Thing #20: YouTube

While I’ve been familiar with YouTube and TeacherTube for a while now, I have to admit that I’ve never actually sat down and browsed or searched them before now.  In the past I’ve always had a link someone else has provided or searched for a specific video that someone needed or that I knew was already in YouTube.

I have to also admit that the whole YouTube thing scares me a bit – not the how to use/access it, but because of the content.  Yes, it has a lot of great original and educational content, but it also has a lot of copyrighted content that I’m sure was never given permission to be uploaded.  Which leads me to question if I use those uploaded items in the classroom, am I modeling good behavior?  Am I inadvertently giving my kids the notion that it’s okay to violate copyright?  Or have I taught them well enough to be responsible users and producers of materials?

Despite these questions, I can’t help but appreciate and get a guilty pleasure out of finding bits of nostalgia from my past such as “One RingyDingy“  I’m going to try to embed the clip, but since YouTube is blocked by my district, teachers, you’re going to have to take a look at it from home.  Sorry!

Of course, I wasn’t born when Laugh-In aired, but my Mom (who worked for the phone company) had the album.

Another example of the benefit of YouTube is using it to bridge the generation gap, especially with cultural references.  I was talking with some students the other day and we were talking about baseball and for some reason I mentioned Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” sketch.  The kids didn’t know who or what I was talking about, so I pulled up YouTube and, sure enough, I found a bunch of clips of “Who’s On First.”  Of couse, I had to play it a few times for some of them to get the humor, and I don’t think they really found it as funny as I do, they were probably humoring me, but at least they know who Abbott and Costello are now!

SCASL Thing #8: RSS and Newsreaders – the task is to find our rss reader shared link and provide it to our public.  So here is my Google Reader shared link.  However, I must tell you that I’ve not used it up until today.  I went and put a couple of the posts that I starred in there just so something would be in there.  I’ll have to remember to “share” what I star from now on!

SCASL Thing #9: Finding Interesting Blogs – the first part of the task is to use search tools to locate interesting blog feeds.  Okay, I COULD do this, but I already have way to many feed to get through now! See also my previous post All Together Now – Think#2.  I currently have 185 subscriptions in my Google Reader.

The second part of the task was to blog about the experience of finding feeds.  That I will do!  Most of the feeds I’ve subscribe to were found in 4 ways:

1) Following the leader:  I started by following the blogs Cathy Nelson listed in her blog roll or that she specifically told me to check out.  Then I followed the ones those folks followed, and just kept doing this.  You’d think that would be way too many, but you’ll find that the groups tend to follow the same blogs.

2) Professional readings:  there are more and more blog links showing up in the professional journals and websites I already visit.

3) Personal interests:  Most of these were news, entertainment, or author/book sites that I visited often, but now the content comes to me instead of me going out to find it!

4) Recommendations/Mentions:  If a blog I follow mentions or links to a blog, I’ll usually go check it out.  If I like what I see/read, I’ll add it to my reader.

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the phrase “Be Careful What You Wish For.”  Well, that’s is SOOO true for me.  Last school year was a particularly slow one for me in terms of work load.  I’d gotten into a rut routine with few surprises.  This year is totally different.  I’m swamped! – but happy.

So anyway, I’ve fallen behind on the SCASL 23 Things project (among other things).  This is my attempt to get caught up.

#1 – Learn about the program.

#2 – Go through the 7 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners tutorial from the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

#3 – Set up your own blog (or for advanced users an independent blog just for SCASL 23 Things).  I’m choosing to use my existing blog as I’ve got too many accounts open to keep track of one more.

#4 – Create an Avatar using Yahoo Avatars.  In case you didn’t notice, there is one over there on the right – you may have to scroll down a bit.  Boy did I “waste” an hour playing around with this one!  I was just as bad as some of my teens – trying out each outfit, background, bling, hairdos, etc.  While this is neat, I like Voki better, as you can record a message and the avatar moves.

#5 – Explore Flickr.  Create an account, upload photos of your library, and tag at least one SCASL2.0.  Boy was I surprised to find that there is already an hloy on Flickr!  Who isn’t me!  So, had to fall back on my other screen name and my flickr account is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hloy22/ for those of you who may want to go visit.  Right now, you’ll be disappointed as there is only one photo up!  Just give me time!  I used one of the Books wi/ Bite photos.

I use Flickr Creative Commons photos all the time, both in my blog and on my school website.  I think it is wonderful to be able to find (granted after a lot of paging through junk some times) photos that match what I’m trying to post.  Typically, I download the photo to my computer instead of using the image URL because my district blosk Flickr.  This way, I know my faculty will see what I’m inserting.

Okay, I’m still a few “Things” behind, but it’s time for me to hit the sack.  Lots to do tomorrow.  ‘Nite All!

PS: I hope some of you will take the time to work through the SCASL 23 Things with me.  While some of the items I’ve learned on my own and with the help of my online friends, I still learn something new with each activity.

Today’s assignment is all about podcasts.

I’ve been downloading from iTunes (podcasts, music, audiobooks, etc.) long before I ever purchased an iPod. I’ll have to take some time and explore the podcatchers linked in “Thing #3″ in that infamous “free-time” we’re all supposed to have! Of course, I already subscribe to so many podcasts that I don’t have time to listen to/watch them all.

Most of the podcasts I find are found accidentally or were recommended to me by someone who knows my quirky tastes. I’ll be searching iTunes for a person (say an author to see if there are any interviews he/she’s given) or a topic (say technology) and come across other shows that I’ll subscribe to on a lark. If they’re good, I’ll keep them, if not, I unsubscribe. There are a bunch in there now waiting for me to give them a listen.

I’ve written a post before on my favorite podcasts, but here are a couple that I’ve discovered recently and/or didn’t include the first time around.

Nancy J. Keane’s Booktalks Quick and Simple – great short book commercials to pique students’ interest.

Old Time Radio – If you’re interested in listening to old time radio thrillers, comedy, suspense, mysteries, drama, adventure, science fiction, etc. search in iTunes for Old Time Radio and you can find a bunch of old radio broadcasts. When I was younger, I used to listen to them from an AM radio station on my boom box. My favorites were Burns and Allen, Abbott & Costello, and The Shadow! No, I’m not old enough to have listened to them when they originally aired, but that didn’t stop me from finding them fascinating as a teenager. The commercials were (are) sometimes even more interesting than the radio shows!

And of course, don’t forget to check out iTunes U to find educational podcasts from prominent colleges and universities. The University of Southern Florida’s Lit2Go: Audio Files for K-12 is a wonderful resource for free audiobooks. Great for struggling readers – they can listen to the audio and read along with the text. They even have a selection of audio in Spanish.

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!