Discovery Learning

I don't know if this is one-time deal, but I got the wmv file from PS3 to download completely in minutes. However, I did it from my desktop instead of the laptop, which never would load entirely. Was it my laptop causing the hang-up or something else? The world may never know.

Thing 23 - It's a Wrap

I found a number of the things to be informative, interesting, and enlightening. I'm a creature of habit and embedded myself in a few different sites to visit on a regular basis. Rarely did I endeavor to set up or visit social networking sites until I was required to set up a Facebook account. Even now, I rarely go there and if I do, it's just to see what other people have posted. I guess I'm a fairly private person when it comes to advertising my goings-on online.

My favorite discoveries were:
1. Online productivity tools - having these apps available for free is wonderful. I can see these wiping out Microsoft's Suite, which is way overpriced.
2. Web 2.0 Awards - This took me out of my "Internet Box" and to some very cool sites that I have bookmarked and will make good use of.
3. Photostory 3 - the concept is great. Will the finished product ever download to a blog? We'll see.

I love learning and Library2Play has taught me some new things that I value. My list of resources has grown thanks to this professional development.

I've racked my brain for ways this program could be improved. All the hyperlinks worked. The write-ups for each thing was an easy read. Plenty of good examples and tutorials. The things themselves are very useful to people in most occupations. Directions/activities for each thing were clearly understood.

Library2Play is an educational experience than everyone can benefit from doing.

Thing 22 - Nings

Ning is a free online application platform that allows users to build social networks and websites for public or private use. Ning allows the user to choose a combination of features to create a customized social network including blogs, discussion forums, photo sharing, polling, RSS feeds, member profile pages, and more. It also allows integration with Internet applications such as email, MySpace, Facebook, and You Tube.

The ability to poll can give the administrator of the site an insite of what his students or peers think or understand about a particular subject. The administrator can compile applicable videos from You Tube to show to a group or allow members of the group to post assigned videos. The same can be done with photo sharing. The use of MySpace or Facebook allows for easy distribution of information and media, easy posting of activities, and promotes communication and community among a group.

Ning is an all-encompassing social networking site that I see having a bright future. The most impressive thing to me is how this application as well as many others that I've learned about through Library2Play, is that no programming experience is needed to make things happen. I'd put myself in the average group for understanding technology, but the numerous applications that I've played with these last few weeks have posed to be quite easy to do.

Thing 21 - Videocasts and Podcasts

I've heard about podcasting and vidcasting, but had never gotten a clear picture about what they were. Now that I've created a videocast through Photostory 3, the benefits of this program in the classroom, boardroom, and other areas are easy to see. Library2Play gives these ideas: "Book reviews posted on line for sharing with other students, book reviews done by a librarian or teacher for "virtual" or "digital" booktalks, sharing a voice performance with others, sharing a presentation at a conference or other such gathering so that those unable to attend can hear the speaker." No offense to Animoto, but vidcasting has the same bells and whistles plus quite a bit more. Additional features include the ability to add narration, manually choose slide transitions, unlimited length for presentation (a membership fee has to be paid to play a presentation over 30 seconds on Animoto), publishing to a remote program such as .wmv (Animoto is played strictly through its website). I plan on using vidcasting during this coming school year. I can easily see my first project being a short Social Studies/History vidcast to be used with an Activstudio lesson. [2 days later] I've tried to download this vidcast, in wmv format, and not gotten more than 31 secs out of an approximately 3 min discussion with music accompaniment. I then converted the wmv to mov (Quicktime) and avi, both acceptable by Blogger, but neither of those loaded either. Very annoying. Oh, did I mention that I gave it 10 HOURS to load?

Thing 20 - You Tube and Teacher Tube

You Tube and Teacher Tube are resources I have used for years for various purposes. For educational purposes, both sites are good, but Teacher Tube tends to make their videos more accessible for downloads or embedding. Thus, educators can probably save time by going straight to Teacher Tube if you want to embed a video as part of a presentation - say in Activstudio.

Thing 19 - Web 2.0 Awards

The Web 2.0 Awards list has a number of sites that I found quite interesting. Del.icio.us, Craigslist, Twitter, Flickr, and a couple others are sites I'm already familiar with and enjoy what they have to offer. Some of the sites I viewed are below. Although the Awards site lists the 1st-3rd place plus an honorable mention, I've only looked at the 1st place winners at this time.

