Flip This

Flip This How to shake up your library and like it. An article by David Loertscher.

Research Pathfinder

Check out this WIKI Research Pathfinder http://what2readnext.wikispaces.com/
As an English requirement students are to read a book of their choice. Wow, what an opportunity for me to show students just a sampling of the books we have and to show them the books that are nominated for Pennsylvania Reader's Choice Award. Cool. As I told students, if you aren't having fun choosing a book, you aren't doing something right and you need to come see me.

week 9 Thing#23

LOL Fair(y) Use Tale. When we talk to students about using copyright images and that Google images are not copyrighted we get a lot of eye rolls. More students would obey picture copyright laws if they were required to cite their picture source. I feel many teachers overlook copyright laws because it is just too tough to keep track of what is allowed and what isn't. I like this copyright chart. Easy to read and learn what is A okay and what is a no no.

Copyright - Upload a Document to Scribd

To sum up this 23 Things in one word - FOREFRONT. Looking back at my 23 things I feel creating my own blog, posting feeds, creating funky pictures (love that imagechef) were probably some of the best Things that I learned about. I can't really find anything Thing that wasn't a valuable activity. This was an amazing learning adventure that wasn't too taxing. Learning had a creative fun element to it. One of the best suggestions, now that I am finished, was to keep my blog as an educational blog and to post the link to my email signature. I will miss leaning more Things and have suggested that a biweekly Thing be emailed to us so we can continue keeping up with technology.

Thing 24 If you want to load a document to your blog try Scribd. I wanted to upload that copyright chart and it was a pdf file. What's a girl to do? Google for a way to upload a pdf file to your blog. Google is my Easy Button.

week 9 Thing #22

Audiobooks for free? At our high school we are just beginning to start a collection of playaways that students will be able to borrow. The nice thing about playaways is that they are small and actually look like a small book on the outside. The only thing we are not including with the playaways our the earbuds. Kind of gross to be sticking someone else's bud in your own ear. Next week we will be offering books on ipods for students to listen to their required fiction English book. We will be adding titles to the ipods as we are just beginning this new venture. Students will borrow the ipods just like they would a book. The website the best place to get free books is terrific. Listening to audiobooks on the road is a great way to pass the time and I have always bought my books through itunes. Love their selection hate the prices. Just this week I was contemplating buying Twilight to get caught up in this popular reading series (I so do want to be a twilighter), but when I saw the price $25 something I didn't bite. I will definitely keep looking for free audiobooks for my own personal use as well as for our patrons in our library.

week9 Thing#21

Learning by listening is one of the best things to do while driving in the car. I have been listening to podcasts for a few years and the best update on technology for me is TWIT. I find out numerous happenings in the tech world this way. I also like the podcast videos of AppleQuickTips. You could actually show some of these quick videos to a high school class before teaching a lesson. Great way to warm up a lesson with technology.

week 8 Thing #19

Lots of discussion about the books I posted to Library Thing. I thought is was interesting that the first 200 books u post are free and then there are fees if you want to post more. The best bet is $25 smackers for a lifetime membership. How long is that? Really? This would be an awesome way for churches, library classrooms to keep track and share what books they have in their collection. As for my personal use I could see using this Library Thing if I were extremely organized and looking for something to do, which I am not. This is a fun tool. Wouldn't it be great to use with high school students to map their reading life of favorite books from toddler to today? I saw an English teacher do this using a podcast to create a history of personal reading journeys. I think this would be a fun way to create one too.

week 8 Thing #18

I didn't know how easy it was to create your own website until viewing the Google Sites tutorial. I was familiar with Google Docs but I think Zoho writer has more writing tools available for documents than Google Doc does. The really awesome feature of either writer is they allow for collaboration. This is a great way for students to create documents together.

