Voicethread

Found this great idea to update our fourth grade fractured fairy tale project by moving it to Voicethread.com This is an example of a story written and performed by 2nd grade students.
Adventures of Baby Bob

Thing 23

I've been trying to put into words all this class has meant to me, but the most important thing I learned is don't just say it, show it so I created this silly video with Windows Movie Maker.



My favorite discoveries: blogs and del.icio.us (remember, I'm a 1.0 gal just now learning to operate in a 2.0 world so I'm starting a little behind.)
My lifelong learning goals are exponentially increased since I now need to go back and develop all these new tools I've subscribed to, plus be alert to new trends.
The most surpising thing was how much I enjoyed what I thought I would dread, and how different today's student really is.
I think this program was exceptionally well-designed. Most of the work needs to be personal and hands-on anyway. The only thing I would change is to move the using your name discussion in thing 12 up to Thing 3 where we need it.
I would DEFINITELY choose to participate in the next stage of the journey. It's foolish to think I can navigate this new world without a guide and I know there's so much more to see, like Second Life and new mashups.
Empowering and stretching.
Thank you for the kick in the pants to get me going on my lifelong journey of discovery2.0.

Thing 22 - Nings

At first, I was confused about the differences between nings and wikis, but this project helped clear this up for me. The wiki is a collaborative group of web pages like an intranet,l not meant to be static. A ning is designed around a social networking purpose, and members upload a static version of what they want to share, while allowing discussion. The extent of collaboration by participants is different in nature because the purpose of the site is different. So you would use a wiki to produce maybe a story together, or to research a topic. But you would use a ning for a classroom to allow students to upload their completed videos, etc... to share with classmates for discussion. I did create a wiki, but not a ning yet until I check with my school IT. I won't create one unless I can use it with my school population. In theory, it could make my library web page function like an interactive, collaborative, library web page.

I am in an elementary school and saw an elementary group on teacher librarian ning (which I joined primarily for professional development), but not on the Texas school librarian ning, (which I also joined because I enjoy Shonda Brisco's postings on the different listservs and my 5th grade students are almost middle school and soon need to function in middle school).

Oh, and I had to open a facebook account -- finally. My two college sons have mixed feelings about it as you can imagine. :)

Thing 21 - podcasts and photo story

This was a tough one for me. I had to go out and buy a mic and figure out the settings to make it record properly, download audacity, download the lame encoder from audacity, think of what to say, learn how to use the software, and me without even an ipod to my name! Now comes the hard part, exporting it to this blog post. Here goes... This will be used for a Texas trivia contest over the course of the year for our fourth graders. Book trailers, audio reminders for directory paths, student storytelling, lots of cool things...

The next task is easier for me as I have already explored Photo Story this summer for my twin boys' high school graduation retrospective. I had lots of fun playing with the music and old photos. I didn't have a mic at the time, and it would have been fun to add my comments to some of the pictures. Unfortunately, it is very long and would not load so I tried a shortened version below. I may have to play with the file size some more (still 2M) to get it to load. It was the highlight of the day for my family members. I can see this in place of biography reports, author studies, history events, U.S. state reports, almost anything ....

Thing 20 - video

Youtube -- familiar territory at last! And I have also used Zamzar before to show a Youtube video at school. Blinkx is amazing, but I think Google Video has more search power which, as always, is both a blessing and a curse. The Portal to Texas History will be very helpful with fourth grade Texas history classes as well. I knew the website but the trailer is fun.

Teacher Tube is new to me and it probably is not blocked at my school. It has much less offensive material, but not nearly the choice in imho. I think it is fantastic for finding out what other schools are doing with video and I really think we'll be making a claymation video, or a storytelling video this coming school year. Here is one example I found.



I sure hope this works. I've always loved this Leo Lionni story.

Here is another video discovered via the Cool Cat Teacher blog on a new way to teach at Woodland Parks High School in Colorado - lectures at home and homework done at school, a flipped classroom.

Thing 19 - Web2.0 awards

What a great awards list, full of many of my new friends like del.icio.us and flickr and google documents, and many more! I looked at several, including the color blender, which was fun to use to color coordinate a website or a room, but then I settled on twitter. I have been hearing so much about it lately that I knew I'd eventually have to open an account. The overview was good, including a great commoncraft video that explained how twitter differs from email and blogs. Basically it's for little sound bytes of what you are doing or thinking, no longer than 145 words per post, complete with a handy little counter that counts down to zero as you are posting. There are fan sites and twitter etiquette sites, and it even went to Mars and was one of the first places to find out that ice was discovered on the planet. Amazing phenomenon! This tool, more than any other is hard for me to get comfortable with and it should be so easy. I think it's because it is not a productivity tool, and doesn't seem "important" enough. I can't imagine why anyone would want to know if I mowed the lawn, ate soup, drank coffee, or wasn't up to anything, just hanging around. I know so many people that are completely sold on it. That in a nutshell defines the digital divide. I still relish my privacy too much to "share" all the time.

Thing 18 - google documents

I have explored the google documents through a "brand-new this summer"school google account. The tutorials were very helpful and incorporated hands-on practice which really made it easy to use. Basically, they can function as a wiki allowing changes by anyone you specify. That makes it useful for me to upload collaboration documents with my teachers that allow us all - the library, the computer teacher, the classroom teacher, and principal to collaborate on assignments for our students, then to upload them to a safe, accessible location for our students. I am so much more used to the Microsoft products that I still really need to think before using them on new documents. Of course, for all the work already created on Microsoft products, it is easy to upload existing documents as well or link to them which helps. You can even conference live time to see who is working on the document or set up a time to review them for everyone without meeting in person if there is noone to cover the library at a specified time. That helps me multitask and get needed tasks accomplished during the day. The documents move so easily from one google product to another with just a click of the button which makes it a time saver that helps compensate for the learning curve to produce the documents. You can work on documents offline for times when the internet is down by adding a gadget. Still exploring all the ramifications, but I think I'll be making the adjustment. Plus, I'm sure we'll get school-based training in August when we get back which will be frosting on the cake.