Keeping Up:

Here is the first “page” of apps on my iPhone.  Most come standard: messages, contacts, notes (great for my to do and grocery lists), camera, calendar (keeps me organized by combining my iCal, Google, and Moodle calendars), photos, settings, voice memo, clock (customizable alarms ensures I don’t forget to set up the laptops three times a week for pullout class!), and calculator.

Ones I added:

Just Light (free) – as the name implies, a blank white screen used as a flash light – you never know when you’ll have a power outage and need a light.  And I have used it a time or two already.

Twitterific - Free Twitter app that I downloaded as soon as I got the iPhone. and for a free app it is pretty good.  Liked the dark screen with light text vs white screen with black text – less harsh on my eyes.

Tweetie2 – the Twitter app that I use now.  Cost $2.99 but was worth the price.  Just wish I could customize the screen & text colors.  Has more bells and whistles, but for the light Twitter user, Twitterific works just fine and is free.

Reader – Free Google Reader – mobile app takes a bit of getting used to, but love being able to quickly clean out the reader when I’m on the go.

Evernote (free) and Delicious Bookmarks (free) are new and I haven’t had a chance to explore them just yet.

Games:

FlowerzLite – free match game – just for time wasting!

reMovem – also just a free time waster game I like.

Wild Things – movie tie-in/ad for Where the Wild Things Are – totally cute.  You interact with Carol who throws things at the screen and when he gets angry he “smashes” your screen (both cause the iPhone to vibrate).  Scared the beegeebers out of me the first time my screen “cracked” and vibrated.  Again, a time waster, but cute and free.

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader – $4.99 app that I purchased for our Teen Read Week program.  We used a document camera and the questions from the game for the competition.  The two teams took turns choosing a category and answering the question.  Right answers earned them a point.  Team with the most points at the end of the period won.

Action bowling isn’t really my game, but it was free.

PAC-MAN – much harder than I thought – moving the guy around the screen takes some skill!  Sol Free – gotta have a solitaire game on your phone.

Ocarina - $0.99 novelty app, but don’t know what to do with it.  It basically turns your iPhone into a flute.  Kinda cool, but another time waster.  You’re supposed to be able to upload your “masterpieces” online to share with others.  I got it just to play around with it.

This is only the first page and a half of my four pages of apps.  I wont bore anyone with the rest, but I’ll share a few at a time that I find useful as I get finished exploring them myself.

I’m also loving the voice memo app which comes in handy when I’m in the car and need to make a note to remember something.  I don’t usually have pen and paper handy.  Which brings up the most wonderful feature(s) of the iPhone – The Apps Store!  I’ve been going wild surfing and downloading apps, but that’ll be another post.

Scholastic.com: Top 20 Teacher Blogs - I subscribed to a couple of these already and will give the others a try.  I’m passing it along because on of my good friends is highlighted on the lists: #14 Best for Media Specialists – TechnoTuesday. Way to go Cathy!

Center for History and New Media – “Providing free access to primary sources, building high-quality online teaching modules, and offering instruction on critical thinking skills.”

PrimaryAccess – “PrimaryAccess is a suite of free online tools that allows students and teachers to use primary source documents to complete meaningful and compelling learning activities with digital movies, storyboards, rebus stories and other online tools.”

Smithsonian American Art Museum – Classroom Activities – “These American Art Museum online features contain interactive or media-rich assets that can easily be used by educators in the classroom. Students can learn by viewing media or taking part in various online activities.”

Lastly, here are a couple of online graphic organizers:

• Lovely Charts - online diagramming program to create flowcharts, site maps, organizational charts, etc.
• Bubbl.us – great for mindmapping/brainstorming

Wednesday:

Connecting With Tech Savvy Students – Bill Sheskey and Chrissy Robinson

• Oconee County Instructional Technology Integration – Specifically, click on the Teacher Resource page for links to resource that they have tested and are safe for educational use.

• xtranormal.com – type a script and make video snippets to grab students interest.

