THING #23

I finished tonight--on time-- and am partly wistful and mostly glad because school starts quite soon and I want to keep my excitement and understanding. My cred is going to be a lot tighter and my ability to suggest really interesting quadrant D projects has zoomed up. And I am grateful that another district would share so willingly with me. Thank you. And I am astonished how many works of creative strength and originality are just out there for the taking.

This might be the best CPE I ever took!

THING # 22

Just when I was wishing for a community of Texas high school librarians to schmooze with and share ideas and ask for help, up jumps two nings. I really liked the 7th comment of "Seven Things etc." Meeting people where they are is the whole "ning thing", right? I wonder if I can get all the BISD secondary librarians to join the ones I'm in? Pretty fun stuff.

THING#20

OK, now I'm in trouble because I don't have any of the equipment to make either of these. I don't have them at school or at home. But maybe I can get them. Because it would be great to do a TAYSHAS Photostory or to make funny ones about how to be...like how to be cool in high school, how to be in the li-brar-eee. So, I am not truly completing this one thing, but in my heart, I am. Does that count?

THING #20

This is just to go along with my funny embedded video. Also, the creator did a good job of giving credit to the sources he used.

Welcome Back To School

THING # 19

This is addicitive! After much clicking and pondering, I conclude the best library applications for thing #19 are the photos & images and the search links. It's all fun. I think our filter would block a lot of it at school. I would consider topic by topic match-ups, for example when the kids come in to do career research there's a top voting group of sites to share.

THING#18

Working fast to get done before Edouard hits, so this is a copy of my post on thing #18, but I'm adding that I think Google Docs has wonderful potential for group work especially. "What good ideas, and I especially like sharing without external drives. Sort of wiki-ish, isn't it?I also really like the teacher/student templates in Google Docs."

THING#17

I made a nifty little searchroll for African Tribes, aresearch topic for our 9th graders. I plan to share this application with my faculty members who like to put webpage links on their teacher pages. I didn't have a lot of luck incorporating other searchrolls because none came up when I searched. Or they were not what I wanted. Still, very interesting.

THING #16

Wikis rock! I can see making a wiki the centerplanning tool for group projects at school, for team collaboration for librarian meetings, a wiki per dpeartment or teaching team for shared events, even for planning those all important birthday and potluck lunches. I do have a concern about vandalism, I didn't see it addressed. Did I just miss it or will someone kindly post a fix? Thanks.

THING #15

I read all these articles and went on a few "field trips" as well. I actually think the one about advocacy ( http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/advocacy.htm ) was most inspiring. It came after the one by Dr. Schultz.

At TLC, I attended a session on future of libraries and don't really see public schools in the mix for sharing metadata etc. But it would be fascinating to see what would happen. I'd love to see what kind of tags our students would put on books.

THING #14

Here are two quick and random things I noticed about Technorati when doing the "School Library Learning 2.0" searches: something big happened on July 18 according to the bar graph ; the ads on each page change. I added a cloud widget to my blog. I have realized most users are much more techie than I. This one I'll have to ponder, but know it will come in handy somewhere along the line this year.

How do you know your blog was claimed properly? I signed-up using my regular email--should I have used the blog one?

Are any of the current players high school librarians? I'd like to make contact, don't have time to read all 60 blog profiles.

Thing #13

I like these. I can really see getting students to create social networking pages for research projects, especially group projects. And I really like that Furl saves the webpages.

The light finally dawns....

Thing # 11 Library Thing I was misguided by the word "catalog". I finally figured out it's not MARC. It's really a very cool annotated list service with comments. I joined two groups and am working to get the RSS to my page. I think my book club will love this!

Thing #12

This has been, by far, the most time consuming and exhausting part of 23 things. It's so much more intense to be involved with people instead of images. I tried to find other high school librarians, went on lots of "field trips" and gave up using Google Blogs to find ones I'd want to explore. I ended up posting on articles suggested by other participants and really pondering where to go besides people playing. Then I remembered "Unshelved" and that authors often have blogs. So, here's to Alice Hoffman and her remarks on The Third Angel.

I noticed, with pleasure, that blogging comments are usually written in excellent form, thoughtful and not at all like texting or IM. Did you find that as well, or have I just scratched the surface?

Thing #10--LibrarySpot is almost too much to believe. I have an enormous booktruck of new books waiting for cataloging and I will be plugging them in. And I look forward to seeing other book lovers' comments on what they're reading. The covers page alone is like being in a chocolate/coffee shop.

Thing #9--I love this manga image since we have an active manga club. And I like to threaten with tongue-in-cheek. These image generators are addictive and I can see I'll have to delegate finding great images to my TAs. And they'll love it.

THING #8 The best thing about the Google-reader is that instead of searching in a lot of other folders, it's all there and updated. And the best thing of this lesson is the little video. Now to take some time off the computer to think of other RSS feeds and blogs I might want to add. So many people have so much to say. It's "mind-bloggling".

Thing #7-My favorite parts of all these great Google aps is how I can use them for my students who are learning to do academic research. I want to get them to create a project calendar for their projects that will include not only the important dates for the assignment, but all other assignments during the same period. And we will delve into Scholar and notebook. What a great way to put all the things they find in one spot. Where have I been????? I don't have links to post yet, but if I'm able (we have an incredibly tight filter) I'll do it this school year.

Thing #6

Playing with all these images and toys is like being Alice down the rabbit hole--each new link is tempting. Humbling to be faced with so much creativity. I could spend hours just searching by colors. The first ap to come to mind is to try Mappr in both world geography and world history.

Thing 5--Since my school district blocks "image" sites, such as GoogleImage, Flickr is a wonderful discovery. It's wonderful anyway. People are so generous, aren't they? I can't wait to turn my ninth graders loose after explaing what's kosher and what isn't.

And that whole tee shirt thing was part of THING 3.

I have a tee shirt that says, "My goal is to someday weigh what my driver's license says I do!". I could use a sharpie to add, "Or really look like my avatar..." Had to have that pirate eyepatch, even if it's branded. This process is fun and encouraging. If I can, anyone can.

Thing 2, part 2--The easiest habit for me is #4, to think of myself as an effective learned because I love to learn, to share what I've learned and to see those light bulbs ("green", please!) go off over other peoples' heads.

Thing 2--I think the hardest habit is to begin with the end in mind because I have a mind like a popcorn popper and having the goal in mind requires mental discipline and logic.