Carol+Jones

I am teetering on the edge of overwhelm-ment!

The tools I was familiar with, but not confident with, before taking this class were iGoogle, Google Reader, Animoto, Delicious (barely), had had some exposure to wikispaces and pbworks. I think I only knew enough to get myself into trouble!

I have found this class very inspiring and exciting. I feel wobbly- the training wheels will be off after today- but I think throwing myself into it and trying is the key. Also one thing that Kris Steingreaber and Tricia both said is that at first we should try one or two new tools and really become comfortable with them.

I also understand and appreciate Marci Dunlap's Teeter-totter illustrations of content and technological difficulty. Difficult content, easy technology, etc. I get that.

More thoughts: I am teaching a class for the first time this fall. I am not sure yet of the content- I am working on it this summer- so at this moment I am not sure how I will be using these tools specifically.

Personal Learning Networks
1. I think the most valuable tool so far I think will be Twitter/Hootsuite. (I was unable to load Tweetdeck). So far I have found so many good sources!! (Angela Meiers is following me!!) I feel as if I want to bookmark everything. What a great tool! Hootsuite is where I will mostly be going as the twitters are organized. And at last I have learned about hashtags!!! I was listening to Angela Meiers at a 1 to 1 conference in Des Moines and there was a Tweetdeck projected so people could follow on Twitter and I had no idea what that was all about. Now i do. Some sense of empowerment, there.

Here is a screen shot of recent Tweets.

AND I just learned how to do a screen shot!! W0000hhhoooohooooo!!!

2. Another very valuable tool for me will be Diigo. You can see that I am very interested in getting current information. The other thing I like about Diigo is that we can see other people's bookmarks- people who know more than I do and that I can learn from. That is very cool. It also organizes things so that you don't forget. This only shows a few that i am following.



3. I have just created a wiki for my class. I'm not completely sure how I will use it, but I know I want to have one! (I like it that I still have access to Midnight Assassin that Scott and I created with I student taught with him. i can use it as a template, or for more ideas.)



4. I have had an iGoogle account for a year but this class has had me refine who and what I am following. Free Tech for teachers and Joyce Valenza for a couple of examples. I love being able to customize. The beach shot is from Santa Cruz!!!



Web 2.0 Connections!
1. Photopeach! One thing I know I want to do with my students is digital storytelling. The only photos I have on this computer are some of Gavin's Redefined performances, so I have made a rudimentary slide show with music to show that I know how to manipulate images. What I would REALLY like to do is get his solo on as music but it is only on UTube w/video which is complicated and probably not worth it for this.

However, for my classroom purposes, we could go into AP images and do a slide show on the Great Depression, for example. I will be teaching library skills and one of the main sources will be Iowa AEA Online, of which Atomic Learning is one of the sources. So many of the students just go to Google Images. Great that they know about that source, but my job is to show others!

media type="custom" key="6430403"

ZooBurst and VoiceThread are also two other digital storytelling tools I need to look into. I have requested to be admitted as a user of Zooburst. It seems to me that it would be fun to use Zooburst with some of the younger classes to explore literature connections!

2. I am excited to share Google Earth with our middle school science teacher. I visited with him just this week and told him all about the Apollo missions info and how there are actual shots of the moon and you can "visit" moon, stars, earth, oceans....and he still checks out StarLab from AEA! We are going to get together this summer and play around with it. I think part of my job as a teacher-librarian is to clue in teachers to good resources!!

3. Obviously I have leaned and will continue to lean heavily on the FHS Media Center Web 2.0 tools. Tricia has built a great armory of tools! Under the front page under Navigation are examples of things she has done this year.

4. Just this morning I was wondering how I could use Glogster. I have only seen it used as an invitation. But Tricia has examples on the side of Glogster in the classrooms. thanks, Tricia! I liked the Romeo and Juliet one. We study that in English 2 also and I want to show it to our oh-so-new English 2 teacher.

Click here to see my [|Glog]!!! The purpose of creating this Glog was to figure out WHY I would use Glogster and then HOW to use it. Wow. Took Tina and Tricia both but I get the idea now. It's not fancy but I learned how to upload widgets and text and how to make it larger. (thanks TIna).

5. I have used Wordle and plan to use it again in book discussions. I like it because it is so easy to use- the words used most get bigger- hey- keywords!!- you can make it look different, sideways, colorful....plus for me, it is EASY so will build confidence in doing things live in front of the class.