• PowerPoint with two videos side by side on the same slide – one is a recorded interview (could use the Flip cameras) and the other is PhotoStory  with just visual of what the interviewee is describing (for example, she was talking about a flood and he found photos from the event, put into PhotoStory to run as she’s talking about it)  Great example of low tech “split screen” video!  as well as examples of primary sources – the actual interview & the photos of the historical event.

• 24/7/7 – 24 hours, 7 days a week, on all 7 continents! Our students need to be able to compete globally.  You can also add 365 as everything is available online every day of the year.

• How Google hired workers based on a billboard w/ a math problem that led to a web address, with another problem, that led to another address, and so on until it led to a contact page from Google saying we want to hire you!

• News magazines have an archive of their covers online, why not use them in your research or teaching to emphasis a point/topic you are sharing?

Keynote: Chris Craft!

• AWESOME!  Chris is a dynamic speaker.  I hope you take a moment to go to his blog and watch his keynote.  Just a couple of ideas I wrote down (didn’t write more as I was too caught up in his presentation!):

• Snazzy Videos – short videos he shows at the top of the class. Something the students look forward to watching…(interest motivates learning?? I think that was what he said!)  You can probably catch some at his SpanTube website (Spanish YouTube!)  His class website – www.class326.com and uses Gcast.

• He records his announcements, instructions, reminders, etc. and plays them as soon as the bell rings to begin class.  This way he doesn’t have to repeat them over and over each class, and so he doesn’t forget to mention something to one class!  Also, a routine that the kids stop what they are doing to listen to the announcements and get right into the groove of class.  The announcements are followed by a riddle (could be any type of interesting bell work question/problem).  While they are listening to the announcement, he’s taking attendance and then begins class answering the riddle and straight on into the days lesson.  Smooth transitioning and no down time or lost time at the beginning of class!

• I also liked his sharing the quote from one of his friends that Twitter = Virtual Teachers Lounge.  That is how I view it – as a way to learn and share from educators & librarians who just don’t happen to work in my building!

What Can The Web Do For You? – Susan Isball

This session was geared more toward elementary teachers, so while the resource she shared were great, they just weren’t as useful for me.  You can follow the link to see her presentation and resources.  There was also a gentleman sitting next to me (sorry, I’m embarrassed I can’t remember your name) who is an assistant principal at a high school.  He came in and was doodling and by the time we left had the most spectacular “picture book” quality drawing I’ve ever seen.  He is such an artist.  He said doodling helps him think – and don’t get me wrong, he had a page and a half of notes from the session, too!  I wish I’d snapped a photo of it…he should be illustrating children’s books!

Shhh!  Don’t Tell We’re Using a Social Network – Avis Canty

The social network she uses with her classes is Ning.  Being a member of several Nings, I was already familiar with her topic.  I was more interested in how she organized getting her Ning up and running (research on social networks, administration support, parental permission, ning access, etc.) to pick her brain for my own blog proposal.  I will definately be contacting her in the next few days!

Socializing Time!

Of course, if I’m being entirely honest, the real reason I attend conferences is the socializing!  I had lunch with Fran Bullington and a couple of ladies from her district.  I also attended a Tweet-Up at Wild Wings in downtown Greenville after the last conference session for the day, followed by dinner out at with Cathy Nelson, Fran, and Kim Isiminger (Kim held the librarian position at Wagener-Salley HS before me!)  There was a huge group at Wild Wings – at least 20 – and just like MaryAnn said in her blog that the Twee-up was like a human twitter feed.  With conversations going all over the place and way across tables and everyone jumping in here and there!  Oh, shout out to Mary Mason who let me crash on her hotel room’s fold out couch for the night!  Photo credit: Wild Wings07 from loonyhiker – I don’t think Pat will mind I used her photo!  That’s me in the safari print shirt.

