Excursion Island AND Last Post For The Summer

Excursion Island--I think the slide ap is a great one and I would be very happy to share it with our faculty.  My favorite of the other offerings is Judy Brown because it is annotated and fits the things I do (or intend to do if I ever get the time).  Of course, my true favorite is JibJab!! Let's make a librarian one :)

I notice that the Great Sea of 2.0 has a lot of similar offerings which can be like the sirens' song.  So SuprGlu and TaDa might soon be my life rafts.  I have so many accounts so many places from these summer sessions....

And so to Reflection Island
1. What were your favorite discoveries or excursions on this learning journey? I liked lots about each Island, but my heart belongs to searching. 







2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? I am renewed in my excitement about 2.0 and my determination to get it in our classrooms.  I am much more interested in having the students do the media productions than in doing it myself.






3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? I am amazed how much FREE cool stuff is out there.  I am also delighted the district is moving to the cloud--wonder how that will affect our student outcomes this year?





4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? I love it and I thank you for putting it together.  I have been trying to migrate all my existing Google accounts to the BISD Google one and think some is going to get lost, so this is my bon voyage to you.

SEARCH ISLAND July 7, 2011

Here is one of my favorite articles about searching, using brain + internet, and being a lifelong learner.  I love Joyce Valenza! http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/neverendingsearch/2011/06/08/i-hope-youll-search-with-skill-a-revised-letter-to-my-grads/

I agree that we will have to be much more conversant with guiding our teachers and students to finding academically acceptable information and citing it.  I realized this last year.  Even with databases, high quality websearching is vital.

Here's my bucket--I think the government sites were among the most interesting and useful.  I also loved the metadata engines.  I've been teaching ipl2 for years, from before the merger. And I'll be showing the world geography teachers the One Nation for sure.

SKYPE July 7, 2011

Here's what I did:  I contacted BISD district technology department to see if we can use Skype, what type hardware and permissions would be involved etc.  And if not Skype, then something similar? They are going to get back with me and I have asked for permission to share that reply.  So...pending approval from technology, I would like to ask the English teachers which contemporary novel(s) will be studied this year.  Then I would be happy to contact the author and see about a Skype interview.  The other best application IMHO would be the converstations in real-time with other classes learning English as our kids study their language.  I especially think this would be fun for the German and French classes as it's harder to find native speakers here.  The most useful link to me was, "Met Any Good Authors Lately?" from SLJ  http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6673572.html