Google Tools

Wow! The Google tools are amazing. I just didn't know these things existed before. I have a lot to learn. I started looking at them and boom! 2 hours were gone! I want to understand Google Earth more. I thought the Google Lit trips were neat. I guess I am starting to understand just how much I really do not know by looking at all of this stuff! I will say that I have a lot to look at and explore further. BTW-I changed my mind. I don't totally hate GoogleDocs after all.

I want to look at Google sketch more too. My daughter is working on a diorama for a book project. It is the traditional shoebox with a scene from the book Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry. It would be interesting to have students use Google sketch to do their dioramas. I'm not saying it is a better way, just a different way. I think there is still something to be said about cutting and gluing and pasting things together to create something. My daughter seems to be enjoying it. I was just looking at Google Sketch when she was working on her project so I thought about it.

Another thing about my daughter is that we got into a discussion about this web site. I had just read somewhere on the web that a large percentage of 5th graders in Holland did not question the authenticity of web sites. That made me curious since my daughter is in 5th grade. (My mother's family was from the Netherlands...so maybe that means something too. Are we more gullible than most? lol) So I showed her the site and sure enough, she totally believed it all! So here was a teachable moment. I told her that it wasn't real and that she should not believe everything she sees and reads on the web. I talked to her about checking sources and what we know or do not know about who puts together a site. She was totally disgusted that someone would put up such a site and exclaimed, "That's just mean!" Then I had to explain to her that most likely this person intended for it to be a joke and not to be taken seriously. I showed her some of the photos people had taken of "sightings" of this endangered creature. Some of them were of stuffed animals up in trees. So I think she understood that it was a joke and meant to be laughed at.

I have been working on my staff development project. I will say that I am glad that I started it in a timely manner. Even with starting it at a fairly early date, I will still be working hard to finish it this week so that I can enjoy Easter weekend with my relatives who will be visiting us. I just do not know the best way to put this all together. I am trying, that is all I can say. Every bit of it is new to me. Even the topic is fairly new to me. I guess it is coming along fairly well, in spite of it.

I am feeling better about my overall workload for school. I have accomplished quite a number of things this week. I am still behind on my reading, but I'll catch up eventually.

I Loved the Online Conferences!!!!

This week has proved to be a busy one. I admit that I am in panic mode right now...everything seems to be overwhelming. Many projects are due at or about the same time. It just doesn't seem possible to get it all done! So...I am feeling some anxiety. It is generally impossible to do all the reading that have been assigned to me between the different classes I am taking. I am forced to let some of it go. I plan on coming back to it once the semester is at a close. There are so many interesting things to look at or read. So that is my complaining for this blog. Sorry. It is just where my mind and heart is. I wouldn't be honest if I were pretending that everything is easy.

I loved all the content and information this week in class. I watched about 9 presentations. I was only supposed to watch 6, but some others looked too interesting to pass up. (as if I had time to watch the extras) I think one of my favorite presentations was "Geo-caching
Across the Curriculum." My son and his friends are into geo-caching. I got really excited about it. I love history and I love geography. I just think it would be such a fun project to get involved with. I passed on some of the information to a friend of mine who is a Global teacher here in town. He loves all the interesting ideas...but the reality is that he does not have time to do anything like this. The "No Child Left Behind" education act has done none of them any favors.

I also watched "Living History" presentation about a class of 5th graders in Indonesia. It made me want a job at their school. My daughter is in 5th grade and I don't see any of this sort of things being done. Her education is very traditional so far...although she did do a PowerPoint presentation with a group of students on a book that they read. She is learning and she seems to enjoy school. Anyway, the kids in the presentation created their own virtual tours of some local museums. They also have been communicating with a woman who lived in the Dutch Indies as a child during WWII. This experience has enabled these children to put a living face on some of the events that took place in their country over 60 years ago.

I have been working on my Power Point presentation. I have to admit that I am a bit nervous about it, having never made a PP before and also...not being sure of the best way to organize the information of my topic. Talking with a couple of students from last semester's class has helped. They have both said, "Oh...you'll do fine. It all comes together. You'll see."

I just loved the article "School Libraries Renewed" by Ann M. Martin. I bookmarked it to be able to easily refer back to it. One of the librarians at a local primary school retired last year. The school board opted to NOT hire a certified librarian. The position has been filled by an aid. To be honest with you, the aid probably can do the same job that the previous librarian was doing, as she was not exactly the most creative or innovative librarian that I have seen. I have talked to many people who are surprised that I need a Master's Degree to become a librarian. They still think that librarians simply sit behind desks and check in and out books or only read stories to children who come to the library. This article is really great. I'm not always good at articulating arguments for libraries...something I am happily getting better at as time goes on!

