Blogs

There are more pictures and a description of the day here: http://lib.surruralist.net/2007/05/22/boxesyarnweb/

Have been reading Friedman (The New York Time ) spin on globalisation and of course was interested in his perspective (it is driven by economic models raising questions centred on key indicators of globalisation - insourcing, open-sourcing, informing, offshoring and outsourcing).

For teacher librarians who have focused on connecting students beyond their classmates (1970s-1980s e-pals, electronic book raps come to mind) then his concept of the flattened world is probably a comfortable image in our bid to connect and lead our students in learning across social and geographic spaces. Up until advent of Web 2, we have not had really seamless, robust and fast ways to keep the energy, curiosity and passion up – key attributes in engaged learning.

It takes a well known writer to put a spin on something that has significant merit for teacher librarians. How does the concept of the flat world and all it conjures resonate with where you are as a teacher librarian? Like anything, we can internalise an idea and build new experiences/ new spins but where does the concept lead you.

Have a look a this – the quintessential use of Web 2 for learning and teaching?

I just spent the last two days trying to move into the 21st century. We are (and I blush) finally moving to an automated system. The cataloguers are hard at work in my library as I type. It's going to be a steep learning curve and as with all technology there will be glitches but I am excited about the new possibilities that will open up. I spent some time playing with Toondo today and offer my effort below. I think it will be a great tool for introducing kids to things on my library website. To see the cartoon I created go to:

http://bookminder.blogspot.com/

Wed, Jan 02, 2008
Laptop project enlivens Peruvian hamlet
For early recipients of the One Laptop Per Child foundation's XO computers, life is profoundly different
From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

"The children of Arahuay prove OLPC’s transformative conceit: that you can revolutionize education and democratize the internet by giving a simple, durable, power-stingy but feature-packed laptop to the worlds’ poorest kids."

Today I got to touch one of these fantastic little XO's! A colleaque was given one by Santa! As part of the 2007 SVVSD District Technology Fair, we will be giving away one in a drawing for all students attending the awards. The winner will receive not only the XO laptop but also mentoring services from one of the Instructional Technology staff on using the XO. I wonder who will be mentoring who?

Will journal the project on this blog after the fair on February 2, 2008.

*This is cross-posted from my personal blog, Infactory.blogspot.com.

When we woke up this morning, there was a goat on our front porch. That’s right—a goat. Now, a goat is not something you see every day, particularly when he’s camped out all night at your door.

Not knowing what else to do, we befriended him and named him Billy Boy. He ate dog treats and lots of leaves, we discovered. And he wasn’t exactly shy.

Pretty soon, we were the main topic of the local rumor mill. Neighbors greeted us, “Hey, I heard you adopted a goat.” And within a few hours, some of our friends called, “Can we bring the kids by to see the goat?”

People were full of suggestions. “Did you call Animal Control?” or “I have a friend who raises goats. I can call him to catch him for you.” Finally someone suggested that Billy Boy had been “let go” on purpose and should be “taken down.” But Billy had become a sort of pet for us by now. I hated the thought of “taking him down” and wondered what other alternatives there were. He did, after all, eat leaves and grass. Perhaps he could be trained to keep the grass cut.

As I reflected on this event later, I realized that I could learn a few things from the experience. Some people I know are like Billy Boy. They have camped out where they don’t belong. It is time for them to move on. Or they are just “Old goats” who aggravate folks around them. People around them think they should be “taken down.” Perhaps their usefulness is questionable to some. Perhaps others think they should move on, or that someone else should take them in.

Maybe you know some folks like that. Perhaps they are neighbors, or, worse, co-workers. In this age of productivity and data collection, Billy goats are no better than weeds or dead wood, even if their main function is as weed-eaters and hoppers.

If you are like me, considering retirement in the not so distant future, you have probably given your productivity an occasional thought. You have tried to keep the pace. You would cringe if someone considered you to be an “old goat.”

I challenge you to consider a rebirth of sorts. Take on a new skill and teach others. Dive in headfirst into the vast ocean of Web 2.0 tools and master at least one. Toot your horn a bit. What have you go to lose?

