Thing #23

• Favorite discoveries or concepts - Looking back over my blogs there are many new concepts/favorites like Delicious, my new Google home page, Google Advanced Search, RSS feeds, tags,  the idea of the future of libraries and where we are going, activities for my kids like Sign Generator or wordle, Google Reader and many more......

• How has program assisted or affected lifelong learning goals - In the beginning I said I did not have problems making goals; however, problems often prevented me from accomplishing them. When I made a goal to view the problems as challenges, the end seemed easier to accomplish.   (Vaughn's encouragement helped too!)

•  Take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes - The biggest surprise for me was how much I enjoyed it. I started with the attitude that I might not be able to do it. My own sense of wonder about what is out there and how I can tap into it even with baby steps is a huge step for me.

•  Improvements to the format or content - This program, in a sense, is geared to librarians first. I do not know if this is good or bad or might be changed.  I have no real complaints.

• Future participation - I would absolutely participate if I had the time. I liked doing it at home with the ability to take as long as I needed on each "thing".

• One word or one sentence - Excitement - it reinforces the idea that learning is fun!

Thing #22"

It was interesting to read about Nings as a resource for teachers. I can see that restrictions about age requirements would prevent students from using Nings to respond with their thoughts so why not Wikis or blogs? SBISD seems to have many things in place for learning communities. Nings would be a good spot to go for educators input /views but with the various sources you have given us with this program, this does not look like my first choice.

Thing #21

I have used both Photo Story and i Movie in my classroom. After TAKS, I have found both to be great ways for kids to have fun and to research something that interests them. They handed in their Works Cited rather than putting it as their last slide which I see is the better alternative.

This is The ABC's of Broadway that 2 of my students did.  Enjoy! 

Thing #20

I'm assuming I have done this correctly as the rap is playing when I preview. I have used YouTube before but just saved to bookmarks and did not add to website so this will be great. My kids loved this video.




I'm sticking with the rap theme and assuming kids still need to learn about how the library is organized. I think middle schoolers would enjoy this.

I found more good choices on You Tube than Teacher Tube---- I hope that is not a problem. Even Common Craft has one I've used before on the Electoral College.
It would be great if more of these videos were shared between teachers and librarians.

Thing #19

Web 2.0 is fun and definitely worth a longer look. Obviously there are so many places to go on the Web, it is fun to search the sites that have won awards in various categories. After searching a few, I wasn't sure what warranted the award; but I did find some that I really liked and bookmarked on Delicious, my other new favorite spot.

Urbanspoon is a site that I can go to when my husband says, "Where would you like to go to dinner tonight?"  It is filled with ways to search restaurants, even by neighborhood, which I liked.

http://www.urbanspoon.com/c/8/Houston-restaurants.html

I can see librarians and schools using this to narrow searches.

Thing #18

Somehow at the beginning of this course I added Google Docs and have made myself a new home page and loved the applications. However, I was still using Outlook on my home computer as my default and it was annoying. This exercise where we were asked to delve into the tools allowed me to finally get gmail as my default. Love it. I have to say I am very slow at all this but it is slowly making more sense and I do love my Google Docs. At one point it asked me if I wanted to have these links on other computers I logged into and I said yes. Is that possilbe? One of my worries is-----I am doing this course on my home computer and how difficult will it be for me to get some of these new cool things on my school computer??????

#17 Rollyo

 I've included my link to my new Rollyo account. Students will have easy access to sites that are student and teacher friendly. I like the link which I can put on my website and the students will have some good sources that I have found credible.


http://www.rollyo.com/search.html?q=mrs.+T.+History&sid=633439