The OLD Top Shelf

Presenter: Jodie Smith, Melissa ISD

Social bookmarking sites allow us to share all of the great web sites that we find.

A comparison of three bookmarking sites from this session can be found on the Melissa ISD moodle site at http://web.melissaisd.org. Login as Guest and choose Teacher Tech Tools.

Tools discussed were Diigo, del.icio.us, and Trailfire.

Diigo has a sticky note feature that is similar to the notes field on del.icio.us.

Trailfire allows students to create a “trail” of resources about a particular topic. Trails can be public or private.

You’ve got to read this!

My sweet digital natives, their information spaces, and trying to Yoda - NeverEndingSearch Blog on School Library Journal

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What an intriguing post by Joyce Valenza, teacher-librarian at Springfield Township High School! She’s describing teaching high school seniors to use some Web 2.0 tools for their research projects and their reactions.

It reminds me of a conversation that I had with a librarian recently. Her question was “Is it really important that we (librarians) know how to use Web 2.0 tools? Aren’t they just something that kids play around with?” My answer was a resounding Yes! They are tools that kids play around with, but they also have some real world applications such as the ones mentioned in Joy

ce’s post. It’s up to us as educators to introduce students to these applications, so they can go beyond the “playing” stage. Our students are going to have to be able to track lots of information. They are going to need to know how to communicate with team members in other countries. They need to know that the tools they are playing around with today can be used in many different ways.

Joyce’s idea of having the students use iGoogle to create their own information spaces is brilliant and I love the concept of having widgets for all of our information sources. Some of our database providers are now offering RSS feeds, which is great - but being able to choose sources and put all the search boxes on your own personalized page - that would be fantastic.

So many possibilities to consider…

 

Google - Beach Theme
Originally uploaded by miss_rogue.

Update (10/29/07) We launched Learning 2.0 Through Play in our district on October 22. It was a great success and everyone is having lots of fun playing to learn these new tools.  On Friday, October 26, we presented the program at Library Expo in Plano. The resources we discussed are listed below.

Any one who is interested in learning along with us is welcome. You won’t be eligible for staff development credit or prizes, but we’d be glad to have you along for the ride.

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 [original post]

At the TLA District 5 Fall Meeting on Saturday, I presented a session on the Learning 2.0 program that we will be launching in our district on October 22. In lieu of a handout, I promised the participants that I would post the resources I used in the presentation, so here they are!

Learning 2.0 – original program created by Helene Blowers for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library

School Library Learning 2.0 – adapted by the California School Library Association

Learning Through Play – adapted by Mary Woodard, Mesquite ISD Library Services

43 Things I might want to do this year - article by Stephen Abram

43things.com

The Machine Is Us/ing Us - Web 2.0 video

Creative Commons

Learning 23 Things – My School Library Learning 2.0 blog

RSS in Plain English - Common Craft video

Social Bookmarking in Plain English – Common Craft video

Links to the Web 2.0 Tools Discussed

RSS Readers	Wikis	Content Sharing Sites
Bloglines	PBWiki	Del.icio.us – social bookmarking
Google Reader	Wikispaces for Educators	Flickr – photo sharing site
	BookLoversWiki – Princeton Public Library	YouTube – video sharing site
	Pathfinder for Literary Criticism – Springfield Township Virtual High School Library	Google Video – video sharing site
	Mesquite ISD Library Services Policies and Procedures wiki	Teacher Tube – video sharing for educators
		Yahoo Video – video sharing site
		Google Docs – online document, spreadsheet and presentation creator
		Zoho Writer – online word processor
		iTunes – great resource for podcasts; must download iTunes software first
		Education Podcast Network – audio sharing; podcast locator
		Podcast.net – audio sharing; podcast locator

Image Citation:
“Logo 2.0.” Gualtierocatrame. 30 Apr 2007. 8 Oct 2007 <http://www.flickr.com/photos/gualtierocatrame/478181093/>.

I stayed up way too late last night exploring tagging and Technorati and I have to say it kind of confuses me. I understand that you can use it to search for blogs that you might be interested in reading, and that it is a way for others to find your blog, but I’m still not sure how the tagging works. For example, if I wanted to put Technorati tags on this blog post, I’m not quite sure how to do it. I did go in and “claim” both of my blogs. I also looked to see who had linked to my blog and found that I had been tagged by another blogger by for a meme back in December and I had no idea. How can I know who has linked to my blog? Am I supposed to be checking Technorati all the time to see if anyone has linked to me? Lots and lots of questions…

I’ve had a Del.icio.us account for quite awhile now and have been using it to access my bookmarks from wherever I am, but hadn’t really thought about the social aspect of the site until now. I think it would be a great tool to use for creating reading lists and pathfinders or keeping up with web sites located for research. Students working on collaborative projects could easily share sources with each other.