Week 9 Thing #20

week 7 Thing #16 & #17

WIKI WIKI WIKI We are using wiki spaces for our high school research pathfinders. Students seem to like the easy access to resources for their specific research projects. After teachers conference with us about their students' assignments we put together the best resources we have to offer - books, searching suggestions/directions, databases, citation machine link ect-all on one page. Students can click on the database they want to use and get there quickly. By using research pathfinders, students are Googling less and are getting quality information from the databases. We added the cover images to our title suggestions. There is nothing like a visual to aid a student in finding a book. Students can get to the wiki research pathfinders from a link that was added to our library's home page. I am in the process of developing a WIKI to promote PYRCA at our high school. I am planning on placing the list of nominees and rules of how to vote plus enable online voting ( I am still checking into the online voting). Hopefully this will be a hook to get high school students to participate in this awesome reading program. Wish me luck.
I tried adding to the Pa Curriculum Connection wiki but the password is just not working.

Week 6 Thing#15

From “Away from the “icebergs” Rick Anderson Director of Resource Acquisition

First Berg: who has funds for the “just in case collection?” You gotta be kiddin right?

Second Berg:
u know I just calculated the librarian to student ratio in our high school and I get 1: 960 which is an improvement over last year which was 1:1200. The biggest connection I made was to make sure that the services we have such as our databases, research pathfinders, citation maker and OPAC are easy to access and use. Students are no different than teachers. They want to easily access quality information. I know our library is striving to accomplish this. We are constantly making improvements and changes to ensure that students and teachers can get to what they need.

Third Berg:
We tell teachers that we can come to their classrooms. With many teachers in our building taking part in CFF (Classrooms for the Future - content area teachers who are participating have laptop carts in their classrooms) we want them to know that we can come to them.





“Into a new world of librarianship” Michael Stephens Librarian, Blogger




New world of librarianship should be my title. I taught kindergarten for 13 years and am just on year 2.5 of being a high school librarian. I have no huge past of how things used to be. I get the wave of constant changes. By reading journals, blogs and talking to other coworkers we get new ideas to try in our teaching. We are teaching cooperatively and learning from others and yes, having fun at the same time. Our newest twist is switching from a 9 day period to block scheduling. Goodbye study halls every period. Hello flex (study hall) for just 2 blocks. Hello added part-time librarian to help handle teaching in the block.

For me 2.0 is our information life. Ever changing so keep learning.

Week 6 Thing #14

According to wikipedia Technorati is an internet search engine for searching blogs. OH, now I get it. If you want the most current noise about an item of interest this would be a great source to look for information. I checked out the tab Blogger Central to really get a good sense of what this engine has to offer.

Week 6 Thing # 13

Delicious So many places so little time. I found that the biggest advantage of Delicious is grabbing other resources that other people have tagged. My recent favorite find is 1oo Unbelievably Useful Sites You Have Never Heard Of. I discovered the search engine Ms. Dewey on this site. When using this search engine you are entertained by Ms. Dewey an actress who will comment on what you are searching. I will visit this social bookmarking site from time to time to see what resources are out there. Teachers who teach the same subject find Delicious useful to share websites. I wish the developer of Delicious had chosen a name that was more descriptive of the bookmarking site. I became more curious about the name and have discovered that Delicious is a domain hack. At least I now know there is a reason for this madness.

week 5 Thing #12

ROLLYO will make researching individual topics more slick. Instead of just hunting in one drawer you get to search in a bunch all at once. We had students researching Alternative Energy Sources this past spring. We placed oodles of websites for students to use on their research pathfinder. I took all of those websites and created one search using ROLLYO. You can check out the Alternative Energy Sources ROLLYO that I put together.

extra Thing u must see

I am interrupting my next thing to share a site with a plethora of resources for you to use. I have just begun to explore
Web Tools4u2Use

Week 5 Thing #11

I checked out a few of web 2.0 and played a bit. Google Docs was reintroduced to me this past spring. Excellent way for students to work collaboratively on a document and or powerpoint. We were finding it difficult for students to work on a document together. It often involved one student being in charge of creating the word document with input being given to them either verbally or written. Google Docs allows for collaboration to take place, each student can add to the same document. Once an account is created go to new to select the kind of document you want to create - document, spreadsheet or presentation (powerpoint). All students need to do is set up an account in Google. Free of course. Another app I checked out was Twitter the podcast I listen to (TWIT) keeps mentioning Twitter and I have always meant to Google it but now I have bumped into it on the Web2.0 award winning list. Twitter is a social network that you can use to tell what your friends, family and coworkers what you are doing every minute of the day. You simply answer the question, What are you doing? In my world of teaching information at the high school I better know what is going on or "gasp" I will look outdated!