These sites are web-tools that you can build with. If we can tame the 800 pound gorilla of time and apply our vision and creativity, there are hundreds of opportunities to connect curriculum with the dynamic world on the highly interactive Read/Write web. Picking up the tools offered by Web 2.0 (and all of the editions after that) can help educators avoid being ‘dis-intermediated’. When a new technology cuts out the middle man, dis-intermediation occurs. Ian Jukes warns that the revolutionary-evolutionary progression of information technology is cutting out teachers by providing a direct supply of information to consumers. The stark truth is our students don’t need us to learn how to collaborate online, create and broadcast videos, or become published authors. What they need to learn from us is how to evaluate and judge the information they swim in daily. Becoming aware and versed in Web 2.0 technology will help us bring relevance and motivation to our swimming lessons!

Blogging

Blogging is a writer's dream tool. There's an audience just a few keystrokes away. A blog is a simple website designed for sharing ideas. The blogger writes. The reader comments. Be it a a dialog or a one way manifesto, popular and free blogging tools have fueled use of the Internet as a Read & Write environment. In addition there are many commercial blogging systems that provide value added features.

• Deeper: The Writer's Center Applied Blogging (Video Tutorials on how to set up a blog.)

Blogger.com http://blogger.com This free site is one of the original and most popular blogging services. Blogger is a relatively 'low-tech' system that's a good choice for those just starting out with the technology. A simple sign-up procedure, easy to use design templates, and compatibility with third party add-on software are positive attributes. Google now owns Blogger and will serve context sensitive ads on your free blog pages. You can pay a modest amount to upgrade to an ad free version.

Wordpress: http://wordpress.com/ Wordpress provides free blogging software and space for anyone who cares to sign up. This is an ad free service, with very rich and powerful tools. Design templates help you create an attractive looking site. Since Wordpress is very popular, you'll find many useful ad-ons as you elaborate the basic technology that comes free with your site. The popular Edublogs.net is based on Wordpress technology and provides free blogs and wiki's to educators.

ClassBlogmeister: http://classblogmeister.com/index.php is a free classroom blogging system created by David Warlick and the Landmark Project. Classroom teachers can get a classroom blog and work in a sheltered environment designed to introduce kids K-12 to writing for an authentic audience. There are currently 3500 classrooms and nearly 36000 bloggers using Blogmeister.

Photo Sharing

Millions of digital cameras in the hands of the curious and creative mean billions of images which can be easily shared published via photo sharing services. Tagging photos, creating albums, and inviting friends to view the latest snapshots are a natural glue for a community of interest. Photo sharing sites like Flickr were among the first to demonstrate the possibilities of the read / write web.

Flickr http://www.flickr.com (owned by Yahoo) has a huge community of users. This means there are also a great many free browser plug-ins and software packages to enhance Flickr shared photos. They offer both free and paid accounts. There is a 100mb per month bandwidth limit on free accounts.

Picasa http://picasa.google.com/ This photo sharing and editing software if offered free of charge by Google. Picasa is powerful basic editor. The new WebAlbum photo sharing element makes Picasa a one stop solution for photo editing and sharing. For more about the possibilities see Google's Picasa for Educators information.

Tabblo http://www.tabblo.com/ provides free photo sharing via Online Tabblos. These are attractive, template driven photo pages. Other features like posters and books are available for a fee. This is an ad free service with with unlimited storage space.

Social Bookmarking

These tools let you store and share your bookmarks online. Once you’ve configured your account and customized your browser it becomes easy to bookmark, describe and tag your Internet discoveries. Just click the toolbar icon and you will be prompted to save your bookmarks (including comments and tags) to the online service you have chosen. Using social bookmarks means you can access your favorites from any internet linked computer. Additionally, you can network within the community finding others with similar interests. You can then link to their bookmarks, or add the sites directly to your own account. One crucial feature is the ability to create ‘public’ and ‘private’ bookmarks; there will always be sites you don’t want to share with the group. Social Bookmarking is a useful tool for collaborative research as well as online community building.

Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/ Delicious was acquired recently by Yahoo! This means ongoing support and development for one of the first and most popular social bookmarking services. Delicious is designed to make sharing second nature. You can subscribe to Tags, and have the system auto-search and update bookmarks related to any tag of interest. You can also create a network of fellow users; just copy the screen name of another community member and they go into your network, making it easy to monitor those with similar interests.

