Thing #23 - The End

This entire experience gave me a much broader knowledge of what is out there today in the world of technology. We have a technology teacher at our school, so I think I more or less left it up to her to be up on all the latest information. How wrong was I in thinking that! I love the idea of returning to my school library in the fall armed with all the knowledge I learned from this Library2Play experience.

My favorite discoveries were Teacher Tube and how to create a podcast using
PlayStory3.

I was so glad I was able to complete this exercise, and it gives me confidence in doing similiar type computer courses in the future.

I was surprised at how much I didn't know about information technology available through the Internet. I hope our HISD Library Services department addresses this in the next school year.

I thought the program was well planned and well layed out, but that some of the exercies needed a little more explanation for novice computer users. But, the exercises were called "discoveries" and I felt being able to figure it out on my own made it more meaningful to me and helped me in remembering the steps that I did to complete each exercise.

I would most likely participate in another discovery exercise, depending on the length of the overall program and what time of year it was done. I was able to do this during my summer vacation; I don't see being able to do it during the school year unless I had longer than nine weeks to complete it.

A sentence to sum it all up - "What a great learning experience for this 52 year old elementary school librarian!"

Thing #22 - Nings

I visited the Teacher Librarian Ning and the Texas School Librarian Ning web sites and liked the Teacher Librarian web site the best. It seemed to have more members and I liked the way the posts were set up, but I didn't join it at this time. I did, however, join the Texas School Librarian Ning just to take a look around the site, but wasn't overly impressed. To be honest, I don't feel either of these sites would be something I would visit on a regular basis. I understand the concept and the need for such sites, but I still have the problem of posting either questions or comments to blog sites. I guess if I was in a small school district, I could see the advantage of having a group of librarian friends to discuss topics of interest with and share ideas. But, being in a school district the size of Houston ISD, I have a close network of library friends and we meet on our own every couple of months just to share ideas, discuss issues in our school libraries, give advice and support, and really work at making our libraries some of the best in the district.
Overall, I just feel I am much more likely to use Teacher Tube than one of these Ning sites.

Thing #21 - Creating a Podcast

This lesson was so frustrating, but I was determined to figure out all the problems I encountered and I finally did it! I even tried calling my very "computer savvy" daughters and they said they didn't know anything about creating a podcast, so now I know something they don't.

I used several photos that I had taken while on a trip to New York last summer. I created it using PlayStory3. I had hoped to download the Frank Sinatra version of "New York, New York" but could never quite figure it out, so I gave up and used this music background which was one of the options provided on PlayStory3. So, although this music was not my first choice, I think it turned out okay. Also, I wanted to use more pictures, but the blog only allows you to post videos that are less than 100 MB. I spent a lot of time editing this until I got it right and was able to get it to download.

I think this would be a great thing to teach older students in a computer class, and I hope to create a few videos like this one to share in my library classes now that I know what I am doing. I thought of several different themes that would be fun to create on my own for use in my lessons. What a great way to incorporate music and art into lessons.

Thing #20-Exploring You Tube and Teacher Tube

I really enjoyed this video and thought it would be a great icebreaker video to show to my older elementary age students at the beginning of the school year.

I found another video on You Tube which I really enjoyed. It is a Classic Sesame Street short called "No Cookies in the Library." I plan on showing it to my younger students at the beginning of the school year. Unfortnately I have been unable to download it here to my post. I will keep working on it and hope I will have success.

I didn't know there was a Teacher Tube until I began the Library2Play exercise. I found so many things that could be used throughout the school year for both the teachers and students. There were several I liked that I viewed as inspirational videos which I plan on showing to our principal as something the staff might view at one of our beginning of the school year staff meetings.

Thing #19 - Web 2.0 Award Winners

I looked at several of the award winner and found I liked the Lulu, Yelp and the LiveMocha web sites.

I didn't know there is a web site where you can publish your own books. Our school did this just this past March when we had two 2nd grade classes write a book about poems about Holidays and we sold the book at our 50th Anniversary Celebration. The book was published by children's author Vuthy Kuon's publishing company out of New York. His company did the cover design for us and we chose the title and cover color. They did all the rest of the designing for us as far as the layout of the poems, student photos and student biographies. I feel the pro to using Lulu would be you only purchase what you sell and you have more control of the overall design of the book. I feel one of the cons would be how difficult it would be to design the book. I visited their forum and there seemed to be a lot of people writing in with problems in trying to create their books. I plan on checking into Lulu further because we plan on having one grade each year work together in creating their own book. The two classes who did the publishing this past year loved it and other classes were asking to do the same. It really is a way to motivate students to write, and they love seeing their creations actually published in a "real live book." The title of the book we did for our 50th Celebration is "From Confetti to Candy Canes: A Collection of Holiday poems and haikus."