Thursday

Using & Integrating Moodle – Ryan Rucker

An nice overview of Moodle and what it can offer for your class.  Since we already use Moodle, the benefit of attending this session was I now have a contact person to help me troubleshoot my Moodle questions/mistakes!  I’ve already warned him he’s probably going to get tired of my emails!   For teachers whose district doesn’t already support Moodle, you can go to NineHub and they will host your Moodle course.  However, it does have ads and you are limited in the features available with free Moodle hosting.

I Heard It, I Saw It … Now What? – Debra Belue

One highlights from this session include recording students & teachers booktalking, sharing their own stories, and research projects and recording them for play on their MP3 players (the library has sets of them) which students can check out.  They have a recess book walking club – each student has an MP3 player and they walk and listen to booktalks the teachers, students, or downloads from StreamlineSC.  She has parents give permission for student to be able to check out MP3s as well as to join the club as they are giving up recess. High schools could do for study halls.

Place Based Stories – Michael Edwards

Very interesting.  Documenting local history for future generations – a Memory Project that students can produce to preserve stories before they die out.  Great thing, he’s at Pelion HS which is just up the road from me!  Two ways: Google Earth and iPod Museum Tours.  Geotag and upload photos, documents, audio and video to Google Earth and take virtual tours of your area.  They use different place markers to delineate eras or types of events.  For the iPod Museum tours, everything is on your iPod (text, audio, video) all hyperlinked and organized.  You drive to the location (or walk depending upon the area) and listen, watch, read about the location.  This allows you to physically experience the place.  Here are his resources.

Abort, Retry, or Fail: Management Skills for Today – Jude Hunt

Engaging speaker – very nicely done.  There were a couple of things that stood out:

• Defusing phrases: I Understand; Probably So; Nevertheless; and I’m Sorry.  All used as a complete sentence w/ nothing after them.  They acknowledge the student and his/her “feelings” without agreeing or disagreeing.  Used appropriately they can stop disruptions before they escalate.

• The other was a “refocus” space with a reflections form on why they were sent to “time out.”  This can be a place in your room or preferably a co-workers room – but never the hall or an office where students can just goof off or be seen as a get out class free card.  Gives the student time to chill out without further disrupting your teaching.  What I liked about this idea was the form asked the student what they did to get sent to time out (they have to reflect and understand what behavior sent them there) which then goes into their file as documentation – great for parent/teacher conference and if further discipline is required.  There is a lot more to this concept as well as in his presentation, but I’m trying to be brief here!

Lunch today was spent in the august company of Chris Craft, MaryAnn Sansonetti, and Fran Bullington.  We had an enjoyable hour catching up since our last get together at EdTech.  Today was jam packed with learning, laughter, and looking forward to next year with an opportunity to put some of these tools and ideas into place.  Once again I am amazed at a FREE conference being not only enjoyable, but extremely useful.  The notes I’ve shared here aren’t a tenth of the notes I took.

So a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who put together such a fabulous conference!  Let’s do it again next year!

Library of Congress YouTube Channel – “Timeless treasures and contemporary presentations from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. As the world’s preeminent reservoir of knowledge, we are the steward of millions of recordings dating from the earliest Edison films to the present…”

World Digital Library – looks interesting and will become active on April 21st.  “The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials…”

New York Times: “A Story of a Teenager’s Suicide Becomes a Best Seller” – article about the origins of the book TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY by Jay Asher.  This title is on our South Carolina Young Adult Book Award Nominee list this year.  The article also mentioned the YouTube video campaign that shows someone listening to Hannah Baker’s tapes.

Chicago Tribune: “Annoying ‘mosquito’ noise keeps students moving” – the article shares how an Indiana high school uses the mosquito machine to deter students from socializing in an area of the hallway between classes and instead get to classes on time.  I’ve written previously about this machine here and the mosquito ringtone here.  I am opposed to this device being used, especially INSIDE a school, and not just because I can still hear the tone.  There are other ways to ensure students keep it moving in the hallways – HELLO, teachers, stand at your doors and don’t let the kids stop to chat.  When I stand at the library doors, the students don’t loiter between classes.  When I’m not there, the do – doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.

If you don’t already follow her blog or twitter feeds, you NEED TO ADD HER RIGHT NOW!