Ma.gnolia: http://ma.gnolia.com This site has a rich toolset with everything you’d expect in a social bookmarking site. They provide powerful import tools for importing bookmarks from Del.icio.us. Tags are separated by commas, allowing you to use multiple descriptive tags. Support tools include a wiki based Frequently Asked Questions option.

Blinklist: http://blinklist.com Blinklist provides you with quick click access to personal lists, watch lists, tag browsing and tag creation. It is easy to search all public bookmarks. Blinklist automatically provides keyword-tag suggestions. If you find a tag combination you like, and RSS subscription is available. You can import bookmarks from your browser as well as Delicious and Furl. Other attractive features are the thumbnail pictures provided for the more popular sites and a convenient auto-fill feature that lets you copy and paste snippets into the description field of your bookmarks.

Video Sharing

Video sharing sites are intriguing places to search for instructional video. Try the same keywords you use when looking for curriculum materials on the web. Additionally, if your students produce video, there is a world wide audience just an upload away. You can provide links back to your school or program site when you upload your video. This can bring the much desired Web 2.0 benefit of connecting you with an audience for your ideas.

• Deeper: Edutopia: How to Use Digital Story Telling in Your Classroom

Google Video: For Educators http://video.google.com Try keyword searching Google video for academic subjects. The results will vary, but we guarantee you'll find some interesting and educational videos appropriate for your classroom or library. Using the little known Google Video operator genre: you can find video tagged for educators. Try searching for genre:: educational to find some useful results.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ This is the video sharing site that's been called the mineshaft canary for Web 2.0. Recently acquired by google for billions of dollars, YouTube features a huge array of videos about many different topics. YouTube definitely has a free range wildness about it that gives the user a sense of never knowing what they are going to see.

VideoJug: Life Explained on Film http://www.videojug.com This is a clever site with a how-to angle. You'll find a variety of user produced instructional video. The Kid's section features a fun series of balloon animal tutorials.

Wikis

Think of Wikis as specialized websites that promote collaborative writing. Wiki team-mates can edit documents at any time of the day or night. The wiki will automatically back up the original and present the newest edition of the document to the next team-mate to log in. You always have a revision history to consult, as you create a dynamic document that grows and changes under the attention of an audience of editors. Wikipedia is the best known Wiki at the moment. (See Doug Johnson's article Wikipedia: Ban It or Boost It in this edition of the Resource Kit.)

• Deeper: Educause: Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not

WikiMatrix: http://www.wikimatrix.org/index.php This is a comparison site that helps a user compare many different features of a wide variety of commercial and free wiki services. If you want to make an informed choice this site is a great starting place. (Both pbwiki and Wikispaces are reviewed side by side and feature by feature.)

PBWiki http://pbwiki.com With a slogan like: "Make a Wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich" you can expect a clean streamlined design. Will pbwiki set you up in just 30 seconds? Try it and see. Learning the ins and outs of Wiki editing and navigation will take a bit more time. Other features include a discussion area where team-members (or any user) can comment on the wiki. If you outgrow the free version you can upgrade for a modest monthly fee.

Wikispaces http://www.wikispaces.com Wikispaces is another educator oriented free service. You will find the easy to navigate discussion, history, and notification tabs useful. You can also set up email or RSS feeds to keep you posted on wiki activity.

Click-O-Rama: More resources than you can shake a mouse at!

We've presented a select number of sites to provide an overview of Web 2.0 Internet services. There are hundreds of innovative sites showing up on the web everyday. Many of these sites provide a golden opportunity to harness the energy of authorship and curriculum. The following sites give you click through access and thumbnail descriptions of far more sites than we can cover in this article.

Web2Logo http://web2logo.com Here you will find 10 pages of Web 2.0 logos. Click on a logo and you are taken to a community rating and review page. You will see the site's traffic statistics, and comments from users. Additionally, you are presented with a hot list of similar Web 2.0 sites, You have the option of subscribing to any of Web2Logo's description pages... and easy way to monitor the community comments about a site.

GO2WEB20 http://www.go2web20.net This is a less detailed , but more direct presentation than Web2Logo. Click any of the long scroll of Web 2.0 logos and see a thumbnail description of the site pop up in the right hand column of the page. You'll also find a hotlink that will open the site in a new window. This beta site still has rough edges but the developers are promising more revisions in the near future. For now it's fun for just clicking around!