A number of these sites are good for personal use. Upcoming.com is an excellent site for finding events coming up in your neck of the woods. What I appreciate is the events that are listed are not all high ticket items. Events such as the World Series of Dogs to Basics cooking classes are posted. Searches can be done by category or date. City Searches are nowhere near as comprehensive. Another site I was looking forward to using for digital storage and remote access was Omnidrive. Unfortunatly, it's been discontinued. This seemed unusual for an award-winning site. That's the business world I guess. I LOVE the widgets site YourMinis.com. All types of widgets are available to embed on your blog or website. I placed the Internet Radio on this page, but it was a little too much with the Rollyo search and books already showing, so I removed it.

Sites that educators could absolutely take advantage of from the awards list are del.icio.us, .docstoc (many educator created forms and lessons), GoogleBlogSearch, and Flickr.

I'm looking forward to previewing the 2nd-honorable mention places in the near future. It's like looking for buried treasure.

Thing 18 - Online Productivity Tools

Open Office.org is an online suite of apps similar to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. To download to your computer is free. It also appears to be very compatible with Microsoft Office. You can transfer or copy and paste information from one app to the other in most cases. I also found that documents can be converted to PDF format with Open Office.org.

Disclosure time - I bought a PC from a guy off Craigs List. I test drove it before purchasing, and everything worked fine, including all Microsoft Office apps. Four months after taking the pc home, a notice appeared that the trial version of Microsoft Office had expired and I would have to purchase the suite (which is costly). Needless to say, I was a bit miffed by this revelation. With Open Office.org (OOo), no purchase is necessary nor are there any compliance or licensing issues. Big bonus!!

Okay, I had to download OOo to explore and learn for myself what it's all about. The advantages mentioned above hold true. The only downside to OOo that I can determine is in time management. The app takes a little longer to open and to save than does Microsoft Office programs. It's not a big deal except that we've been spoiled on the timelessness that it takes to perform these functions with Microsoft Office. It's kind of like going from dsl back to dial-up, but no where near that extreme.

OOo is a viable and excellent alternative to purchasing Microsoft Office, if you want to save some cash. Newer versions are continually being produced in an effort to keep up with current trends so it seems that OOo will be around for a long time.

Thing 17 - Rollyo

So, I was able to create my own search engine by providing Rollyo with the sources of information I wanted them to find and left the rest to them. I see how it will save time weeding through a bunch of trash on regular search results. I also like it because it lets you search through a particular community of websites that you may frequent. It seems like a cool new way to search online.

The setup was easy. I was able to enter urls that I visit frequently. I then categorized my sites, submitted the information, and Rollyo took care of the rest. I'm going to visit this site quite a bit more and try to learn more of the finer points - my interest is piqued. I read that Google has also now developed a customizable search engine - Google Custom Search Engine (Google CSE). I gonna check it out to see what it has to offer.

http://rollyo.com/search.html?q=blog&sid=560478

Thing 16 - Wiki Wiki Wikah

Wikis serve a multitude of applications for the education community - academic, social, and administrative to name a few. Academically, the "Curriculum Connections" listed in Library2Play offer a variety of ways teachers can challenge their students to incorporate wiki technology with classroom curriculum to complete assignments. Socially, the Sandbox offers an opportunity for students to share their thoughts and give feedback - similar to blogging. Adminstratively, you can use a wiki to organize materials for a paper. You can save weblinks, quotes, and documents to the wiki and then just go to that particular page as you're writing.

Thing 15 - Library 2.0 and Web 2.0

Libraries have to evolve continuously to keep up with the changing needs of their users. In the past, libraries were just places to find books. The creation of Library 2.0 refers to a collection of online tools used to deliver services in an interactive online experience. With Library 2.0, the library will be a meeting place existing both online and in the physical world where needs for entertainment and information can be met. People can actively contribute information, giving them a stronger voice in library collections and services.



One of the interesting things about Web 2.0 is that users can easily contribute to the content they are viewing. Conversely, websites can be misused and abused. In the education community, Web 2.0 has significant benefits. It:



1. encourages student engagement and increase participation – particularly among quieter pupils without the anxiety of having to raise questions in front of peers in class.
2. is available anytime and most anywhere, which enables individuals to extend their learning.
3. encourages attention to detail with written assignments because students feel a sense of ownership and engagement when they publish their work online.

Thing 14 - Technorati and Tagging

Technorati, technorahtee, techno-rat, tecccch...I don't care for it. Not all blog search engines or portals are alike. Technorati is too random and busy for my liking. However, this posting's intent is not aimed at dissing sites, but rather about expressing my findings about the values of tagging. After months of intensive research (perhaps, minutes), I can list what I believe are a few reasons tagging is beneficial to the Internet world.