I also liked Yelp for my own personal use because I like reading reviews posted by real people. To check it out, I checked reviews for restaurants in Boston since I will be traveling there the end of the month. In reading the different reviews, it seemed like most of them were posted by the college age crowd. It might be helpful if you could search reviews based on gender, age, likes and dislikes, but that might be too much to ask. Anyway, I will probably visit it again but I still like my old standby web site, Tripadvisor.com.

I had heard of LiveMocha but was under the impression it cost money. I was surprised to find out it was free! I signed up for beginning Spanish classes and invited my two daughters to join. I also plan on making the teachers and staff at my school aware of this web site. Our school currently serves students speaking about twenty different languages, so this could be a valuable tool for our school community.

Thing #18 - Online Productivity Tools

Well, I looked at both Google Docs. and Open Office and really don't see the need for either of them if you already have Microsoft Office installed on your computer. I did like Google Docs better because it allowed you to open a document already saved on your computer, but I still don't see the need for that option. I guess the ability to share documents is the biggest plus. Perhaps teachers could download homework sheets, share it with students so they could complete the exercise, then print out their work. But that is similar to what you can do with Wikis so I don't really see the point. The only application I could really see is if you were on a computer that did not provide Microsoft Word, you could go to this site and would be able to create documents such as a PowerPoint presentation, Excel sheet, word document, etc... also, Open Office did provide translation to different languages. If I were a frequent business traveler, it might be great to have in a pinch.

Thing #17 - Rollyo

Once again, I learned about something I never knew existed. I sat up my Rollyo account and decided to use travel sites on my search engine. My husband and I travel ALOT and I do all our reservations over the Internet. Having my own Rollyo account now allows me to search so much faster and easier. Instead of visiting half a dozen different sites, I can search them all at once and narrow down my searches by keyword. For example, we are going to Boston this month so I did a keyword search for Boston under all my chosen search engines and was amazed at how quickly and easily could locate information I needed for our trip.

The link to my Rollyo Travel Account is http://rollyo.com/tjcoult/travel_tools/. I am sure it could be improved upon, but I think I am off to a great start and this is definitely something I will be using whenever I travel.

For my school library, I am thinking I could add a link to my library web site and have search engines that my students would be interested in, for example, author web sites, encyclopedias, dictionaries, book reviews, etc... I will take time to think about it and research various tools before the school year begins.

Thing #16 - Wikis

I managed to make a post to the SBISD Sandbox and I also signed up for my own account. As I dicussed in my Sandbox post, I love the way Wikis cut down on e-mails. I didn't even know such a thing existed! I just finished my library schedule for next year and it became so complicated when trying to coordinate my schedule around everyone else's schedules. It would have been much easier for myself, the computer teacher and the science lab teacher to workout our schedules had we done it on a wiki space, rather than sending dozens of e-mails back and forth. I definitely plan on using a wiki space next year for our scheduling. As far as using Wikis with my students, I could see having the older students working collaboratively on a research project that I set up for them. Much like the 4 campers in the tutorial video, I could create a project, give them a list of things to discover, assign each of them a job, then let them finish the project by adding, editing and deleting as needed among the group. It is something to think about as I do my planning for the next school year.

Thing #15 - The Future of Libraries

I watched the Teacher Tube video and I thought about my own college experience back in the early 70's. Things were pretty much the same back then in regards to the cost of textbooks you may never use, the cost of tuition, worrying about paying back loans, etc...The biggest and most obvious difference of course is the technological changes. It would have been great back then to have Internet access, phone service, and music at my fingertips 24 hours a day. I guess what I am trying to say is, I don't really feel too sorry for today's college students.

I read all five perspectives, and I enjoyed reading all of them. The one that I felt applied to me most at this time was the "Away from Icebergs." My school is slated to be torn down and rebuilt within the next two years, and I am really excited, and nervous, about my new library.

Mr. Anderson's quote "As a Web 2.0 reality continues to emerge and develop, our patrons will expect access to everything – digital collections of journals, books, blogs, podcasts, etc. You think they can’t have everything? Think again. This may be our great opportunity." With technology growing by leaps and bounds, I hope that my brand new library won't be outdated by the time they get it built. I am trusting in my school district and our Library Services team to make sure that doesn't happen.

