I know it’s been a while and I’ve got a bunch of links clogging my bookmarks to share with you guys.  Here are some for today:

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

Do some technical difficulties for which I couldn’t fix, I’ve had to move the Wagener-Salley HS podcast page to a new site.   Currently, the site contains podcasts for the 2009-2010 South Carolina Young Adult Book Award Nominees.  I hope to move last years podcast over  to the new site soon.

Education Jargon Maker – Angela Maiers shared this one via Twitter.  Sure wish we’d known about it while we were still writing our ERT documentation!  Have some fun typing in a phrase and seeing how it is converted, ex: math skills translates as “deliver visionary critical thinking.”

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!

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

CNN.com: Falling asleep in class? Blame biology – study shows that starting school later would decrease the number of students sleeping in class – because they would be getting the needed 8-10 hours of sleep a night.  Hmmm, somehow, I don’t think pushing back the start of the school day would make that much of a difference, but I’m all for it – since I’m soooo not a morning person!

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?