Go on.

I’ll wait.

Hmmm, Hmmm, Hmmm, Hmmm.

Done?

Good.

Once you follow her you’ll find she shares a bunch of excellent educational resources as well as thought provoking posts.  While I was over on her page just now, I happened to see the following YouTube video “Goomoodleikiog” (Google, Moodle, Wikis, Blogs), which is a great introduction to an ideal virtual classroom ala CommonCraft style.  I SOOOOO, would love to develop something like this with one or more of my teachers (ahem! Mr. Forston, you reading this???)  I’ve attempted to embed the video below, but it is YouTube, meaning it is blocked by our district and you’ll have to watch from home.  Sorry, it hasn’t been posted in TeacherTube yet.

There is also a “sequel” for students “Goomoodleikiog 4 students” that is just as good, if not better, with two sock puppet students discussing the classes virtual classroom.

I hope you enjoyed the videos and have taken a moment to subscribe to Angela Maiers blog and twitter.  You won’t regret it!  I’ve got a bunch more resources to share, but I’ll pass them along in another Odds & Ends post later.  I was just too excited to share these to do a “proper” odds & ends piece!

Typically when people discuss the issue of the ‘digital divide’ they are referring to rural vs. urban access to computers and the Internet.   In Linda Braun’s post, “The Other Digital Divide,” she refers also to the ‘digital divide’ in software access (typically MSOffice products) between what is available at school (or not) and in students homes. She makes the argument that these technologies and access should be made available, not limited or eliminated, in our libraries BECAUSE they aren’t available to teens at home – this includes access to social networking sites like Facebook, to iPods/mp3 players, and to audiobooks/electronic materials!

Scott McLeod’s post asks “would you send your child to school with a laptop from home?“  His concern seems to be would the child feel awkward if they were the only one with a laptop?  Which is a high probability in my school!  Comments on the post are mixed and bring up interesting points.  The ones that caught my attention:

• laptops are/can be a distraction and detract from student participation in class
• puts the responsibility and care of the technology on the student/parents instead on the school for up keep and reduces tech cost to the school
• concerns for damage/theft/liability
• teacher buy-in and training on how to integrate the tech in the classroom
• educating students in the appropriate use of the tech during school
• if it’s just one more thing in a kids backpack it’s just another burden – however, if all of his/her textbooks were on it instead of hardcopy – how cool would that be!
• wireless access?  server security issues?

While most of the comments seem to bring up more concerns than positives, I have to say I lean on the side of why not let them bring them to school?  Of course the point is pretty much irrelevant in regards to my school, since we are a very rural and low socio-economic community – desktop computers and dial-up are are the norms.  I would be more interested in our district/schools developing policies/guidelines for using cell phones in the classroom – as I believe that the vast majority of our students have those mini computing devices instead!  Add iPods & MP3s in the mix and now we’re talkin’!  Unfortunately, all personal electronics are verboten.

Still what I take away from these discussions are that I need to push for technology, no transformative access for my students.  I need to look into the possibilities of iPods/MP3 players and downloadable materials, audiobooks/Playaways, relevant software, online access or cloud computing alternatives, filter overrides/unblocking of resources, etc. be made available in our school library.  Maybe I’m out of touch with my students and their needs.  Maybe it’s time for me to run a student tech and interest survey?!  Shoot, I should have done this last month before Teen Tech Week!  *sigh*

Photo Credit: “Laptop” by laRuth on Flickr

Updated 3/12/08 to add additional links and photo credits that I forgot.  Forgive me, it was late and I was in a hurry to get something posted! – Heather

Today marked the beginning of the 2009 SCASL annual conference in Greenville.  I am fortunate enough to have been allowed by my principal to attend,   Many of my fellow colleagues in the library world haven’t been as lucky.

Once again, I’ll be sharing my notes and thoughts from my experiences at conference.

