I'm now a graduate!

I just logged on to see who else finished their 23 Things and I found my blog listed under "Congratulations Graduates!" Wow! What a thrill! There were times I didn't think I would make it and now I am a 23 Things Graduate! It will be sweet dreams tonight! Thanks VMB for updating me on Library2Play!

Thing #23 - The End

Wow! What a journey! I can't believe I have made it to the end! This has been an incredible learning experience and I am grateful to our Kickball Captains for putting this together for us to explore, learn, stretch, and grow. Here is a summation of my thoughts about this journey...

What were your favorite discoveries along the way?
Blogging, comic strip generator, Google Reader, igoogle, Library Thing, podcasting, & vidcasting, just to name a few!

How has this program assisted or affected your life-long learning goals?
I love learning new things and this program has given me the opportunity to learn many new things! Most importantly, I have learned that I still have a lot to learn! It was also great fun reading the blogs of others and seeing what interesting things they found along the way.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes that surprised you?
Take aways were many! For one thing, I have thought about starting a blog for awhile, but have never really taken the time to set one up and learn about it. This program has forced me to do that and I really have enjoyed keeping my blog. I have been thinking about the direction I would like to see my blog move in now that the 23 Things are done. Another surprise to me was how many people are spending a lot of time online and what great things they have created for us to "play" with! (i.e. Flickr, Library Thing, Trading Card Maker, etc.)

What could we do differently to improve upon this program's format or concept?
Overall this has been a fabulous experience! However some of our "things" were quite time consuming. Maybe we could have fewer "things", or for the "things" that are heavy in activity, like the whole Google section, that could be divided up into smaller steps. Also, having talked to several players that were less familiar with technology, I think there needs to be either more specific instructions for a few of the things, or one or two face to face meetings after school.

If we offered another discovery program like this would you choose to play?
Of course, I am a glutton for punishment!

How would you describe your learning experience in one word or one sentence?
Amazing, mind-boggling, fantastic, appropriate,...yes I know it is more than one word! I just couldn't stop myself!

Thing #22 - Nings

This was something new to me - Nings! These are an interesting way to explore social networking through web 2.0. For safety and security reasons I have never been comfortable with sites like MySpace or FaceBook so, I appreciate the idea of creating your own social network and one ning I tried to visit was limited to invitation only, allowing for more security for those in the ning. Honestly, I can't see myself joining a ning. However, I did enjoy looking at several. One of the features that I liked are the specialization of nings. You can choose to join a specific group for a specific reason (i.e. librarians, knitters, etc.) On the TeacherLibrarian Ning, I like the videos and looking at the different groups. The Texas School Librarian one was very similar(photos, forums, videos), but not as many members or groups.

I did visit Nings.com and searched through some others. I found a good one for knitters with a link to a knitting website I had visited before. I also just browsed through some others. One thing I can see is that there is an enormous amount of people online!

I tend to agree with Ms. Frazzled on this one...I may have to create a second life to be able to keep up with all of these new 2.0 tools!

Wait...what is that I see? Is it the light at the end of the tunnel??!! I think I may have made it!!! On to Thing #23!

Thing #21 - Podcasts

Whew! This one took some work! Unfortunately, I don't even know if you will be able to hear it! After much trial and error, I don't think the sound recording is working quite right on my computer - probably user error! With the headphones on, I can hear it clear as a bell. Without the headphones I have to turn up my volume all the way to hear it just a little bit. Hummm... it is a problem!

I really love podcasting and vidcasting. For Thing 21 I decided to create a book review using Photo Story. I have long admired one done by a fellow librarian! Now I have a new respect for this! It has taken me all day to do this! Well, in between all of the other demands on my time! First I had to find images, then write out my script, and of course I went back and rerecorded multiple times! When I had to choose music it almost sent me over the edge! I am pleased with my finished product (if the audio portion will work!) However, I don't know how many of these I will be doing, but I will definitely teach some kids how to do this!

I have been working with a second grade teacher at my school on podcasting for the past month. We have had great fun teaching the second graders how to podcast on Audacity. Check out their book reviews!

