Thing #3 - Skype the whole wide world!

To be honest I have been using Skype for the last 2 and half years. My husband works from home for an Engineering software company and he has a team in Pakistan that he works with as well as talking to clients all over the world so he discovered Skype probably 4 years ago and has been using it ever since. Many times his Skype connection is much clearer than our cell phones at home! Anyway, when our district got laptops for all teachers I installed Skype and would use it to talk to my hubby at home from the different locations where the tech and library teams were doing "laptop rollout" --- it worked great! I actually told several folks on the tech team about it and had many of them using it by the end of that year.
So back to using Skype in schools --- a place I had managed to wander from!
I can see many uses for Skype in the classroom. It would be a wonderful way to communicate with students in classes from other schools all over the world, kind of like "real time" pen pals! Because you can also use a webcam with Skype it would allow you see your class friends in their own atmosphere and encourage real discussions about differences in education in various countries. Another great way to use Skype was demonstrated by the Texas Association of School Library Administrators at their annual conference this past June. Although I had to miss the conference due to other district commitments, I did get to hear all about it both from my esteemed colleagues and through the comments left on the TASLA back channel. What happened is that one of the presenters was able to present to the group and exchange ideas from Australia via a Skype connection. How cool!!! Just think, with Skype your class could participate in presentations and class discussions with professors, researchers, and others all over the world!
In conclusion, Skype is waaaaaaaay cool!
Liz

Thing #2 - Voice Thread, Animoto, and Bookr

Before doing this professional development I have used both Voice Thread and Animoto. I haven't created a Voice Thread but below is one that I really enjoyed.

Voice Thread on Teaching with Technology



Here is an Animoto that I created a couple of years ago when my son got a new puppy, it is still one of my favorites.

Both Voice Thread and Animoto are great tools for education! I have both used and seen them used for student projects, introducing a unit in a classroom, getting students interested in a topic, and as a way to summarize a classroom or student experience. I have seen an increase in the use of these image generators this year and I think that will only increase next year!

Bookr is a great tool for creating a product based on a topic or subject. I think this would be great for language arts projects because it would require the student to combine both images and words to create either something original or an interpretation of literature. I played around with creating one of my dogs(of course :) but couldn't get everything set up in Flikr right. I'll have to try this one again later!
LKP

Thing #23 - Summary

This was a great journey!
Although I had a part in creating this program there were areas that I really had not investigated before and that was great for me. Often in both my personal and professional life I get so busy that I forget to "Play" and this was a great way to force me to play with the neat tools that are out there. I am so thankful that I work where I do and with the people I work with, even when I get in a rut doing the "daily" tasks I have to, my colleagues push me to go farther and find more and that is something that you can't get just anywhere or from anyone!
I will, of course, take part in another version of this, because I know that there are ALWAYS new things out there to find and discover! What a wonderful world!!!

Thing # 21 - Pods, casts, vods, and more!

I have been playing around with Podcasts and Vidoecasts for a couple of years now, and I believe that they have unlimited potential in the educational setting, especially in elementary! What a wonderful way for students to show what they have learned about a topic AND using technology for the final product!

Anyway, the thing about blogs and podcasts that is frustrating is that you can't directly load an audio file into a blog, so you have to have a place to host or keep your audio file or podcast, or you have to do a photostory. The file below is one I created when teaching a class on podcasts and videocasts, it is on the Alamo and instead of talking through the pictures I put in background music.

As a side note; in the previous "Thing" I did find a website that will "host" your podcasts and you can link from there, so there is a way to do it, it's just not easy!

Here is my pod/videocast:

Thing # 19 - And the award goes to.......

There were so many options!!! It was really hard to choose, but since I have done a lot with podcasting I picked Odeo to explore first. It is a site where you can store a list of podcasts for future listening and search other podcasts to find ones you want to hear. You had to register, it was free, but you did need to sign up. I thought at first that I would be able to upload podcasts I had created there, but for that they suggest you use one of two sites where you can upload and save your podcasts, so I went to Switchpod and registered for the free service that will allow you to upload 450 mb of audio files. Here is the link to my son's book review podcast that I uploaded;

Your podcast url:http://www.switchpod.com/users/philippi/Johnreview.wav

I also took a look at YourMinis, this site has a collection of Widgets that you can add to your blog, webpage, or Google page. It has everything from a weather widget, quote of the day, calendars, and even YouTube videos. I have just started playing with Widgets so this one was pretty fun for me!



