#39 Digital Storytelling

I LOVE THIS. As you can see by my digital story below, I used voice thread with beginning English speakers and their English teacher to work on a lesson about emotions. The students found pictures that showed different emotions that were on their vocabulary list for that week and then they wrote sentences, read their writings and commentated on each others work. The teacher expressed that this was a very effective way to teach students not only the content but fluency and writing skills. Plus as an added bonus the students were more engaged then they would have been in a traditional vocabulary assignment.

Maria's Emotions Book

#38 Screencasting

Screencasting rocks. We've been using this a ton this year in our library and I've even done some staff development trainings. I'm attaching a screencast I created on how to search our library catalog, along with a link to my wiki containing my training materials. A few tips on screencasting - create a script - Short is sweet - Keep it simple - Try different screencasting software. They are always coming out with new tools.

#37 Photo Tales

I used Animoto to create a slide show from a trip we took to Washington D.C. to learn more about IB middle school libraries. I can't believe how easy it was to create a slide show. The free version only allowed you to create a 30 second slide show which is not very much time for many pictures. If you were to use this for your library or school I would invest in the paid account. I could easily see you getting your moneys worth.

IB Havin' Fun

#36 Comic Relief

This was fun. I helped my husband who is an art teacher make a video. It can be found at the bottom. We are also using word clouds to create promotional material for our library and teachers are using them to highlight their guiding questions. Although I was familiar with some of the tools, it was really great to find some more. This is what makes this type of training so fabulous. You find a tool and figure out how you can make it work in your setting.

# 35 Books 2.0

I think these book 2.0 resources are really exciting. It gives avid readers a platform to share their thoughts about books. I joined good reads a few years ago and even though I don’t post very often or rarely update my info, I enjoy getting the emails from my friends seeing what they are reading.

The cataloging sites and book swapping sites also seems like a really great idea for people trying to organize their personal libraries and then share their resources with others.

One of the other sites I thought was cool was the book crossing site. This was a site where you take one of your books, register it and mark it and then take it to a public location and “release” it. I looked at some of the books that recently had been found. It looked like a fun thing to do.

The sites for children’s books seemed to be a great way for kids to play and interact with literature. Some of these sites also allowed you to publish your writings and illustrations. How fun would it be for our students to be able to use these sites to publish their work?

# 34 Online Answer Sites

I found the articles about the future of the library reference desk really interesting. Currently I work in a junior high so we don't have a typical reference desk. We work with individual students when the need arises but also work with whole classes teaching research skills.
The article that hit home was “The Future of the Reference Desk”. It gave the problems and benefits of our current situation. I think that the online answer websites have a place. Just like any information on the web you need to look for bias. I looked at yahooanswers and found some good information and some junk as well. Some of the other websites asked questions but also seemed to ask the opinion of the answerers.
We should try to design our media programs to offer the user an easy way to find the answers to their questions. This could be done in email, in person, by phone or in a live chat form. I see this area of service changing a lot as technology changes.

#33 Travel 2.0

These travel sites are a great resource for people trying to get multiple perspectives before taking a trip. We used some of the travel site for students who were taking a Spanish class and needed to plan a pretend trip to Spain. I think using these sites were not only more motivating to the students but also made them feel more in control. The students felt they were getting better information. With any open site you need to remind students of bias. The hotel may be creating comments and one bad review by a negative customer should be kept in perspective.

#32 Google Maps and Mashups

Wow, there are so many mashups for google maps. If you can think of it there is a mashup for it. One thing I noticed is the applications are only as powerful as the information entered. For example I went on safe2pee.org and looked up my city and there were no bathrooms found safe 2 pee in. Now I know there are safe bathrooms but it just means that we need to be aware of the limitations of these sites and teach our students the limitations. That said I can see so many possibilities for use in the classroom. One site I found showed Barack Obama's road to the White House following him all over the world since birth. It had information on the Google map and had a timeline with additional information. How cool would this be for a student doing a report?
I created my own map for a girl's weekend that I am going on.

# 31 More Twitter

I have been using and checking twitter several times a day since we explored it on #27. I added the badge on my blogger page so visitors to my site can see my latest update. I follow several news reporters and see their updates. I also follow Minnesota Public Radio. I am a news junkie so this has been a new and quick way for me to get my fix.
I have made twitter part of my social networking plan. I do find there are things I like more about it than facebook. I added an app on my iPod touch which allows me to update my facebook and twitter in one step.

#30 RSS Feeds and Delicious

I went back and took a look at Google reader. I added some new blogs that I want to follow. I also looked at the speed reading tool Spreed. I thought it was a neat tool but not really practical.
I went back and loaded the Delicious tool bar on my browser. I have been adding bookmarks like crazy. I have also used it to gather resources for a staff development training I was doing on Marzino's key instructional strategies. I found Delicious had a ton of sites bookmarked. Very helpful.

#29 Google Tools

WOW! Google is taking over the world. I am a fan of many of the Google tools. I have a gmail account but have been using yahoo for so long, making the change now would be difficult. At some point I may go for a paid yahoo account which would allow me to check it from the gmail page and also some of the custom start pages (see #28). I think that the calendar feature could be very useful to teachers who want to create their own web pages and are using something like blogger or pbwiki. However I do think there are better options for a teacher page then blogger or pbwiki.
I thought that the Goog411 thing rocks. I haven't tried it yet but think it would come in handy when traveling.
The Google health app also looks really interesting. I checked and my hospitals, clinics, etc. are not yet available for data impute. I'm not ready to start loading my info yet but think the possibilities are interesting.

# 28 Start Pages

I have looked at the google and yahoo start pages in the past but after reading the articles I was not utilizing them to the full potential. I had not heard of Pageflakes or Netvibes before this project. I like the looks and feel of the netbvibes the most but find that the most important feature, my yahoo email, can’t be accessed without a paid account.
I spent my time going back and adding features to my yahoo start page. I wish that the facebook app did not time out after 20 minutes. It would also be nice to have my twitter feed available. If anyone knows how to work around this please let me know.

# 27 Twitter

I am now a twittering fool. I added the application to my iPod Touch so I can update and read the twitter feeds from my handheld. I am following several of my peers in my district and some national news feeds. I don't think I would be as interested in twitter if I didn't have my handheld. The iPod makes it easy and fast to check updates. I was even able to search for feeds within a five mile radus of my house.

#26 Join the Ning

I joined the Ning the first time around however I missed the District 279 group. I joined that group and even posted a message for my coworkers to see. It doesn't appear to be active at the moment but my goal is to get this up and running again.

#25 Bloggers' Toolkit

Look it's Snowing!!!
I learned how to make it snow on my blogger site. It would help if I had a darker background.
I also added the text to speak feature. You can copy and past text in the box and it will convert it to speach. It would be a helpful feature to add to a site that did not have Read and Write Gold available. I noticed that it worked better and faster if you just entered little amounts of text.

#24 Refresh Your Blog

I have been working with blogs a little since 23 Things ended just not this one. I changed by background and avatar. I looked at some of the templates you can get free but was afaid to use them because I wondered if it would cause problems with some of my widgets. Has anyone had any problems?

Okay, I tried it, because this is about trying something new right? I found a very cute, very clean template to use with a pretty pink flower at the top. I copied that html code, put it into the layout and hit preview. I would have lost my video feed and several more of my widgets I have added to my page.