Once my workload settles down (hehehe...I'm laughing at myself! Does my workload EVER settle down?), I am going to go to many more online conferences. I just loved them!

Learning PowerPoint and spinning other plates

This week I'm beginning to feel more pressure build. I have big projects coming up for both classes I am taking. I'm starting to spin quite a few plates now. In the mean time, my house is looking messier and messier because I haven't done much in the way of housework.

It took me awhile to catch on with the PowerPoint that Dan created to help us learn how to create a PowerPoint presentation. I really need to watch and listen to it again. I have never done this before, but I think I can do it. I'm a little nervous, but somehow these sorts of things seem to work out.

I liked the presentation that Susan and Dan put together about making a presentation be professional in appearance. I'm a little overwhelmed with the project, but I started breaking it down into "bite size pieces." You know what they say about eating an elephant? Eat it one bite at a time.

I have so much reading to do for my classes, that I'm afraid I may fall behind.

I am taking my last two classes for SLMS now and today I was able to talk to someone about doing a practicum in their library during the fall. She is willing to take me on and I think it will be a great experience!

GoogleDocs and Collaboration

Here is a picture of a collaborate effort between three teenagers to create a snow army in my backyard. This was taking place as I was inside of the house working on the collaborative SLMC website paper. Collaboration everywhere! Click here for more fun!

I have decided that I absolutely HATE GoogleDocs (GD)! I really love the idea of being able to collaborate online with a group of people to work on a project, but GD is clumsy to use. Personally, I would rather write a document using Microsoft Word and email it back and forth before using GD again. I am wondering if there is a better collaboration format out there for writing documents. I see so many possibilities for a tool such as GD. Too bad it is so clumsy to work with. I read Christopher Case's article entitled GoogelDocs and Spreadsheets: Collaborating in the Classroom or Library. In fact, I read it twice. Once before I started using GD for this week's project and again today because I honestly wanted to be convinced of all he says it is. I am wondering what is wrong with me that I don't like it. Am I missing something? Maybe I am just spoiled by all the things that Microsoft Word has to offer. Of course GD can't copy it because that would be breaking copyright!

I thought working together on one article this way was challenging in many respects. There were times that I wanted to communicate quickly with my fellow collaborator(s), but had to wait for them. I understand this because we all have our own time constraints and schedules. On the flip side, I thought it was interesting that we could write a paper together and share ideas from a distance. Technology is pretty amazing. So here I am in a town south-east of Rochester, collaborating with people in the Buffalo area and coming up with a finished paper. I have never met either of my two group members face to face. Overall, it was a great learning experience.

This all brings to mind a memory that I have from the late 1980's. I had just gotten a job at a bank and was introduced to the fax machine for the first time. I was just amazed that someone could take a document and feed it into this machine at the branch I was working in and a copy of it could come out in an entirely different branch! I thought it was a wonderful invention. I find that memory to be amusing now because of how far technology has come since!

I enjoyed the discussion group this week on how we would use (or wouldn't use) web 2.0 in the school library. I like the idea of online book discussions. My classmates had so many other great ideas on how to use them too. I've been looking at quite a few blogs for school libraries. Some of them are blogs that I read regularly. I love all the ideas I'm getting from them and some day I hope to be involved more directly with a school library blog of my own. I happened to find the library blog for the high school that my son attends. I liked feeling connected with the happenings there.

Our family's digital footprints and more...

This week I spent quite a bit of time going over internet safety. I liked Doug Johnson's article,“Staying Safe on the Read-Write Web” in particular. It just makes so much sense to me. The points he makes were driven further home when I talked to a couple of SLMS last week. They are frustrated by internet filters that filter out web 2.0 tools that could lead to perfectly legitimate teaching sites...all because of scared and misinformed adults. Can the damage that CIPA has brought be reversed? I agree with Doug that the opportunity to teach students how to use these tools responsibly has been largely lost now.

I spent time googling the name of each person in our family. I've done that in the past, but not in a while. I'm happy to say, that we all have clean digital footprints. I was surprised to find my husband's name on the blog of an entire stranger. No,...it wasn't creepy! It was because my husband played the piano in the background of a couple of recordings that a friend of his, a local Christian musician and song writer had made during the 1980's. Eventually he published his collection of music. The blogger writes reviews of Christian music (well known artists...and not so well known artists). He wrote down all the names of the musicians involved when he reviewed the collection that my husband's friend had created. The good news is that he liked the music!