This is kind of off topic, but a great resource that I have discovered through this program is the Common Craft production company and their great online videos that explain new technologies in “plain English.” A great example is “Wikis in Plain English.”

As I browsed the list of award-winning Web 2.0 sites, I saw several names that were familiar and many that were not. I was surprised that Del.iciou.us was listed as a social tagging site, rather than a bookmarking site and I wondered what the difference is. That’s an exploration for another day, though.

Since I’m getting ready to go on vacation, I decided to check out Yelp the #1 choice for City Guides and Reviews. I looked at several reviews of restaurants and hotels in Nashville, where we will be stopping overnight on our way to the Biltmore in Asheville, NC. I guess it’s the librarian in me that is trained to look for authoritative information, but I really don’t care for these types of sites. How do I know these people who are posting aren’t complete nuts? Why should I take their advice? Unless I spent enough time on Yelp to get to know the people posting and who to trust, I can’t see myself using it very much.

I was also surprised to see WetPaint as the #1 hosted wiki provider. I’d only heard of it recently and am a pbwiki user myself.

Had lots of fun with the image generators. Once again, another thing that you could get lost in! There are hundreds of different signs that you could use.

The first link I visited was the Generator Blog. The first posting there was for a Simpsons Avatar Generator, which I , of course, had to visit. Here are the results of my play on this site…

Next I Googled “image generators” and got 2,070,000 hits. The first one was the Sign Generator Collection, which listed hundreds of possible signs that you can create with your own text. Here’s my first attempt…

Last week, DS and I attended a videoconference and one of the presenters used these generated images in her PowerPoint presentation. There was a different image for each page and she used them to title her slides. I thought it was a very clever use of this new technology.

I already have many library and technology blogs that I read as I mentioned in my last post. Some of my favorites are:

Doug Johnson’s BlueSkunk Blog
Diane Chen’s Deep Thinking
David Warlick’s 2 Cents Worth

One I just discovered during this exploration time was School Library Blogs on Suprglu. From the About section:

A selection of blogs by and for school librarians as noted on LM_NET and other sources. This list was compiled by Christopher Harris from Infomancy as a way to showcase school librarians who are blogging. An additional selection of more general education and instructional technology blogs can be found at http://schoolblogs.suprglu.com.As for the search tools, Technorati was the one I had heard the most about, even though I had never really used it before. It seemed to work pretty well, but I’m still confused about how a site earns its “authority” rating. I’m sure if I took time to go into the Help and read, it would tell me, though.

Feedster was a little confusing to me; Google Blog Search seemed pretty thorough. I loved Blog Pulse and how you could track conversations.

One new app that I learned about in my blog reading for this exercise is Twitter, which is a web site where you post what you are doing at any particular time. All of the bloggers that attended NECC came back all a-twitter about it. (Pardon the pun - couldn’t help it…)
I’m not really sure why, although David Warlick did have some neat application ideas for it. His suggestion was that students could read silently for 15 minutes, then post something to Twitter about where they are in their reading at that particular moment in time. Of course, others can see and respond to the posts since this IS another social networking site. Anyway, time will tell if it will have any use in the classroom or not.

That’s it for now. I’ve spent way too much time “playing” this week!

I’m ahead on thing #8 because with Bloglines I’ve already been there and done that! I created a Bloglines account a couple of years ago and I try to read library and technology blogs on a somewhat regular basis. Recently I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader - it works well also and allows you to “star” blog posts that you want to save and go back to later.

In my experience, blogs are becoming the new place to go for “professional” reading. Instead of having to wait for the next School Library Journal or other professional journal to be delivered to your mailbox, you can find out what the movers and shakers in the profession are thinking about on a daily basis. I’m always amazed at the quality of thought put into these blog posts.

Of course, there are also”fun” blogs I like to keep up with - and these folks are just as passionate as the professional bloggers!- like Entertainment Weekly’s Popwatch, the Unclutterer, and Stage Notes (Broadway theater blog.).

As for sharing blogs, Google Reader does not allow you to share your blogroll. but it does give you a public page on which to share individual items. Here’s mine:
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/16266143818895262220

Banjo and Brownie - mosiac!
Originally uploaded by mwoodard

Here’s one more sample of my play for this afternoon - a mosaic of my dogs!

I could see kids using this to illustrate concepts they are learning. They could create a photo set of related photos, then create a mosaic with one click of the mouse.