Thing #14 - Technorati

I went to the Technorati web site and tried doing a search for School Library 2.0 and got an error message. I tried again and got the same results. So I gave up and tried exploring some of the most popular blogs, searches and tags, but didn't really find anything of interest to me. Again, it is that part of me that has a hard time being interested in someone else's opinions, ideas, or interests - when I don't even know them. I did go ahead and claim my blog as part of one of the optional "things" to do, but I don't feel I would return to this web site any time soon to try to share anything.

I liked Del.icou.us better than Technorati as far as a place to post my tags and share my favorite web sites. Right now, I can't see a way to use Technorati in my elementary school library, but I may change my mind once I have a chance to explore the sight a little bit more. I think it would have been helpful if the assignment for this "thing" had been a little more in depth. I more or less felt like a tourist who had been dropped off in the middle of London, England, without a tour guide or map and told to go explore every popular sight in the city.

Thing #13 - Learning tagging and discover Del.icio.us

I was able to set up my Del.icio.us account without any problems. I can see several applications for using this web site for research. It would have came in handy back in the days when I was doing so much research while earning my Masters in Library Information Science. It would have been much easier to tag all the items I found and save them for review later, rather than printing out pages and pages of information.

For personal use, I search the Internet quite often for various recipes. I hope to start tagging those recipes so I can find them easily at a later date. Again, I often view many recipes before deciding on one, then I print it out. If someone asks for a copy of the recipe, I find myself returning to a brower and trying to find it again. I can't wait to start tagging my favorite recipes by category, favorites, etc...

In my school library, as I have mentioned before, I use the Unitedstreaming Video web site almost every day. I now plan on using Del.icio.us to tag my favorite videos by subject, grade level, content, my own personal rating, and time of year that I most often view the videos. I can share this with the teachers at my school which hopefully will cut down on the number of times we repeat showing the same video to the classes. I don't know how many times I have started a video and had the students say "We already saw that!" Also, if nothing else, I can tag my backup videos in case I have problems with my first selections.

My account is http://del.icio.us/tjcoult

Thing #12 - Creating Community through Commenting

Well, I posted comments for five team members from the Library2Play summer list. I hope this is what I was supposed to do. The directions said to post to five Learn2Play blogs so hopefully they are the same thing. I chose these blogs mainly based on the name of the blog. I particularly liked "Miz Liberryan" since I could relate to that title. For my two personal blogs, I chose KHOU's Yourstreet.com blog web site because it has a blog sat up for members of Quail Valley Country Club of which my husband and I are members. The golf course was recently taken over by the city through the Eminant Domain process. I am having trouble adding this blog site to my favorites but will keep working on it. The second blog I chose was Management Blog which I stumbled on while looking for blogs that deal with unwanted phone calls. It has a blog sat up where you can post complaints about companies that keep calling you, even if you are on the Do Not Call for Texas. This site has loads of information on managing everything from insomneia to unwanted calls. I left comments at both of these two web sites to complete this assignment.

Thing #11 -Library Thing

This was the easiet "thing" by far that I have done for this project. I easily see applications for this web site through my school library web site. I am thinking about having my Name That Book team members setup their own library and as they read the required book titles (35 total) they could add the book along with their review. This would be one way for me to help track who has read what books, and they would be sharing their library with me and the other team members.

I could also share my library through our school library web site which would allow both students and parents to view my recommended book titles. It would be a great tool for posting both an adult and student Summer Reading List.

Adding the LibraryThing blog to my favorite blog list was a snap. I am finding that the lessons are getting easier to do which means that I am mastering skills that I learned in past lessons. What a great feeling!

Thing #10 - Online Image Generator

I chose the Fake Magazine Cover for all three of my images. Each is very different but are things I could use either in my library or for sending to friends to create interest in my blog. The link is http://www.fakecovermagazine.com.

The first cover I used was "LOVE" magazine and I used a photo of my nephew and his wife that I took while in New York last summer. They are both school teachers - he teaches high school science and she is a middle school Health/PE teacher. I wanted to let them know about my blog and I thought what better way to get them interested than include them on one of my blogs. Plus, they are so cute, they could actually be on a cover of a romance magazine. Here is a photo of my cover.


Next I used the K-9 magazine cover to do a photo of my daughter's pug, Oscar. I wanted to show her my blog and also thought this would get her interested if I had a picture of her "Oscar." Here is the little guy with his reindeer "chewy."




