Thing #23 - I see the Light

That's the light at the end of the 23 Things tunnel (which was pitch black a few times) as well as the light shining on all things Library 2.0.

OK, my favorites...Google Reader came in handy, especially for keeping up with the other players. It is also overwhelming as some of the professional blog keepers are certainly have much to say and say it often.
Lifelong Learning...I'm glad to know a little more about a few things. This program absolutely made it easier for me to tackle the first layer of Libray 2.0.
Take-aways/unexpected outcomes...Google alerts has let me keep up with my brother a bit. He's in the music biz so whenever he puts a new song on his MySpace page or another person writes about him, I get an alert! That's been fun. I'm in the middle of doing trading cards with the 2nd graders with the dreaded bird research and we're starting with 3rd grade states. I didn't realize how l o n g it would take 2nd graders to type in 3 facts that they already had written on their research sheets. Won't do it again. It was nice to realize that I already had a little experience with some of the tools (blogs, wikis, podcasts)
Improve this program...Well, it really was TOO much. There were way more than 23 things. Thing #7 had 8 things all by itself! SO, pare it down a bit. Maybe split it up so someone can be successful even if they can only get through half of the program. If you have smaller bites, someone could then move through the different levels?
Another one?????? I'm not sure if I would sign up to fully participate but I would certainly look at what was there that I needed/wanted to learn. Let me get over this one first.
One word or one sentence... Self-paced introduction to a variety of web 2.0 tools that can be used in our schools for, by, and with our students. How's that?
Thank you to our kickball captains. I know that setting this up wasn't easy and keeping up with all the players had to be more than time consuming. Once again, I've been pushed to go places I didn't think I could go. And I survived. Now let me go see if my daughter did.

Thing #22 - Ning

OK, I wasn't really getting it. I mean I sort of understand but, being over 40, and not a joiner, I don't get it. Maybe if you worked somewhere rural and didn't have a built in network the way we do, I could see joining the teacher or librarian nings as a place to start. So, since I wasn't convinced yet, I searched ning for the popular ones and found SXSW 08 which is an Austin music conference/party that my brother has dropped in on a few times. OK, I get that this could be useful to him on the East Coast before he hits town. Maybe if TLA had a ning, those who couldn't attend could pick up some conference remotely...but there are other ways to do that. So I kept searching. Lots of Moms groups, schools groups, tv fan groups, yadda yadda yadda. Nothing in my life that I searched for had a ning. Somehow, that didn't upset me. I did see that it could (and does) serve as a closed network for student groups, school faculty, far flung friends and relatives. I'll have to think about whether this is the best place to start for a few of my teachers who are ready to have their own space but aren't sure how.

Thing #20 - You tube, we tube...

These are two videos I saw at TCEA that struck a chord, for different reasons of course.



I'm trying the Zamzar thing but, while they keep saying they'll send me an email in 24 hours, I've yet to receieve one. I searched Blinkx but came up emptyhanded in my specific search but I want to remember it exists. I've seen some interesting curriculum videos on Teacher Tube though they are usually geared a little higher than elementary. There was a cute claymation that had the 3 pigs and Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White's dwarves in each other stories. I do wonder what kind of schools have the time to do these projects. Seems that all we have time to do is test, retest and test again. I use the streaming video in the library but I do suffer from flashback to junior high when they turned off the lights and put you in front of a movie. I hope I do a better job of relating it for the kids and doing something with it after we've viewed it. There is still that question in the back of my mind that I'm bringing kids to the library and putting them in front of TV? Now if we could make the video... (that's going to take another 23 things!)

I know that my teachers have appreciated the science clips I been able to share and work together with kidspiration or other activities to help reinforce the science instruction in the classroom. It's been great using digital stories in various forms with first grade's Around the World unit, for changing up holiday presentations such as Valentines Day or President's Day, and of course, just for fun!

Thing #17 - Sandbox

Ok, I added an entry to the sandbox. Is that really all there is to this Thing? I didn't spend my usual three hours so I'm thinking I missed something....

Thing #13 - del.icio.us

First, I just have to say that I LOVE The Common Craft Show! It is my favorite thing and it doesn't even have a number!

Now, this one was tough for me. All of the bookmarks worth tagging in del.icio.us are bookmarked on my school computer, not at home. So...dilemma...do this at school...export the bookmarks and take them home...find sites and create a new list to play with this tool so I can move to the next thing...I won't divulge my methods but I have a small collection now.

I definitely had a hard time NOT typing a comma between tags.

If our favorite puppet afficianado had used del.icio.us way back when she started keeping bookmarks she could have saved us all a lot of time and effort. Alas, we're on our own.

I think I will use it to finally take care of the links from my old library page. I may even dump the wiki where we've been putting our links since I can't get the teachers to add to it. No need for a wiki if I'm the only one adding to it. Hmm, have to think about that. No pages, just tags. Hmm.

Thing #10 - Image Generators

I couldn't open the comic strip generator but a google search found this Photo Cube that is interesting. I plugged in the 2nd grade heroes. And below I made myself a reminder using Image Chef. I could see you could spend a lot of time PLAYing!
Myspace Photo Cube

Thing #11 - Library Thing

Hey! Something that actually worked for me! I could sit and add my books all day but my 'to do' list is too long. I don't know if I will actually use this but I did like tagging my books with prediction, problem solving, etc. If every teacher/librarian did this with their picture books then instead of our marc subject headings you could search for inference, for example. There is a list for inference but imagine what it could be....

Yes, I know I skipped #10. You can catch it later...

Thing #9

I'm feeling the limitation of online professional development. I want to TALK TO SOMEONE. I want someone to EXPLAIN things to me when I DON'T GET IT. I didn't get the shared thing. I tried but I'm not much of a sharer so the computer must sense that. I tried to share a video, it told me how to share the video from the Common Craft Show but it didn't work the way they told me to do it. Then, I couldn't get the blogger page elements to share it the way I thought I could do it. So once again, I have to come in through the backdoor or down the chimney or something. I think I am destined to be a dabbler, no proficiency. I think I am ok with that.

And then, once I've vented publicly, it seems to work! Anyway, it seemed that some of us weren't feeling the Flickr thing as much as others and I thought this presented a new reason or two. I'll try to find something different ot share and see if I can keep it working. I may need a nap first.

Things #8 and #9

I think it was 2 years ago that our fearless leader suggested Google Reader to keep up with his and other blogs. I remember dutifully getting an account and then getting stuck not understanding what to do next. Apparently I don't remember actually going forward but when I logged into it today I had several blogs in several folders with over 100 new posts waiting for me! Needless to say, I read a few and marked the rest as read and will start over. That is definitely the problem with all of the technology, there is too much to keep up with! I have to go back and deal with the shared stuff but I have a four-year old who didn't go to daycare today so I'm lucky to have gotten this far! I am excited to have gotten this far because I knew I would be able to put our 2PLay blogs in the reader and not have to click through the list like I have been doing. So now I have a folder called 23 Things. I also will make my husband set up a Google Reader. He actually has sites that he visits daily unlike me. I also have not explored the searching for blogs quickly opportunity - ah, so much technology, so little time.

Problem = Challenge

My last post ended in frustration (and a fair bit of blue language but my kid was in bed.) After taking time out to read through several 2play blogs, I returned to the scene of my frustration. I did manage to embed the slideshow as a page element but without the captions. Not what I wanted. I followed the directions for adding the link, didn't work (again). So, I eventually ignored the directions and took what looked like a perfectly good address even though it was for email and IM not for adding to your webpage. Ha, it worked. Definitely don't think it was worth the time invested. I'm going to bed.