ESC Thing #21, Week 9

Last fall I attended the Young Adult Conference held at Sam Houston State University and one of the workshops was on podcasting. I was able to create a podcast by following the guidelines set forth by the professor conducting the workshop. Upon returning home, however, I have not been able to create a podcast. I searched all of the sites provided and was able to subscribe to a podcast titled "Teacher 2.0". It was extremely easy to load to iTunes. I look forward to listening to the podcast.

ESC Thing #20, Week 9

Instead of posting a professional YouTube video, I decided to find a video just for fun. As my students, daughters, friends and I anxiously await Stephenie Meyer's latest Twilight saga, Breaking Dawn, here is a pretty good book trailer that promotes the book. I love so many of the videos on YouTube but our filter does not allow them to come through. There is much that is inappropriate, and of course high school students will be drawn to that. However, are we to keep out all of the good?

ESC Thing # 19, Week 8

LibraryThing is great. I was able to add books as requested and I joined the YA Lit group. I had previously set up an account and have been adding to my library every time I read something new. Added the widget to our school blog and will try and add it to our library web page when school begins again. What a great way to advertise new books to our students.

Dolly Part 2

It has been a few days since my last post. Our DSL line went out again and we did not have Internet service until this morning. I feel bad even mentioning it knowing that there are still some communities without electricity or worse even, plumbing.
What is it about this blogging exercise that is so addicting? We are truly social creatures. It is hard to imagine living without my favorite blogs and web sites that I have come to rely on not only for education but for entertainment and social interaction. Okay, time to get back to 23 things, I'm a little behind.

Hello Dolly !!

Well hello Dolly. Brownsville took quite a punch but thankfully our city suffered only minor damage. Our backyard looks like, well it looks like a hurricane hit it. Broken limbs, debris everywhere and inches of rainwater everywhere. I am still grateful that it wasn't far worse than it was. We never lost our electricity but for some reason our DSL line went out and I felt so cut off from the rest of the world. My daughters were not the only ones going through withdrawal.

It's clean up time and we are all busy cleaning up after the storm. I will post pictures on my Flikr account soon. A big thanks to everyone out there praying for South Texas, it helped.

ESC Thing #18, Week 8

From my previous post you can see my Zoho Writer experiment. While at Zoho I looked at some of the presentations that are shared. I searched Web 2.0 and found quite a few that offered some great information. Posting to my blog was so easy, it took me no time at all to send it over.

Teacher Inservice

I am trying very hard to organize my thoughts and think of what will be the most effective way to inservice 9th grade geography teachers. While Hurricane Dolly is churning away in the Gulf of Mexico this is as good a time as any to try out Zoho Writer and finally put my thoughts down.

• Introduction to databases
  
• Unitedstreaming
  
• How to download and imbed video into presentation software
  
• Web 2.0
  
• Applications of Web 2.0, what comes through the filtering software
  
• Using Animoto and Photostory for class projects
  
• del.icio.us
  

That should keep us busy for the entire day. We probably won't make it through half of what I would like to do. I only hope I can keep their attention.

Technorati Tags Geography,Teachers,Teachers,Inservice

Twilight

Just playing with Imageloop and created a cool little slide show of Bella and Edward. Can't wait for the movie!!!

ESC Thing # 17, Week 7

There really just isn't enough time to look through all of the wonderful ideas on what to do with Wikis. I've added the California Curriculum Connections wiki to my del.icio.us account for further study.

Am very intrigued by their idea of "2.0 THING of the WEEK " "Would teachers like hearing about a new 2.0 tool or set of tools each week or so? Why not feed classroom teachers (or interested teachers only) some or all of the 23 Things over the course of a school year. Something along the lines of a chapter-a-day book club, but it would be a "2.0 Thing-of-the-Week." What a wonderful idea. I already write newsletters for my faculty, this would be something that I know many of our teachers would love to try. If it is presented slowly and very non-threatening there are many on our campus who would love to give this a try.

ESC Thing #16, Week 7

Wiki, Wiki and more Wiki. Quick, Quick and more Quick! I really took my time examining the links that ESC 23 Things provided for us because I am pondering changing our library web page into a Wiki. Still trying to figure out what is the best format for our students. I'm feeling rather inferior right about now though. Just proves that we never stop learning in our profession. If we want to keep our libraries as the center of where learning and technology are happening we need to lead our schools into the direction of Web 2.0 and then get ready for 3.0.

ESC Thing #15, Week 6

As far as libraries are concerned, I love where the next generation is taking us. As a high school librarian I have seen the shift from books to web based searching. It is impossible to teach 2500 students to properly sift through what is reliable information and what is not though there are days that I give it my best shot and I have the tired feet to show for it. Putting our OPAC online and directing students to the best possible databases accessible from any classroom and from home have worked well with our students. I have already contacted teachers about conducting inservices on del.icio.us and other social networking sites. I have never been big on keeping stuff "just in case", not in my personal or professional life. With school budgets getting tighter and tighter I have made a major shift in my book buying. No longer do I purchase expensive reference books that I know students will not use, the bulk of my money goes towards fiction and high interest non-fiction which my students love. This has kept our circulation statistics high and our students are happy. They know they can find resources online either on their own or with my help.

ESC Thing #14, Week 6

Its pretty interesting that Technorati is attempting to categorize so many blogs. The librarian in me applauds them for their efforts. I searched for "School library learning 2.0". The keyword search brought up multiple postings. Tried searching just the blog postings as well as just the tags. Noticed that most of the postings that were brought up were mostly other bloggers participating in "23 Things" for other school districts in other states. How interesting that so many of us are trying to learn about Web 2.0 and all of its applications.

ESC Thing 13, Week 6

del.icio.us is really easy to use. I spent lots of time visiting many of the different tags that people have set up as well as the SJLibraryLearning2's account that was set up for this assignment. I had already set up my own del.icio.us account previously and find myself adding to it constantly. You can set up del.icio.us on your browser's toolbar and just tag and tag to your hearts delight. Since first setting up my account I have discovered other tools which make me love this site the best of all. You can add other users to your social network and all of their bookmarks come with them. Cool!!
I have already been approached to in service all of our district's Geography teachers and this is one site they will all learn about.