Tech Tips & Timely Tidbits

Another school year is up and running.  I’ve been very busy with training teachers in Moodle and the gradebook system.  I’ve also assisted with almost all of the English classes in taking the STAR (reading comprehension) and TRAILS (information literacy/research skills) testing and will finish up the last class tomorrow!    Now that I’ve got a few minutes to myself, I’ve been trying to clean out my RSS feeds (again).  Here are some odds & ends I wanted to share:

A Plethora of Technology: Trick My Truck - by Barry Bachenheimer - interesting ways to “trick out” your learning activities.

Blogging on the Bay: The Heart of a Teacher - by Bill Gaskins - All teachers should watch this video of a student giving a keynote address to his school district’s teachers.  It’s an embedded YouTube video, so you may not be able to view from work, but PLEASE take the time to watch from home.  You wont be disappointed.

Self Check #260 - by Emily Lloyd - Toung in cheek, “muliticultural” books.  I really love these doses of humor.  I think it would be a hoot to work with this lady!

CNN.com: “Monster mom’ - how to avoid being one” - 7 tips on how not to alienate your son/daughter’s teachers.

Both BBC News and The New York Times have articles about the Harold, TX school board allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons (guns) on campus.  How scary is that!?

Reader’s Digest: “13 Things Your Computer Person Won’t Tell You” - My personal favorite is #10 - get a MAC!  Hehehe! Told ya so!

The Periodic Table of Videos - Thanks to Cali Lewis over at GeekBrief.TV for sharing this cool site. What makes this periodic table great is that there are short videos describing each element and/or showing an experiment using the element.

National Geographic: Wildlife Filmmaker - “Make a custom nature film with animal clips, sounds, and more. Then share your masterpiece with friends.”

ThinkQuest: Math Movies: Math for Everyone - “Have you ever wondered how mathematics is actually applied in everyday life? Do you like games and movies? Are you looking for ideas for your science project? … Are you a teacher looking for lesson plans and fresh teaching idea? Welcome to Math Movies.”

Tony Vincent over at the Learning in Hand blog posted the following: “How to Cheat” - he provides examples of YouTube videos that show students methods on how to cheat. As Tony says, we don’t want our kids to see these videos, but they are out there nonetheless. As teachers, we need to be familiar with them, too, so we can prevent the use of them in our classrooms.

Another great post by Tony Vincents is “Video Podcasts Free Up Class Time” - “… video podcasts to remove lecture from class. Viewing podcasts made by teachers is given as homework so teachers and students can focus on hands-on activities and direct problem solving during class time. For students without Internet, they can copy episodes to a flash drive. Those without computers can take home DVDs to play on their televisions.”

BibMe - a free online bibliography maker in MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian formats.

Great TeacherTube video brought to my attention by Vicki Davis via Twitter a while back with teachers who tell how they are going to use Web 2.0 tools in the classroom: Today

I’ve taken some time off from the Odds & Ends posts, as well as with reading my RSS feeds. Hey, I deserve some time off for summer vacation, too! However, I’m ready to get back to sharing. Here are some articles and blog posts I’ve found interesting:

Washington Post - “Travelers’ Laptops May Be Detained At Border” - “Big Brother Is Watching”. Just another reason to ensure our students are reading 1984, and discussing the implications of these types of policies to the average citizen. “No, Mr. Smith, I don’t have to give you a reason why I’m taking your laptop/cellphone/iPod. Nor do I have to give it back anytime soon or at all. Just another way we’re stomping all over your civil liberties keeping America safe from terrorists.”

Endgadget - “Local public school students get assigned Zunes” - Students in Missouri are getting Zunes to assist them with their learning. It will be interesting to see the results of the study.

NYT.com - “Holding Back Young Students: Is Program a Gift or a Stigma?” - Thoughts anyone? Getting students up to grade level is important, but at what cost? What concerned me is this statement: “The special classes, which are limited to 15 students and follow a pared-down curriculum of reading, writing and arithmetic, are called the Gift of Time and come with extras like tutoring and field trips to a local farm.” Eliminating arts (again!) as a sacrifice to “the basics” - what student would look forward to that every day?

Washington Post - “The Odd World of E-School Teachers” - an interesting article about virtual schools and teachers who teach them. I’m all for providing opportunities for students to learn at their own pace and environment, but what is the cost to their education? If all of the “classes” are via computers, you’ve lost that face to face interaction that, for me, seem vital to connecting with your students. Maybe they do some Skype type interaction?

Steve Dembo - Teach42 blog - “Aaahhh, the joys of being a teacher” - Just for fun, take a look at these examples of student answers on tests. Boy, I wish I was as creative as these kids when I was in school - who am I kidding, I wish I was this creative now!

Thing #2’s assignment is all about RSS feeds: learn about them, subscribe to a feed reader, and add feeds to your reader. After completing those steps, we’re asked to reflect on what we like about RSS/readers and how we might use them in our work and personal life. And, how can libraries use RSS technology?

I’ve been using an RSS reader for quite some time now. I originally used Google Reader (as I love all things Google), but switched to Bloglines earlier this year as some of my feeds weren’t updating properly on Google; however, I’m now having the same problem with Bloglines. <sigh> I guess no service can be perfect all of the time.

One thing I learned quickly, but was just an extension of my need to be organized, was to use folders to group my feeds. Here is a screen shot of my current groupings:

There are certain folders that I make a point of reading daily (SC Blogs, Favorites, and Library Profession) and as many of the others as I can each day. I’ve given up thinking I could keep it cleaned out, especially since I keep adding more feeds than I delete. For most of them I will simply scan the titles and/or scroll through them without truly reading the posts. As you can see, there are quite a few that I’ve marked keepers that I have some form of follow up I want to do: mention them on my blog, comment on, check out the resource(s) mentioned, etc.

I try not to stress over reading all of the posts and will quite frequently mark all as read. I figure that the folks I make a point of reading are reading the same ones as me and they’ll write or share anything important! Both professionally and personally, I’ve found RSS to be a great way to keep up with all of my interests. Of course, it can be a great time saver AND a great time waster.

As for using RSS in libraries, I’d be interested to read how others are utilizing them. I’m leery of getting to excited about using them since most Web 2.0 tools are currently blocked by my school district.

I totally forgot that SLJ was starting their “All Together Now” program.  If you’ve been reading the blog, you’ll see absentmindedness is a fault of mine!  What is even more embarrassing is that I wrote a reminder post on SUNDAY! Go figure. I guess its time for me to start up my scheduler again…the one I stopped using since going on summer vacation.  Anyhow, “Thing #1″ of the program is to set up a blog, write an about me post, and enter the blog address at the community clearinghouse site: http://tametheweb.com/alltogethernowblogs and then explore your new blog. You can find out more about who all is participating at the NetVibes portal, too!