Thing 2 - Image Generators

So many cool tools! I love Wordle! Above is a Wordle I created for my library. This is a great tool and one many of my teachers have used. There are so many possibilities for Wordle...students can create one to describe themselves, a character in a book, or even a science experiment. I have seen students create them to describe a biographical subject too. I love how these are so easy to create and you can choose layout, font, and color.

In regards to the other tools in Thing 2:

WordSift: Didn't like it as well as Wordle. It has a different focus, but similar. I do think this would be a great tool to help students identify main idea of an article or text students were reading. I like the feature of showing the word web and pictures from websites, however, this can produce some images you may not find appropriate for younger students.

Glogster: Love this!!! This is one of my new favorite tools! I played with this quite a bit and am excited to introduce this to teachers for projects!!

Voki: Very neat tool! I attempted to make a Voki, but had some technical difficulties. I do like the option of being able to put in your own voice! Students would love to hear your voice and create their own!

Bookr:

I created the book below on Bookr. This is a really cool tool, but I did not find it easy to use. You have to get pictures through Flickr Creative Commons and I found it difficult to get the right picture on the right page. It could be more difficult using a touch pad vs. a mouse. I think students would like this as an option.

11.5 Things - One More Time: Thing 1

Time to jump into 11.5 Things again!! I watched the video of the The Networked Student again and was once more struck by the creators' idea of 21st Century Learning. The video is stressing the idea of "Connectivism" - that learning occurs as part of a social network of many different connections and ties - interesting. I agree that learning can occur in this setting, but it is not the only setting where learning occurs.

One of the key elements of success in this model is for the student to take control of his/her learning. I like the idea! I love it when I have a student that is on fire to learn something new. The challenge for the teacher/librarian is to keep students motivated. The student compiles all of his/her learning materials through web sites, online articles, blogs, podcasts, and video conferencing. The student then creates his/her own representation of the knowledge acquired - blog, wiki, podcast.

The teacher's role is tremendous! The video refers to the teacher as a "learning architect" - great description! The teacher has to guide the students in building their learning network. This will include modeling how to find good information as well as how to check on the reliability of the information found. In addition to the the teacher also needs to show students how to organize information and present ideas for them to share their knowledge.

One comment made in the video that I feel is key is - Information management is and will continue to be our biggest challenge in the 21st century. I couldn't agree more! Students are bombarded with information - much of which is incorrect. Learning to evaluate and organize information is a skill that our students will desperately need for success in the 21st Century.

The librarian will definitely play the role of the teacher. Librarians are already "learning architects" and have been for many years!

The Journey Continues...11.5 - Thing 1

I enjoy this simple style of video that is found in Common Craft videos. Love that the author of this video gives credit to Lee LeFever of Common Craft and mentions that he asked for permission to use this simple design idea.

The video is gives a great view of the “ideal” Networked Student. The idea that students become more responsible for their own learning and use 2.0 technology tools to reach their learning goals while being guided by their teacher is very exciting. How will it work in the real world? That remains to be seen…

The Student: As I mentioned earlier – this student is “ideal”! Who wouldn’t love a student like this?! The roles and responsibilities of the student in this learning model are very great indeed. The student basically is taking responsibility for their learning all the way from developing a knowledge base, to creating wikis or websites about what they have learned. The video mentioned several roles of the student:

1. The student takes control of his own learning.
2. The student creates a personal learning network.
3. The student must be self-motivated to seek out sources of learning and information.
4. The student must be critical of information in order to sift out the accurate information from the inaccurate.
5. The student must learn how to organize this information in order to create new knowledge from what he has read and discovered.

Wow! This is a lot to ask of students – especially from a society of kids who have not been taught to do this and who like instant gratification. I don’t know many adults who would be successful in this type of learning environment.

The Teacher: I love the descriptions this video gives to the teacher: learning architect, change agent, learning concierge, modeler, connected learning incubator! These are great and require teachers to think differently about their role. I think the role of teacher in “Connectivism” is tremendous! Keeping students on track for one thing, would be a great undertaking.

The Librarian: Can the librarian play this role – absolutely! I think we are already taking steps in this direction by helping students learn how to locate and analyze information and by helping teachers learn how to facilitate projects that focus on “Connectivism”.

Playing with Technology #4

Last exploration today was images. I love using the image generators that we learned in Library2Play. This was created in Big Huge Labs - so much fun! The picture came from SuperFantastic on Flickr Creative Commons. Love the dog!

Playing with Technology #3

This exploration was focused on video. We could either use TeacherTube or Discovery Education. I chose Discovery Education because TeacherTube was taking a long time to load. However, when I uploaded my video into Windows Movie Maker, I had trouble with the audio. The audio would play fine until I placed it on the Storyboard and then the audio played much faster making it sound like chipmunk talk! I tried several things to see if I could change that, but haven't discovered a fix as of yet. If anyone knows how to fix this, please let me know! Until then, enjoy the chipmunk talk!

Again, this only took minutes to load from home and it would NOT load at work. Maybe there were too many of us clogging our super highway at work!

Playing with Technolog #2

Our second exploration today was Photostory. This is a program I was already comfortable using. However today I explored images from Discovery Education, one of our online databases provided by our district. There are some great images here! I attempted to load this during our meeting today, but it would never load. I left it loading for over 2 hours and never got it to load. I am now trying it from home! I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will work!

Yea! It worked. It finished loading in less than a minute. Wonder what the problem was today?

Playing with Technology #1

I have been wondering what direction to move with my blog. I have composed many post in my head (mostly in the car). Today I was given direction. In one of our library staff development meetings we reviewed and focused on some different technology skills so that we can better help our students and teachers with these on campus.

The first was audio:

Here we worked in Audacity and downloaded free music from Incompetech. This was a new sight for me. I definitely want to spend more time exploring this site. I also learned that you cannot post an audio file on your blog. I would have to post it on a wiki and then link my blog to it. Instead, I have chosen to use Photostory, add a few pics and import my music. Here it is if I can get it to load. (Getting things to load today took a long time!