I was also shocked to find there were 100's of hits for the name of my 10 year old daughter! Does she live a double life? Does she look like an innocent little girl? You decide. I thought she was just playing with her American Girl dolls in the other room! Who knew? Actually, almost all of the hits were for some woman of the same name who must live in a Hispanic country since everything was written in Spanish. This was no problem at all thanks to my new and improved google searching tools. I was able to eliminate all but one hit...which brought me down to 3 hits for my little girl. What was mentioned? She won a "character counts" banner design contest a few years ago in her school district and she competed in a local 5k race.

I also ought to state that I took the time during this exercise to explain what I was doing to my children and why. This naturally brought up the topic of how we must be careful about what we put on the web. I gave them examples of the mistakes of others. I think it was a good discussion.

I've been brainstorming with the girls in my collaboration group, creating a list of things that a good library web site must include. I think we are off to a good start. I like working in groups. There is strength in numbers. What I didn't think of, they did. Also, as a result of trying out Google Docs, I can see many possibilities for its use in education.

I also started the iSafe curriculum.

Browsing the Catalogs...and Searching

I've been reading the articles about searching. I liked the 6 strategies suggested in "Web 2.0 Strategies for Searching," by Pam Berger. I tried some of the search engines mentioned in some of the article. Not all of them worked, but I liked clusty.com in particular. I've been trying to do searches on some of the databases that I know schools typically have. I'm kind of concerned that I might not be a good searcher and I'm supposed to be the expert! It is all new to me and I'm determined not to end up being the librarian who doesn't know how to search efficiently! It was a nice relief to find the 21st Century Information Fluency site. I may have to spend quite a bit of time on that.

I checked out Google Squared and was completely amazed. I created a square for constellations. My son has been interested in them lately. I can't wait to show it to him. Too bad we don't have a telescope or live out in the country where we can really see the stars!

I really must say that I enjoyed all of the readings this week. They were all very practical and informative. The copyright reading in Simpson was helpful too. This is a book I plan on keeping.

I liked looking at the different catalogs available. I would have to say ease of use and visual appeal is important. I love catalog systems that show covers of books. I like features that include suggestion lists such as new books, teacher favorites/suggestions, certain genres, black history month books, etc. Kids being able to write reviews, make a wish list, browse a shelf of books or see suggested books that are similar to others they like are a plus. Search features should include suggestions for misspellings, and advanced search capabilities. It is also important to have ease of use behind the scenes for uploading books into the system and being able to add your own keywords or tags to a book's marc records.

I had fun this week. I actually visited 3 school libraries, which I found most informative. I also visited 1 public library for another class. I figured out that in the past week, I have been in 7 different libraries. This coming week is winter break for the schools around here...so no visits to school libraries for a while.

Learning by Piano Concierto

I thought that the information in this week's readings were just fascinating. I particularly enjoyed learning more about creative commons. Of course I had heard about CC, and even have borrowed pictures from CC. The information behind the creation of CC was just so informative and quite inspiring! As I write this, I am listening to some great piano instrumental by Kendra Springer that I found over at CC. I encourage you to listen to it as well.

I'm really glad that I took the time to watch the presentation by Laurence Lessing about copyright that he gave. It took about an hour, but was well worth it! I think it is a total tragedy about the documentaries in America! This is a HUGE piece of our history, people!

Going through the webquest was quite informative. I think I could go over it a hundred times and still find something new each time. I am determined to get to know this stuff. Right now, I can read it and learn it...but the real test of knowing it is being able to speak the language and teach it to others. That reminds me of when I first went to library school in the summer of 2008. I was taking 505 and 506. I didn't know the basics of the language. I had to go interview a librarian. I ended up talking with the SLMS in a local elementary school. She mentioned her "OPAC," and I didn't even know what that meant. I've come a long way already so I'm confident that I will go even farther.

I really thought that the TILT exercise on the webquest was great. I already knew most of it already...but I think it is a great tool to point people to in order to help them become information literate. I think I need to design one of these tutorials for my students some day once I get a library job.

Also...I am a fan of graphic novels. Somehow learning about something in this format is not quite as intimidating as reading it textbook style. I just loved Bound by law, about public domain. I admit that it really helped me read with more interest. I didn't get to read the whole thing yet, but I plan on doing that.

Learning and enjoying it. Until next week!

(Photo by Gotham Guy, Creative Commons)