Week 5 Thing #10

Absolutely love image chef to create visuals for the blog page. Can really see how using images on a high school library page would entice students to check out what is happening in the library. I am not crazy about comic strip generator. First, I can't get the image to appear when pasting the link to my blog page. Secondly, many pictures are not copyright free images - a big no no.
Learning 4 Life picture is AASL's new catch phrase for Standards for 21st Century Learner. And of course I knew this by checking out one of my feeds.

L4L

Week 4 Thing #9

Did I really read add a few useful School Library and news feeds? I can't stop trying to decide which ones to add and which to delete. I have been posting, editing, deleting and adding to the list. I really like the ease of adding and making things go away in my blog. I think I have a pretty solid list of library resources and am wondering at the same time what I may be overlooking. I love how the feeds tell you how long ago they were posted. One of my pet peeves is reading old news. You know, like when you are waiting in a waiting room and all the magazines are over 3 months old. Yuk! I also like how you can display a bit of the info before going and checking the rest of it out.

Week 4 Thing #8

This week is about RSS feeds that can be set up using a variety of outlets. I set up Google Reader and added some new RSS feeds and added some favorites that I already subscribed to. I prefer reading my feeds through my iGoogle page. I have my feeds categorized by content area. Students should take advantage and set up RSS feeds when doing research. Students could be alerted when websites have new information on their research topic. The best place to put your feeds is where you will see them the most and right now it is here.

Week 3 Thing # 7

I just read an article from Cnet news.com about Princeton University publishing Kindle textbooks. Kindle is a wireless reading device. The article goes on to name some prominent universities that are creating textbooks for the Kindle. There are many advantages of having an ebook reader. Can u image not having to drag a ton of books around? Guess it is all in what you get accustomed to. For me, I am still a concrete reader. Love the look, feel and smell of a new book:-) Besides, what about building that upper body strength?

Week 3 Thing #6

My creation
Originally uploaded by kristin8675309

Week 2 Thing # 3 & 4

Blogging is interesting. It was quite easy to set up. I am looking forward to learning all the things that can be added to a blog site. Avatar was created. I am not sure why there is a partial web address above it.

Week 3 Thing #5 Sari Sari

Sari Sari
Originally uploaded by Jungle Bay Guide

I found this photo on flickr of one of the many waterfalls that are on the island of Dominica. We are planning a vacation there this summer:-0

Week 1 Thing #2

The 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners

*Lifelong learning puts the student first
*Never too soon or too late for learning
*Learning does occur everywhere throughout life
*Open to new ideas

Habit 1 Begin with the end in mind
Determine the goal first

Habit 2 Accept responsibility for your own learning

Sign up for training participate in class discussion


Habit 3 View problems as challenges
Most successful learners think


Habit 4 Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
Don’t say I or think it unless you want it to be true

Habit 5 Create your own learning toolbox
Books, technology, classes, webpages, friends

Habit 6 Use technology to your advantage
Should make things easier

Habit 7 Teach/ mentor others
Good way to reinforce your learning

Habit 7.5 Play

Successful lifelong learners know the importance of play be curious and read

For me the easiest habit is 7.5 Play. The hardest would be 1 begin with the end in mind. I think it is too concrete and doesn't allow for right brain thinking.

Week 1 Thing #1 (from a total of 23 things)

I am one of 70 completing PA Online Web 2.0 program. I have completed my first year as a high school librarian. Love it. This was my 16th year of teaching. Can u believe it? I went from being a kindergarten teacher to a high school librarian. I have 2 masters degrees - one in reading and language arts and the other in library science and information technology.
Just picked up more books to read this summer - The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris and Janet Evanovich's Fearless Fourteen