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

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!

If you read “Internet: Part 1 – Please Define“, the topic under discussion was what do teachers mean when they refer to the Internet in regards to student research. I posited that the problem we have is with semantics – that subscription databases/DISCUS are NOT “Internet” resources. On the SCASL Ning, after giving my opinion of how teachers and students should perceive subscription databases, I then posed the question concerning how will we be evaluating the evolving nature of web resources as applied to student research:

“… 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!

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.