Tool 3

I looked at several of the video hosting sites. You Tube, being the most popular and the one I have used most often, was the easiest one to navigate successfully. I also have use Teacher Tube and School Tube, both have some good educational videos, but they are more limited in their selection. I also looked at Blinkx, which I found to be the least user friendly - at least for my area of need. Blinkx looks to be more focused on news related current events. I was not familiar with View Pure. I am glad to have learned about it. There have been times when I have shown a You Tube clip to students and have been uncomfortable with the side ads and other videos on the screen. Here is a link to a You Tube video using View Pure:

http://viewpure.com/pkIJDXCiZsk

I found two videos on Book trailers; both are posted below. Book trailers are a fairly new genre. They are similar to movie trailers, but are centered on books. Many publishers are now creating book trailers to promote their new titles. I have used book trailers with my 4th and 5th graders many times. Our 5th graders even made their own. It was a great experience for them.

I am familiar with the Fair Use Guidelines. The video clip was a good general explanation of Fair Use - especially when it comes to transforming a work and repurposeing a work. As long as something is being transformed and repurposed and it is for an educational purpose, then students have a fairly wide berth of freedom when it comes to copyright. I do feel though, that it is important for students to give credit for photos and other pieces of media when they are not transforming them, but just using them as is in their work.

I also enjoyed exploring Picasa Web Album. While I have used Flickr Creative Commons many times, I have not used Picasa Web Album. I was pleased to see how easy it was to search for pictures and the number of returns. This will be something that I will use with students this year.

One thing that was mentioned in Tool 3 that I was unfamiliar with was the SBISD Media Server. This is something I have never heard of and would like to learn more about.

Here are the two videos I found on Teacher Tube and School Tube:

Tool 2

I have really enjoyed reading the blogs from other teachers on my campus. It is great to share in learning! Different people find different things as they look at other websites. I have learned so much just from reading their blogs.

I already have a Google Reader account. I set it up several years ago when I first did 23 Things with the SBISD Librarians. I have used it quite a bit. I have several other librarian blogs that I follow as well as blogs on children's literature reviews. I also set up a Diigo account and plan to use it to add websites for students to use in the library. I have used Delicious in the past and prior to that the site IKeepBookmarks. All of these are similar bookmarking websites that allow you to add and or access your favorite websites from any computer.

As far as building a PLN, I do have a few blogs that I follow and I have recently signed up for a Twitter account and have learned about following specific educational hash tags. While I do learn things from the blogs that I follow and specific websites that I visit, I also feel like my main PLN is my fellow colleagues right here in SBISD. I am constantly learning things from teachers on my campus as well as my fellow librarians. I can email my fellow librarians with questions and have answers before the day is over. They are a great network!