Week Nine Number Twenty Three

This is a great video to explain copyright. The irony is of course that Disney is more than serious about the subject and most viewers will be left with the understanding that copyright is a multilayered concept. Confusing in the least.

The Stanford Media Education Foundation has loads of teaching resources on their website that I have ferreted through to both learn and get ideas on the issues and creative ways of approaching the topic.

These 23 things have been fun and will serve as a checklist for me to go back and periodically review. It's all changing so fast that there is always something new to be updated. As always the challenge is to translate the neat stuff into meaningful content and realistic use. We continue to be constrained by rules and regulations on the use of web 2.0 applications and technologies as well as the lack of sufficient time and bandwidth.

The blog and respond format is most effective if you keep up with the rest of the class ;-)but if you take the time to go through and explore it is motivating and worthwhile.

Week Nine Number Twenty Two

e-Books and Audiobooks

When will our students be able to have all their textbooks on ebook readers?

I've been playing around with both formats with the aide of my iPOd , laptop and Kindle.

I have tried several times to find a title on Listen Alaska that I am interested in and that comes in the mp4 iPod format. Lately they have added some of these audio titles that looked interesting but inevitably there was a waiting list.

I do like Librivox for classic titles. I recently listened to My Antonia and thought the readers did a great job.

Even though I enjoy the quiet of knitting there are times I wish I could whip through more YA fiction titles while knitting ad accomplish two things at once. Audible.com seems to have a great selection but I have not brought myself to spend the money.

We have added to our audiobook collection at school but only for those titles that are in the curriculum. My intent was to make sure we have options for reluctant readers, makeup assignments or for class instruction . In a perfect world our students could download these titles easily from their library website.

eBooks have the scene this past year. I subscribed to Gale ebook editions of some of our more heavily used reference titles. They were used more this year than last year so it will be interesting to see if the use increases as the format becomes more familiar.

I have downloaded several titles from Gutenberg for my Kindle along with using Stanza to convert journal articles. I think once ebook readers are multi platform and ebook content is also cross platform there will be no limit to what we can use them for.

Week Nine Number Twenty One

iPod, uPod...

When I first got my iPod I downloaded lots of podcasts related to technology, education etc. After I was sufficiently bored I swiped those off and returned to iTunes where I discovered KNITTING PODCASTS. Need I elaborate? My favorite knitting podcast is created by Barbara Dane and comes from Wales. Try it!

In a perfect work world I would not be telling students to hide their cell phones, iPods and earbuds as is required in our school. I would create podcasts for orientations, book reviews, student created book talks etc. The recreational reading and instructional possibilities are endless. This year we had teachers who used garage band to have students do interviews, essays and reports. Sadly they stay on the computer but it would be great if we could post them on our webpage and have students be able to download them. Alas, our IT teacher said "not" that they took up too much storage space.

I have no worries. Podcasting will be around for awhile and the powers that be will come around and catch up with the kids ;-)

Week Nine Number Twenty

Teacher Tube has some great stuff.

A co-worker recently pointed out to me that all my information literacy lessons could be found on Teacher Tube. Clearly all I needed to do was to download them and voila, my work would be done.

I would still prefer to make my own presentations and/or use some of the pre-made ones to augment my lesson. Why? Because I still believe that what I offer is created specifically with what the assignment and student are required to learn. One size does not fit all.

Here's the Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto

Enjoy :-)

Week Eight, Nineteen Point One

Digital Pipeline...Dragging the Horse to Water

Why is it that we are enamored with databases and work hard to get our kids to use them but they continue to default to Google? ( Including the teachers...)Part of it is that students do not share the thrill of the search. They only want the find and so they don't really care about all the advanced slick features of any searching engine unless you can convince them how it will save them time.

I was rather heavy handed this year and insisted that all freshman English teachers have students locate at least one source using the databases. I also provided lessons introducing the fascinating resources found on a database and had them compare a database source with a website for a specific topic. ( snore)I made some progress but will have to continue the good fight in the Fall.

I have set up journal alerts in the past. They seem to work for awhile but then they drop off and I forget about them. I find it more convenient to search under publications and browse the latest issue available online. I also have branched out from library related journals to those published by NCTE and IRA along with one on adolescent literacy. I've been taking this angle rather than pursuing a steady diet of tech magazines because I find the tech is in the other titles but usually within a deeper framework and with more content.

This coming year I would like to have an orientation lesson using the high school edition of SRC and using that database only. I also would like to push the consumer health database. Global studies teachers will be interested in the Historical Archives beta database because of all the primary resources.

Week Eight , Number Nineteen

I started a Library Thing account some time ago but ended up having my books on Shelfari. I just liked the format and overall look better.

I actually have an account for my professional reading and one for my personal reading.

This spring we started a Library Thing account for our library. Depending on any changes in our district policies on using blogs and wikis we will need to upgrade to an institutional account come September because we have over 200 titles listed. We are planning to tag them by genre and then have students participate. We hope this functions as a reader's advisory, marketing for new books, student book reviews, book group support etc.

I chose to use Library Thing because they made an offer for free book cover photos that we could use for our blog. Great idea but I never got anywhere with it but it's still on my to do list.

Week Eight, Number Eighteen

Productivity...( verb ) Google Docs

I've found many uses for Google docs from my own personal needs to family and work activities.

Editing daughter's research papers without having to worry about format or attachments

Working on my thesis and not have to put it on a jump drive

Keeping a list of things to do at work or a list of books to read

Keeping my work budget on a spreadsheet that I can look at from anywhere I can get on the net

Developing a unit with a teacher and being able to work on it at the same time

Teaching my students to do their work on Google docs or presentation app so they can work on it at home and open in in the library or classroom.

Have the Google apps on my iGoogle page. Very handy

Keeping an annotated bibliography of books for booktalks

Being able to work on a "powerpoint" with a copresenter without sending stuff back and forth

Keeping a list of things to do for library staff

Being able to share my work with others by setting them to "share" .

Having students work on group projects at different times