#22 Week 9 ebooks

It's been a few years since I have looked online for free audio books. The quality wasn't very good and never looked again. I can see that things have changed!

I first looked LibriVox. It took me a while to figure out how to search when I didn't know what title to look for. I ended up finding some African Folk Tales. The quality is good, especially considering that this whole project is done by volunteers! I thought that would be fun to share with teachers if they want an easy free access to content related stories. The whole series of the Wizard of Oz is there too...

Now - the Internet Archive is way cool. There is a collection of old classic cartoons, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, Superman -- yes check it out!


The World ebook Fair also has hundreds of thousands of books. The childrens book collection has over 1800 like In Search of the Castaways, Hound of the Baskervilles and much more

#21 Week 9 Podcasts

I added a podcast subscription from the National Middle School association which is a necessary connection for middle school teachers, so I thought I'd see what these podcasts are like. I listened to part of one on adolescent development and it was ok, but not too exciting... The teacher tube videos are definitely more interesting to watch.

I used the Podcast Alley site to search for the podcast. They have a list of genres to choose from, and it's a good thing because all of the sites listed in top 5 or recently viewed were pretty close to porn....

The Education Podcast Network is a site sponsored by David Warlick and offers some student produced podcasts as well as professional development and teacher work. This site is nicely organized and will use this to find podcasts to demo to teachers and students.

The \ site is nice because it includes handouts with the podcasts on things like differentiation, or reading fluency...

The techSavvy Girlz site sounds interesting but their stuff requires iTunes and i don't want to put that on my computer- so I guess I don't get to hear/see that. Not so techSavvy to have content limited to iTunes-- if you ask me.

#20 Week 9 the tubes

wow- another wow! ok I add making a teacher tube video on my list for this year. On what I have no idea. To make even a 3 minute video I think a digital video camera would be good. Though most of these videos are not 'video' they are stills put together as a video... so the camera should not be the limiting factor!

Some of the teacher tube videos are really just typical dry lectures on video, but I suppose if I were absent and needed to see what happened in class that would work. Sort of like the times when we had to put a video in the back of the room to record our teaching and reflect on that. Not a bad thing to do still!

I went from the web 2.o video to this one: "A Vision of Students Today"
Reflects upper education, but still a lot to consider for k-12. Sort of the same idea as the did you know type, but with a bit of a different presentation.

#19.1 Week 8 - Digital Pipeline

I created an alert for SLJ because I took it off my subscription list.... we'll see if I actually use it in electronic format.

Took me a few tries to find a pamphlet. Aids/HIV was successful and results also had a pamphlet on steroids.

I had a harder time finding a movie... I even looked in the help menu and the search screen they show with an option for videos isn't in the health database. I did find images and diagrams galore.

I like the thumbnails of the images and links at the left column to help modify your search.

I used the small engine database this summer and got a manual for my lawn mower engine so I could change the pull cord. This job is not as easy as it sounds! I needed a new spring and brought my printed diagrams into the shop so they could find the spring. It all worked in the end.

As far as using with students and teachers I will try again to get the one health teacher in there.. It is good stuff!

Getting teachers to utilize the online databases,specifically journals, can be quite a challenge. Part of the difficulty is that journal articles don't display information like web pages and all involved get frustrated trying to find "facts." So you have to find a reason to use the type of content in a journal article.

One way to expose students to the databases is after a unit of study when students have some understanding of the topic. Students can generate questions as they study the unit then research their questions; or I steer teachers to journals when considering these questions hoping to deepen students understanding an make connections to real life:
--What is currently happening in the field of study? (chemistry, geology, environment...)
--What are experts in this field studying/doing?
--How is this issue/topic impacting society today?

Blog thoughts

You know, one thing this class is accomplishing is getting us to just use the blog... I'm finding that while I've had blogs for years, I have never used it this much. As I go through the posts I'm thinking ok... I'll know where this info is and won't have to hunt... I can go back and read my own posts and think.. gee I wrote that!

We are forming the habit, and for some it will be the push needed to make this a long-lasting practice. If that happens I think we've accomplished a lot more than learning about all the web 2.o tools.

#19 Week 8 ---Thingology (LibraryThing's ideas blog): LibraryThing at ALA—with reviews in your catalog!

Thingology (LibraryThing's ideas blog): LibraryThing at ALA—with reviews in your catalog!

I'm really looking for different ways to have students post book reviews..... so what can library thing do?

Here's what I found.... As you can see I've added the 5/6 and 7/8 battle books and created a book cover widget for each. The tool for doing this is very easy and intuitive. I like the ability to see what it will look like before you commit to the java script. (though this seems to be a common feature on script generators).

It all was really cool till I clicked on a book cover and it took me to amazon. I thought it would take me to LIbraryThing. I was hoping to use this to get kids to go to library thing and add book reviews. So I don't know....

My other idea for this widget was to put one on the school home page of books that teachers and/or students are reading now-- or maybe the most popular books of the month... (will have to figure out how to get that data from our system!)

Anyway, I'll keep playing with this and if anyone has any ideas on this- chime in!

#18 Week 8 web 2.0 connections

This is my Zoho Doc that I posted directly to the blog. The zoho editor has lots of formating tools including special math symbols. Easy to jump right in! There are quite a few collaborative tools on zoho, though some of the require money... Like the database application. There are many times we use Excel when we should really be using a database, but we either don't have access to one or they are too much work to set up. This looks pretty easy (like the old appleworks database) and you can also create web forms and integrate into web page... might be worth the $25 if you had a need for a database!

Blog responses by Robin Turk

1. library livin’ Week 4 - #9

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5320793857891507038&postID=1264451810103566433

2. Sonic Shade Week 9 - #20https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7500539252511721651&postID=8913490489812165777&page=1

3. Book 2.0 – chapter 5 Professional Development

http://book2library2.blogspot.com/2008/07/chapter-5-professional-development.html

4. Janet’s Raven 2.0 - No Week—on Library Blogs

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7552621841919542937&postID=5016056705828158665&page=1

5. Aunt Book – Week 6 # 15 https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5186509637097213927&postID=7036547893740821174&page=1

Curriculum Connections

Motivational Posters
There are many uses for these motivational posters found on several of the image generator sites, such as BigHugeLabs or Imagegenerator.org. Our sixth grade teachers are always trying to come up with new projects for the beginning of the year to help socialize kids. We also explore ways for students to identify themselves with character traits. I see students making posters with images of themselves illustrating a character trait, or just with that trait as the text. Comic pictures would be great too. Giving students a choice of several of these tools would be the best approach! RobinT July 08

Group work notes and sharing: not a new idea- I learned from David Loertcher at th e AASL 2007 conference. The trick is to have at least one computer per group. Set up a page for the project with directions etc and insert a table for each group. Label each cell and link to a new page. Then each group has their own page to record notes and it is easy to share. Suddenly being the note taker takes on a new meaning! Robin T July 2008