I also looked at Farecast, a travel site. Our family goes to visit my inlaws twice a year and occasionally we do get a real family vacation, so this was a great site for me to keep an eye on the price of flights to New Jersey, and prices for Disney trips!

Thing # 18 - Online tools, or Can we really get it free???

I tried both of the word processing tools mentioned. I found that OpenOffice took a good bit of time to download but was useful when I got it loaded. I was however VERY impressed with the ease and simplicity of GoogleDocs. I also liked the way that you can share and edit documents with GoogleDocs. I have used GoogleDocs with a class that I am currently auditing, all of the students are located in different parts of the state and the U. S. and we were able to take a document and all look at it and make our comments and edits in one place without the hassle of emailing and sending a document all around to get the changes and ideas we needed to get a finished product. I think that both tools offer a viable alternative to Microsoft Office with the added benefit of sharing the document with others for either viewing or editing. It is like being in a "virtual conference" room and collaborating with others from all over the world --- what an awesome world we live in!

Thing #17 - Playing in the Sandbox!

The Sandbox Wiki was really fun. I have contributed to wikis before, but the fun thing about this was reading all of the comments of the other Library2Play players! What a good way to see what everyone else is thinking about this professional development tool and reading what other players are experiencing. Collaboration is the heart of education (at least in my opinion) and what better way to collaborate!

Thing #16 - Wicky, wacky, wikis!

I have worked with wikis for at least four years, thanks again to my incredible boss, and I think there are unlimited uses for them!!! In our school district we have several wikis that we use for a variety of things, we have one for posting new websites that are good for different subject areas, one that we posted reviews of "required reading" titles for our secondary schools, several that solicited thoughts and comments on different school district initiatives like new library construction, technology in libraries, etc.
Anyway, I even started a wiki to record family information from relatives all over the U. S., essentially a place to write down antidotal stories from our childhood about our long lost relatives. I think wikis a an awesome tool for sharing thoughts, ideas, and stories for anything! They allow us to share in real time with people who live all over the world, they really are a boon to us in this mobile information society.
As for education uses, it's a great way to share student thoughts, comments, and ideas in a common space, I even know of a school where they use a wiki for teachers to order lunch from a local salad and sandwich restaurant. What a great example of the use of digital technology!

Thing # 15 - Library 2.0oooooooooo

In the office that I work in I have heard about Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 for at least the past 5 years! This is primarily because I have the kind of boss who is a "visionary" and a great "leader", so we are always (or at least trying) to keep up with the newest developments in libraries, school libraries, and technology. After reading the articles on Library 2.0 I can honestly say I knew a lot of what they were talking about, but there is still so much out there to learn! I was especially intrigued by the metadata ideas and the new browers that allow your library catalog to behave like Google and the thought of sharing materials world wide via the Open WorldCat Project.
I guess the bottom line is that in the Mid life of my career I feel like I am sitting on the edge of a whole new school library world! I am so glad that I have gotten to see this door open and that I have the opportunity to experience it! What a wonderful gift to the world of education and libraries!!! And to quote a popular song, "the future is so bright(for libraries) I've gotta wear shades".

Thing # 14 - Technorati

Okay, this was fun! I had played around in Technorati before and had even add a page element, but this time I went in and added a couple more Technorati widgets. I have played with widgets before, but this was way more fun than I had before using widgets. The widgets in Technorati that I used were the "Tag Cloud Favorites" and "Technorati Link Counts" these both keep you updated on the tags used in your blog, The "Technorati Link Counts" will display in REAL TIME the number of links from your blog (not that I expect many of those :). Anyway, it was a lot of fun using the widgets but it's even more fun learning about tagging and using tags to identify things on the Web. I knew about tagging before I did this blog, but I have since had to learn to use them with my work. Before I just thought of tags as a way to identify material for my searches, or identifiers to use when searching, now I have to "tag" my self and that's a whole new ballgame! So happy tagging everyone!



Liz's Bytes

Thing # 12 - Rolling, Rolling, Rolling.....

American Presidents

Select...American PresidentsSearch The Web

This is my Rollyo search on American Presidents. It was fun, a little confusing at first, but after I explored a little I did find a way to post my ROLLBAR! It was fun after I got a little better at finding my way around!