I drove up to Greenville yesterday – after a side trip to Charlotte, NC.  I had to stop by the Apple Store to get a replacement battery for my Macbook.  Thankfully, it was covered under my warranty!  I couldn’t attend conference without my laptop!  But it sure made for a LONG trip – a little over 4 hours in total.  Anyway, here are the sessions I attended today:

Storytelling Through Pictures – Take a Walk on the Wild Side

Presented by Donna Goldsmith, Tim Van Heule, and Cathy Arnold – This pre-conference session was an all day experience beginning with a morning ride on the trolley to the Greenville Zoo.  We were met by a zoo guide who provided a very enjoyable and informational explanation of the animals: how they came to the zoo; their care and feeding; endangered species renewal plans; mated pare matching, etc.  Throughout the tour we were given the task of taking photographs to be used in our digital storytelling session in the afternoon.  In addition to my taking photos for the session, I also agreed to be a Roving Reporter for the SCASL IT Committee – I agreed to take photos and video interviews from our group to be shared with the folks who couldn’t make it to conference this year.  We are using the SCASL Ning to share information and live streaming of some sessions from conference.

After returning to the convention center and a boxed lunch, we met back up and were introduced to various storytelling tools.  See the presenters website for the tools they discussed: Flickr, Glogster, Photostory, etc.  After uploading our photos to Flickr, we were to use one of the tools they covered and create our own digital story of out trip.  Sorry, I don’t have one to share as I didn’t get to that part – I was too busy talking and going through others photos!  I kinda got sidetracked by all of the giraffe photos everyone took.  I love the giraffe.  I don’t know if you can see it in this photo, but the female giraffe is resting her head on the male giraffe’s back.  How sweet is that?  Another highlight of the giraffe segment of our trip was watching the little kids try to throw crackers to the giraffes – not an easy feat.  We learned that a zoo worker would go out later in the day and collect all of the crackers that didn’t make it to the giraffes and then feed them to the pair.  It was interesting, if someone sad, to see how the giraffes had to contort to reach the crackers on the ground.  

Can We Work Together?  Using Collaborative Tools

Presented by Cathy Nelson and Fran Bullington – As a member of the IT Committee, I assisted Cathy, Fran and Anne Lemieux with streaming the session using UstreamTV.  This was one of our efforts to include folks who couldn’t make it to conference this year.  I was in charge of the camera and chat room (once we figured it out!)  I am by no means an expert and I apologize for the poor camera work.

The session focused on using Wikis and Google Documents to collaborate with teachers and/or students to collaborate on group projects.  If/When I get the links to the session, I’ll update this post with them.

Reflections

While I truly enjoyed both sessions – the Zoo and the picture perfect, beautiful day were wonderful and I had fun working the camera for Cathy and Fran’s session – I must say the highlight of the day was having dinner with Cathy, Fran, Anne, and Doug Johnson! Fran took us to Flat Rock where I had a tasty meal and we shared fabulous conversations and laughs together.  I bet we were the highlight of our waiter’s evening!  Doug is a HOOT and a witty fellow!  I’m looking forward to attending one or two of his sessions, as well as his keynote, tomorrow.

Well, its getting late and the first session starts at 7:45 tomorrow morning and I want to make it there on time, so gonna hit the sack.

Photo Credit:

Greetings from SCASL 2.0: Experience the Journey @ your library.

DSC01317 by Greenville Instructional Technology – FlickrCC

DSC01315 by Greenville Instructional Technology – FlickrCC

OnGuardOnline.gov – “… a multimedia campaign to help consumers be on guard against Internet fraud, secure their computers, and protect their personal information. …  Includes: tips, articles, games and videos in both English and Spanish. … Contains modules about … spyware, social networking, wireless access, laptop security, Internet auctions, and file-sharing…”  Created in partnership with the Federal trade Commission and other federal agencies.

BubbleComment – record a video comment on a website.  Would be a great way to direct students who were absent are homebound to areas or information on the site that you covered in class.

My friend, Fran Bullington shares “The Wally Principal” over at her Informania blog.  I’ve shared it with a few of my teachers, but think it is too good a point not to share with the rest of you!!  I agree we do our students a disservice by judging them solely by their ability to memorize facts.

