Web 2.0 Summer Blog

I have done a podcast in the past where I used GarageBand on the Mac, so I used the same thing again. I created a podcast on how to find books in the library. It was simple to do and our school has a podcast library where teachers can publish their own podcast. I also created a podcast when we had an author, Eric Kimmel, visit our school. I had the students ask several questions of the visiting author and published the podcast for all to enjoy. I have a link to both podcasts. I hope you enjoy the interview!

I found some interesting Podcasts from other elementary schools. There were some great projects. One project was from a 5th grade class that had the students read 3 facts about the states they researched. After introducing themselves, they read 3 interesting facts about their state and then gave the microphone to the next student. It was a great little project and a fun way to end a research project. I can see myself doing a project like this with our third graders after they research the states. A lot more fun than writing a paper!

LibraryThing is a fun tool. I played around with it and set up an account with some of my personal collection of books. Not only does it catalog the books, but I can see other books that are recommended in the same genre by readers that have enjoyed the same books that I have. I’m not sure whether I can use it to catalog books in my school collection since I have other cataloging programs that I use, but it will very fun to use for my home collection and to get new ideas for books that I might really like. I’ll definitely use it in the future.

I absolutely love Del.icio.us. I have been using it for about a year and don’t bookmark websites any other way now. I have about 80 bookmarks at this point (I will be adding several more after this class) and love the way I can organize them. It makes finding a particular website so easy! The tags are so important – especially for finding things later. I am definitely hooked!

Oh, I just found an excellent website from one of my RSS feeds, techLearning. It described a site named Copyright Bay. I can’t wait to send a link to the site to our teachers. It is a fun way to demonstrate this copyright issue to teachers. I hope you will take a look at it – what a great find!

Wow! These tools are fabulous. There are some incredibly talented people out there to think up and develop these wonderful tools – and then to make them available to everyone. There are so many ideas out there. I love our Tool Reviews – what great ideas. The JigZone brings up all kinds of ideas including a way to introduce authors to students as I read books to them, especially for the younger students. I’m always looking for fun “library” activities for students who are not checking out books during library time. There are also all kinds of tools for the students to create books of their own with ToonDoo or MixBook. I would love for some of the students to create a Welcome to HIES book for new students, describing the different places they’ll go and all the teachers they will meet. I look forward to spending more time with these tools.

Attending a conference at home was fabulous! I loved looking through the available sessions to select one. I had a hard time choosing! I finally decided to listen to one about using Web 2.0 with 1st graders. If you can do it with first graders, you can use it with anyone. Those students actually wrote in blogs and wikis. It was a great session and gave me some ideas about research projects with 1st and 2nd graders. Second graders already do a small one about dinosaurs with their classroom teachers, but I could probably do something with animals. The opportunities out there are incredible, the hard part is narrowing it down and going for it. I think that becomes easier the more I have my hands in this Web 2.0, and this class has done a great job of really getting me into it, even though some tasks were faced reluctantly. I’m becoming more and more comfortable with blogs and wikis, as well as some of the other tools out there. I’m looking forward to going back and listening to more conference sessions when I have time.

I have to admit that this task wasn’t quite as easy as I’d hoped. It may have something to do with the fact that I changed my subject matter and spent HOURS searching for pictures in Flickr. I decided to try to do a slideshow that might go along with one of the GA Book Award nominee picture books for the upcoming year. I worked on several different books with very limited results. The Girls Baseball League had too many copyright pictures and then the next 2 books I chose didn’t have many pictures to complement them. So, I decided to work something up on Margie Palatini’s Sweet Tooth. That was fun, as I spent many hours looking at different desserts. I downloaded the pictures, created a word file for the credits, and then chose PikiStrips for my slideshow. I loaded 7 of the 9 pictures with captions and then the site went down. Saving it as I went seemed difficult, and sure enough, it was lost. So, I started over again. This time I went through the cumbersome task of saving after every couple of pictures. I don’t know about these Web 2.0 slideshows… The jury is still out. I guess I find Powerpoint so easy to work with, that I may be a little skeptical. You can see my slideshow in my wikispace, Sand in My Shoes.

Flickr can be a valuable tool to take students further in a lesson. Since I participate in the Georgia Book Award program from UGA, I’m always looking for ways to bring the books to life. For instance, one of the nominees for next year is Mama Played Baseball by David Adler. It is a story about women playing baseball during WWII. I thought it would be interesting to find pictures of some of the real players from that time.

From the Florida Memory Collection.