The last photo I used is a picture of myself with my 3rd-5th Name That Book team that took 1st place in the all of HISD back in May. We competed against 57 elementary schools and came away with the lst place trophy! Here I am with my team - I was so proud of them and all of their hard work. I thought Student Stars was a very appropriate cover for my photo.




I plan on using this web site throughout the school year to display on my library bulletin board. I thought I could use it for my birthday club activity, my Name That book, Texas Bluebonnet Award Breakfast, etc... Kids loving viewing pictures of themselves and I thought this would be a great way to showcase all they do in the library

Thing #9 - Useful Library Blogs and Newsfeeds

After viewing all the search tools, I found I liked Google Blog Search and the Topix.net the best. I disliked Atomic Learning the most because it is a subscription service that costs money to use; however, it might be something I would check into as a service for our school. I plan on discussing this tool with our technology teacher to see if it is something we might be able to subscribe to for our school. It does indicate that you can access the sight with a SBISD password, so they must have it in their district. Perhaps it is also a tool that HISD might consider providing through Library Services.

I felt it was equally easy to find feeds through both Google Blog Search and Topix.net. While playing around in Topix.net, I tried several different searches and one I did was for the Texas Bluebonnet Award. I found a news sight - Newsome.org. - that had an article about a young girl who read all 20 of the 2008 Texas Bluebonnet Award books and posted a review on each book. It included a blog where you could post your comments and congrats to this young lady. That gave me an idea on how I might use something similar through our school web site.

I didn't find any of the recommended sites confusing, I just liked some more than others.

I found the feeds for the Texas Bluebonnet Award, Newbery Award, and Caldecott Award useful. Just for fun, I typed in Tiger Woods and I found it unusual that there were several feeds that had been created over two years ago that still were awaiting approval by Topix.net. I wondered what dictates whether a feed gets approval or not.

I didn't discover any other ways to locate newsfeed during this exercise, but I am aware of how to locate newsfeed after the last few exercises.

Thing #8 - Rss feeds

I have to be honest, initially I didn't spend alot of time choosing the feeds I wanted to share. I chose FoxNews and ESPN as my primary feeds as those are the two stations I watch the most. I included the Houston Astros feed since I am a big fan -even during their losing ways right now. I am also a birdwatcher and included the bird watching blog. When I did take the time to search for the RSS and newsreaders,
I liked the ease in locating the blog feeds through the Google Blog Search, but I also found it a little overwhelming. There is so much out there that it was hard for me to decide what feeds to post to my blog.

I also found it much easier to think of how the newsfeeds could be added for my own personal use, but not so much for use in my library at this time. As an elementary school librarian, I am not sure how easy it would be for my students to access my blog, read my postings, visit my favorite blogs, etc... It might work for my older students, but maybe not so much for my younger students. After some thought, I felt my blog might better serve the parents of my students.

I feel libraries should take advantage of the ease in which newsfeeds may be accessed by their patrons. I plan on adding some Internet connections to RSS and newsreaders through my Alexandria Catolog system. I know there is a way to add sites through the Explorer tab in Alexandria.

I recall talking about RSS at one of Alan November's seminars, but had never tried it. I am love the way I am learning something new with each of my lessons.

Thing #7 - Cool Google Tools

I have used Google Earth and Picasa in the past and will continue to use them in the future. Google Earth is a great tool to use in my library lesson plans as my class can literally fly to any place on earth for a skyeye view of a place we may be discussing in class. I found my elementary age students to particularly enjoy seeing places that they are familiar with, such as our school campus, their home, their Little League baseball field, etc... I have also used Google Earth in discussion about famous landmarks. One of my 2nd grade classes did a project on famous landmarks this year for their classroom teacher, and I was able to show the teacher and students how to view their various landmarks from space, using Google Earth.

I liked the Google calendar and thought it would be fun to set it up on my library computer and have student birthdays posted on the calendar. This would be a wonderful tool to assist me in implementing a Library Birthday Club next year. For more about Library Birthday clubs visit
http://www.saa-sds.org/SummerPacket/PDF/LibraryBirthdayClub.pdf


I have only used Picasa for my own personal use, but I do see applications for using it in a classroom setting. I particularly like the way you can edit the photos so easily and build a library for each of your albums. As I had stated in a previous blog, I enjoy showing students pictures of places I have visited. I could set up my Picasa albums on the student computers for them to view when visiting the library.