Here is the Photo Story on Belle Teal by Ann M. Martin

Thing #20 - You Tube & Teacher Tube

I had never really explored You Tube or Teacher Tube prior to Thing #20. My nephews however are proficient on You Tube! They love the Harry Potter puppet videos among other funny videos. Well after spending a couple of hours on these two sites, I now understand the allure! I started off my search for educational things like "libraries" and "Web 2.0", but before I knew it, I was watching video clips on Pride and Prejudice and other movies! I know I have said this before, but I am blown away by the sheer volume of content on these two sites! Amazing!

I will agree that much of what is on You Tube is not appropriate for elementary school students, but there are some good quality videos there and I appreciate the information on Zamzar as to how to save them into a different file format for use at school. Having said that, the video I chose to embed has little educational value, but great sentimental value! Cookie Monster at the Library!



Teacher Tube was definitely more educational in value! I do wish there was a way to search for videos by age (i.e. elementary, middle school, high school, professional). There may be a way, but I didn't find it. I did finally search the groups for elementary videos and found this one called "Science Detective". There is no audio on this video, but I think students would really like it and I thought this is a good idea for something students could create themselves. A good idea for our PGP kids!



Now that I have crossed the divide into You Tube and Teacher Tube, there is no going back! I will just have to make sure I spend as much time looking for educational videos as I do on other videos, such as the plethora of videos on Pride and Prejudice!

Thing #19 - Web 2.0

Once again I am amazed and a bit overwhelmed at the number of 2.0 sites out there - and these are just the award winners! Many of the sites we have explored in our 23 Things were on the Award Winner list! Some others that I found interesting were:

1. Biblio.com - a website that lets you search for used, rare, & out-of-print books and purchase them from independent booksellers through their website. I looked up some of my favorite children's books that are out of print and found out where I could buy them!

2. Pandora - this one was just for me! This is a music website that sets up your own personal "radio" station. You put in a song or artist that you like and then Pandora creates a play list/radio station just for you with similar songs. Of course you can also buy the songs you like!

3. Listdump - If you love lists - this is a great one to check out! Basically you can go on and create a list or add to others' lists. There were list on best mountain ranges, best food websites, top ten tips for salary negotiations, etc. You can create your own list and have others add to it or rank the items in your list. I was thinking that this would be a good idea to use with students since creating lists is a writing genre. However, as I explored the site further I found some lists that were clearly adult in nature. So this site should not be used with students, but you could use the idea of creating lists with your students. Students could come up with a list title and then have their peers add to their list.

4. One Sentence - This is another great idea: write a true story in one sentence. You can add tags to your sentence and then others can rate it. Again I thought this would be another great idea to use with students, but once more I found some clearly adult sentences. So...the best thing to do would be to pull off some of the better one story sentences and use them as examples for your students and then let them write their own.

5. Fuzzmail - Again another fun one. I first saw this one on Happy Harping's blog. I tried it out myself and it is fun! You type in an email message and send it. When the message opens it types out the message you typed exactly as you typed it - same speed and including typos! It is fun. This would be a fun thing for students to use to be able to see how fast they are typing!

All in all - a fun place to play!

Thing #18 - Online Productivity Tools

I checked out Google Docs and was pretty impressed. What I like most is the ability to share the documents with multiple people and the changes are maintained in real time. I can see using this especially in situations where you are collaborating with other people. This would be a great tool for group presentations in either high school or college courses.

Advantages of online tools:

1. Free
2. Supports multiple platforms - you can upload & export in various file formats.
3. You can save the files online (at least with Google Docs).
4. Access anywhere there is a Internet connection.
5. Can share and collaborate with multiple people. Changes are maintained in real time.

Disadvantages:

1. Learn a new "software."
2. Doesn't have all of the bells and whistles as MS Office products.
3. Need to be familiar with various file formats to know how to export documents based on who you are sending them to.

I think that online productivity tools will continue to add more features to allow for easier use for users. I did notice that currently Google Docs is not compatible with MS Office 2007 which saves documents in a new file format (.docx).

Personally, I like the MS Office products, but if I were buying a new computer and had to purchase the Office suite (currently priced at about $330.00) I would definitely consider using Google Docs or another online productivity tool.