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.