My Brochure Maker – quick and simple way to create a basic brochure or flyer brought to you by DoodleLabs.  Could be a great way for your students who don’t have MS Publisher (or MS Word) at home to still create a brochure for your lovely projects!  Granted, you have limited choices and you cannot move the objects around, but sometimes, simple is better!

Suburban Journals: County library labels teen books with sexual content – Okay, this last item I debated on if I should post or not.  So I’ll just put it up and leave you with the comment, “WHAT!!!!” — Well, guess keeping my opinion to myself isn’t likely.  Hey, it’s my blog! — So if you get enough pressure from your patrons, does that mean you’re going to start labeling all of your books for each and every item they don’t like?  Too religious, too violent, crude language, promotes homosexuality, …  IMHO this is just another example of censorship – and isn’t that what libraries are AGAINST? Or am I off track here?

“… now that many periodical resources are moving to limited print runs and/or to solely online subscriptions, how will we define them? Internet, free web, subscription databases…? Do (or can) blog entries be considered valid sources – do we simply apply the web evaluation methods for other websites to blogs, too?”

Are blogs credible/reliable reference sources?

Last year I had students performing research for their English IV papers who were citing blogs as credible sources. My initial reaction was – not acceptable! I’d like to point out that I hadn’t yet jumped on the Web 2.0/blogging bandwagon and didn’t REALLY know anything about blogs. The only blogs I had heard of were celebrity or rant blogs. So, being the smart librarian I am, I challenged the students to apply the same web evaluation guidelines (credibility, accuracy, reliability, relevance, date, sources, scope/purpose) to the blogs, that we do for all web pages – fully expecting blogs to fail the test. To my surprise, we found some of them to actually be acceptable – along with many that weren’t acceptable.

Subscription/Newspaper Databases

Recently a teacher assignment required students to find a current (last two weeks) newspaper article that related to their subject and write a summary. They had to provide a copy of the article with their summary. The teacher wanted them to use print newspapers. The problem was the library no longer subscribes to print newspapers. For one thing, no one ever read the daily paper. For another, I could count on one hand the number of times a student asked for the newspapers last year. So the newspaper subscriptions were a casualty of the library budget cuts I had to absorb this year.

Since we didn’t have newspapers for the students to use, and knowing DISCUS had the electronic database Newsbank, which, at the time, included The State Newspaper and a couple of other South Carolina newspapers, I showed students how they could access articles from there to use for the assignment. Some other bright students simply went to The State Newspaper website and found articles to use. You’d think the students would be praised for being resourceful in order to complete the assignment. NOPE. The teacher didn’t accept them because they weren’t what she asked for…WHAT!!! The explanation given by the teacher was that the articles were from the Internet and not from a print source. Students weren’t to use the Internet for the assignment.

(Picture me banging head on desk)

How could they not be what was asked for? – the articles used were all the same, whether they came from the print newspaper, the database, or the newspaper’s OWN website. They had all the same words, written by the same author, published the same day … *sigh*

If newspapers are no longer printed on paper, are they still newspapers?

Which brings me to print newspapers that have ceased print circulation and moved solely to online publications. I’ve read that many small town/city newspapers have already or are considering moving to online only publications. For educational purposes, are these online publications no longer acceptable sources because they are “Internet” sources? Are teachers going to limit the number of online newspapers students can use in research simply because they are online? You can also pose this question as it applies to print magazines and journals that publish their content on their websites as well as in print. And don’t forget about ‘zines – magazines that are only published online. Are all of these sources usable for student research?

Bottom line, evaluate!

In a perfect world, teachers wouldn’t need to specify number and type of reference sources for their research assignments. Students would naturally choose a wide variety of acceptable and evaluated sources (print, subscription databases, websites.) Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world; therefore, students (and many teachers) need to be taught how to evaluate materials, regardless of format. As the teacher librarian, that’s where I come in – it’s my job to teach these skills to my students and teachers!