Unfortunately for me, I recently lost all my photos that were saved in Picasa when my computer crashed and I had to restore it back to its original settings. Thank goodness I had made print copies of all the pictures. So I learned a valuable lesson. I guess I was thinking that even if my computer crashed, that the pictures would be saved by Picasa. Next time I will be sure to back them up to my jump drive.

Thing #5 - Explore Flickr

I had heard of Flickr before but never tried using it. I didn't particularly like the idea of going through tons of pictures posted by people I have never met trying to find something that might interest me. However, I can see the application for it. My husband and I travel alot during the summer and I do relate stories to my students during the school year about places I have been and things I have seen. The students often ask if I can bring pictures in from the places that we discuss in class. My goal now is to start uploading my photos to Flickr and using them to enhance my library lessons and also to teach my students how they can go to the Flickr web site and view my vacation photos on their own. The next step will be to teach the students how to create their own vacation photo web site and share them with their classmates. Also, our school has discussed the possibility of getting an inexpensive class set of digital cameras for the students to use for taking photos for science, social studies, etc... and uploading to our school web site during their computer lab classes. There are so many possibile applications....

I did like the tip about downloading photos from the Discovery Education web site. I use this web site almost everyday in my library classes. I usually start the year out discussing the autumn season and have my elementary students tell me what they know about fall. For example, how do you know it is fall, what holidays do we celebrate in the fall, when is the first day of fall, etc... So, I created a "fall photo" folder and plan to use it in my autumn lessons plans.
I thought I would display the photos to the class first - via the LCD projector - and let the students tell me what season they think the photos represent and why, then have our fall season discussion. Here are just two of the photos I could use in this lesson:


Of all the things I have learned so far, I feel Flickr is the web site that I would most likely use in a elementary school library setting.

Thing #2 - 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners

I almost forgot to do this step. Thankfully I read a few posts from other team members, and realized I had skipped this step. I had read it, but forgot to post my thoughts. I think the habits hardest for me are habits 4 and 6. I have not always had the confidence in myself as an effective learner, which may explain my getting my college degrees later on in my life. I think having my two daughters and seeing them grow and learn helped me to gain the confidence to go back to school and get an education. But even after all that, I still find that I lack confidence in myself from time to time. Habit 6 which is using technology to its full advantage, has not always been easy for me. I do not own an I-pod or MP3 player, and don't know that I would use them if I had them. I do know my way around digital cameras, palm pilots, and computers, but that is because I use them in my current job. I am thinking by the time I finish this course, I may be the proud owner of an I-Pod. The other habits I found are pretty easy for me, especially play! I love to have a good time - whenever possible.

Thing #4 - Registering a blog

I got my blog registered with my team captain, Vaughn. At least, I hope it worked and that I provided him all the correct information. I just realized today I am supposed to be labeling my blogs by the "thing # so I hope my captain can determine what my first two posts were in reference to as far as what number I was completing. I haven't visited any other team member blogs yet, but will do that today. I want to see if my posts looks like other blogger posts, or if I am totally off track.

Thing #3 - Creating an Avatar

Well, I did it! I made my own Golf Girl Avatar, with a little determination and alot of figuring it out on my own. I have to admit, at one point I became so frustrated I said out loud "Forget this!" But that Life Long Learner thought creeped into my head, and I pushed onward. It was easy creating the Avatar, but I struggled with figuring out to export it to my blog. I think I just need to slow down and read the LibraryPlay instructions more closely, and use the hot links provided in the instructions. On to thing #4 - I am already wondering how much frustration I will ultimately experience as I go on with this journey into cyberspace.

Creating a blog for the first time

In in the words of Gomer Pyle "Well, Gol-lee!" I actually sat up my own blog! I guess I just can't imagine anyone taking the time to read it - except maybe my team leader Vaughn. (Hi Vaughn)
I can't say it was easy to setup. I kept having to go back to the directions from the LibraryPlay2 instructions, and it took me awhile to figure out what was what (blogger name, what I am known as, how to access my e-mail through the internet address bar, etc....) but after an hour of trying, I am on my way to becoming a first rate blogger - I hope.

Thing #1 - Becoming a lifelong learner

I never really thought about what makes someone a lifelong learner until viewing Thing #2. But when I did think about it, I realized how nice it is for me to already be one and how it doesn't take alot for anyone to become one. I hope that makes sense.

I look forward to the LibraryPlay experience. I call myself the late bloomer because I graduated from college with a degree in elementary education at the young age of 39, then finished my Masters in Information Science at the age of 42. So although I got off to a late start, I have tried to put my education and knowledge to great use and enjoy the opportunities to "keep on learning."