With the use of tags:

1. Students can be more accurately directed to relevant content. No need to waste time with random searches.

2. It's easier to find previously viewed desired information

3. Online clutter, such as ads, graphics, hyperlinks, are practically nonexistent so that more relevant information is presented.

Thing 9 - Useful Library-Related Blogs and News Feeds

Google Reader - nice site, fairly easy to use with a few distractors. Bloglines is better for the basic user -easy to find tabs, radio buttons that are easy to understand and locate, and only a quarter-page of graphics to have to look at on the home page - no sensory overload here. Contrast that with Superglu and Topix.net and the tons of verbiage and graphics you see upon first entering the site and you'll see why a lot of viewers might quickly leave these sites without giving them a second glance. They do have valuable information for many, but do you have the right shovel to dig out the desired search?

An extremely useful blog site for SBISD teachers is the Promethean Planet Forums. There are answers to almost any question you have about Activstudio or Activboards. I frequent this site regularly to get new ideas. If you can't find an answer, pose your question and you'll get a lot of valuable advise. I searched a multitude of blogs, but unusual blogs didn't appear. At least, not any that are visited very often. One that does have a creative author with some interesting reads is the Good Word of Sprout blogspot.

Thing 8 - RSS Feeds and Readers

RSS feeds and readers allow me to keep track of the new things added to websites and blogs. Unfortunately, it is also an excuse for me to subscribe to every website under the sun to keep watching for great content. It's like my daily newspaper written by all the websites I like to read. I open it up, and it shows me the recently added stories on all the sites at even faster loading times due to reduced graphics and ads. The same holds true for blogs to which I subscribe.

A reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines can be used advantageously in the classroom. Teachers can set up a reader and have students reference it for a variety of purposes. The reduced content and removal of distractors (e.g. blinking ads, hyperlinks, etc.) enable much more user-friendly reading.

Thing 13 - Social Bookmarking

Social networking weblogs such as Del.icious allow you to bookmark and share links. The use of tags makes it easy to find/narrow searches about desired subjects. Social bookmarking is a way of storing links that you like, and sharing these ‘collaborative opinions’ with other people. Some are designed primarily for listing blog posts, but others are intended for any webpage.

Can these sites, such as Del.icious, be used for research assistance? Strategic individuals can add websites that they feel are worth other people viewing to their list of bookmarks. This can impact thousands of people indirectly. So here’s an efficient way to help other people find good sites that will help them for research or other venues.

Thing 12 - Creating Community

I don't know if I'll ever be overly involved with blogging. At this time, I only go to one on a frequent basis. I think this partly has to do with time constraints. I'm open for ideas about any blogs that are interesting to you. Particularly if they're Houston-based.

The above query was a taste of what I read about on "10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog" having to do with "Leave open-ended comments." I found the sections about being humble and gracious, and "rewarding" comments to be useful tips. I've seen this done on the blog that I read and can see how it leads to encouraging more friendly blogging. After seeing all the junk that people throw around on the Internet, it's nice to know that there are still a lot of "friendly fire" to be had.

"Information Wants to be Free" was a reinforcing article for me. The idea of sharing ideas with others and you will be rewarded ten-fold is a great philosophy. I enjoy sharing ideas, websites, information, etc. with whoever might benefit from them. The saying, "It takes a village to raise a child" is true and is even truer in the education community. So to work collaboratively is very important for the success of the students and the school. I'm glad to see Farkas' comments on these lines so that others might be enlightened by this thought if they are not already.

Thing 11 - My Library Thing

LibraryThing lets you have your own personal online library. It's a nice site for helping you create a library out of your own personal book collection. The site can also recommend books you might like (or not like), connect you with users that have similar reading interests and give you book ratings. I created a widget that shows some of the books I've catalogued. I placed it on the right side of my blog page. It's a dynamic page, so you'll see different books listed each time you return to or refresh the page.

I looked at some of the social groups on the site but I don't have an interest in frequenting this area. I can see its value for people, particularly librarians, to get recommendations from others about books to purchase or not for their libraries.

Thing 10 - Image Generator

The listed online image generators really are a lot of fun but can have educational value also. I really enjoyed the simple sites, such as making goo from dumpr.net (http://www.dumpr.net/amazing-goo.php)

and badge maker from bighugelabs.com http://bighugelabs.com/badge.php. I've got my daughter, who's going into 6th grade on these sites, and she's getting a big kick out of them. Even without a drawn-out writing lesson, she's creating verbiage and other text to complement her images.