Thing #23

Finally!! I am here at the 23rd thing. I never thought I would make it. To be honest, I never would have without the help of VB. My favorite bits were all the image stuff and projects dealing with images. I was happy to finally learn how to do narration in Photostory. Learning how to calibrate the internal mic made a huge difference. I think Photostory has some amazing possibilities for students. Powerpoint is dead, Photostory lives to replace it. This will be huge for me. I also like igoogle. It was fun to customize this page for my own needs and likes. I will keep using it all year. This program hasn't really changed my lifelong learning patterns or goals. I am always up for learning something new IF I have adequate time to devote to it, and am not pressured by deadlines, I don't like being pressured. Most of it was unexpected because I did not know much of the information. As far as doing something differently, I think it would have helped me to have more actual face to face time with an instructor that knew what they were doing. We had 2 meetings that were helpful, but I could have used more. That might also have helped my frustration level. Also, MORE TIME! I had alot of other things going on, so it was not easy to squeeze this in. Especially since each thing took hours and hours of online time.
I'm not sure if I would participate in a similiar program. It would depend on the parameters. I need a teacher, and more time to finish. To describe my learning experience in one sentence:
It was an amazing, fun, informative, stressful, angst-producing experience, I'm glad it's over.

Thing #22

I went to Texas School Librarians. This site was rich with diverse resources for teachers and librarians. There were videos and photos, chats and blogs. I think it would be a great tool for someone just starting out. They could get a great deal of support from this site. And many different ideas for projects and things to do with students. I think it would also be a great site for someonw who has been around for a while and needs some new, fresh ideas.

Thing #20

I looked at videos in utube and teachertube. Why is it everyone else can find really amazing videos, but the ones I find are just wretched? Did not see any instructions telling how to download a video. Am struggling with this one.




So, here is my video from teacher tube. VB helped me again, I could not have done it without her. Thanks VB.

Thing #21

I created a photostory with music. In audacity I recorded my narration. But I cannot figure out how to get my narration into the photostory or how to link it all on my blog. Thank goodnes for VB. She helped with setting up the mic on my laptop, and I was able to record my narration in Photostory. Yea!! thank you VB, I could not have done it without you! You ROCK!!

Thing #19

I decided to play with picnik which is a free photo editing software. Seems to be a poor man's Photoshop. You can do many of the same things you can with Photoshop such as: auto-fix, rotate, crop, resize, colors, sharpen, red eye and more. It is not as powerful as photoshop, but not as expensive also. I liked this and thought it was fun, but it kept asking me if I wanted to upgrade to picnik premium for a new low, low price. Students could use this in conjuction with powerpoint or photostory to edit and manipulate photos they have taken themselves or gotten off the web.

Thing #18

I explored google docs. At first I thought I would like it, but thenI started having difficulties with the program. When I tried to edit and change font size it did not change all the type. I went in several times, highlighted specific type, but still could not get it to change the size. But it changed the size of other parts of the text. Very wierd. Also, my choices of font and other design aspects were totally limited. I hate that. I like to have many choices when it comes to designing a page. That seems to be common thread with all this online stuff, the design choices are very limited.

I prefer the choices I get with Microsoft Office. I did like the fact that I could edit a page anywhere in time and space, convenient. Also that I could share. I could have collaborators that had edit rights. Or just viewers with no edit rights. It's kind of like a wiki. I think I prefer Microsoft Word; more freedom and more choices.

Thing #17

I watched the video of Rollyo. It was good, but I got a little confused toward the end. Too much information. I registered on Rollyo and created a jewelry searchroll. This all went pretty well. But then I had trouble with attaching a link. Then I couldn't get my websites to show up. Guess I need to view the video again.I'll keep trying.

Thing #16

Ok, this was fun and easy. Thank goodness it was easy. I just LOVE the commoncraft guys. They explain things in simple terms with simple graphics. I like the wiki and think it would be a fun thing for students to explore in school.

Thing #15

I read Michael Stephens' article "Into a new World of Librarianship". I especially liked what he said about the library being "human". How it needs to be a "...socially and emotionally engaging place for learning and experience". I agree with this statement 100 percent. The library needs to be an emotionally engaging place, this means, magazines, books, computers, ipods, music, etc. Students should be allowed to "plug in" in the library to whatever technology they prefer. They should have access to many sites that are being blocked by many school districts. I do think that Mr. Stephens is living in a fantasy world when it comes to librarians designing and providing state of the art equipment. This takes MONEY!! Funds are short, budgets are cut every year. How are we supposed to keep up with technology that changes daily when we don't even have enough money in the budget to upgrade from VHS to DVD? I like what he has to say, but I do not think he is grounded in the reality of limited resources for schools.

Thing #14

Went to the Technorati site to search by tags. Could not find tags, so searched by the buttons on the top of the page. This was ok. I did like the organization of "top" this and "top" that. There is quite a bit of advertising on this site. Could T Moblie get any more ads on this site? I don't think so. Blogger Central was probably my favorite place to go. Lots to see here.

Thing #13

First I have to say I love the commoncraft videos. They make things so simple and easy. It is a bit frustrating cause the first time I watch it , it is constantly buffering, so it takes 10 times as long for the video to finish. After it goes through it's buffering woes I can watch it a second time without any problems. I started to get a little excited about this social bookmarking thing. Think it would be a great tool for teachers. I went to delicious.com and signed up for an account. However when it was time to add the two very important links to my browser I was unsuccessful. So I tried to go back and find a way to add the 2 very important buttons, but I could not figure out a way to do this, short of deleteing the account and starting over. And people wonder why I get frustrated with the internet.

Thing #12

In considering what 2 points are important when trying to invite comments to blog, i choose:
1. Interact with the comments left and 2. Be gracious and humble. If people leave comments and get a response I think they will be more likely to interact more often because they know someone is out there listening or reading and responding to what they have to say. Nobody likes a know it all. And Nobody knows it all. So being gracious and humble are paramount in inviting people to interact with you. After all, good manners are worth a million $$. I went to two different gardening posts. There is so much I do NOT know about gardening that I could search for an eternity. Found some good info on organic gardening and hanging baskets.

Thing #11

I created an account in Library Thing. This was amazingly simple. I added 5 books to my library.
I think this would be an outstanding tool for students to use to review books and discover new titles and authors. You could form a book club and make Library Thing a part of your book club meeting.

Thing #10

I really like playing with all the image generators. When we made our avatars, that was an image generator that was fun. Creating a different persona of yourself is intriguing, I think the students would enjoy it. They could even create avatars of each other. I went to the comic strip generator. I was assaulted with images of the Simpsons. Is that seriously the only comic that teens are wild about? I guess I just don't get it. Luckily I was able to search for anime images and found a great many anime cartoons that I think teens would like. I have posted two of the images I played with.

Thing #9

Still haven't encountered a lot of feeds that I am wild about. This could take weeks or months, and I am working against a deadline. I really liked topix.net for the news. It was well organized and easy to follow, didn't have to waste alot of precious time stumbling about. Of course the top news story was about a teacher having sex with students. Seems those headlines always generate interest.
I did not like Syndic8.com. Found it hard to follow. Had to wait too long to get into different areas.
I did like the categories, but it took too much time to wade through it all.