Friday, June 27, 2008

Thing 10 - Wikis

I love the concept of wiki's. There is something about the idea of people writing collaboratively and synergisitcally that really appeals to me. Realistically, I probably would have difficulty giving up control over any wiki I started, except to a small group. I think that you have to have a belief in the basic goodness and intelligence of people to unabashedly embrace the concept.
I have a son who reads Wikipedia the way that I used to read the encyclopedia, and in my own perusals I have not come across much that I thought was misleading or incorrect. People tell me that Wikipedia is the place to go for articles on technology and the Internet. All that being said, I once saw a student deliberately vandalizing an article on minerals that he should have been getting information from, so I know that that kind of activity also happens. Rather than a banning of Wikipedia, I would rather see teachers (and media specialists) emphasizing the need for a variety of resources in a variety of formats when students are involved in research.
I would like to see the students and larger community in our district do a town history or school history wiki. The public library could get involved along with the nursing home. Another possibility would be something like the Princeton Review wiki. Students could post book reviews under genre sections or grade level sections.
I really enjoyed the Albany County Public Library wiki--not because I would like to do one like that, but because I was impressed by how useful it appeared to be and by how well documented their training procedures seemed to be. I also visited the Blogging Libraries wiki. Of the six wiki's that I clicked on, 3 were current, 2 were not available, and 2 had no recent posts. It would be nice to have some sort of rating system, or at least a date when the last post was made so that you would know which blogs were likely to be interesting to you. Otherwise, it seemed like kind of a waste of time.
I edited the 23 Things on a Stick wiki. It was easy to edit, and I enjoyed reading the previous edits, but it might have benefited from having some sort of organizational format developed before the editing began.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Thing 9 - Online Collaboration Tools

I have a request in to get permission to edit the Declaration of Independence, but the person who grants requests is out until 7/3. Therefore, I am on to Thing 10 in the meantime and will edit this post after Independence Day. How fitting!

I do think that these tools might be of some use to teachers who are working in site committees and need to either come up with or edit documentation. I also have a couple of teachers who have groups of students who do some complex projects. This might be an option for them, too.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Thing 8


Thing 8 - Share Your Creations

Above is a cube that I made on PictureTrail. I am amazed at how many photo sharing sites there are on the web. I use Shutterfly sometimes because I make photo books on occasion, but I don't post many photos on the web.
I first tried to post by just copying and pasting the code into my blog but that didn't seem to work, so I went back and found that I could autopost to Blogger which worked very easily. One of the things that I really liked is that when I changed the cube in picturetrail, the changes were automatically reflected on my blog. Cool! Now that I know it works, I'll go back and play and little more.
I did find the ads somewhat irritating, even though you could skip them. While I understand that they bring in revenue that keeps the site free for users, I guess maybe I don't want to use them all that badly.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Thing 7 - Web 2.0 Communication Tools

I have used e-mail for many years. I have three accounts: an official school account, an official home account, and a yahoo account that I use when I want to remain more anonymous. I use the school account frequently to talk to teachers, administrators, vendors, colleagues, etc., but not often with students. I find that e-mail is more effective than a telephone call in many cases. 

I IM very little and never with school personnel or students. I did have a very positive experience recently though, IMing through a home computer router problem with tech support. 

Texting is not my thing, but it is my son's preferred method of communication on his cell phone, so 0n occasion I text him just to prove that I can do it. Our students are not allowed to have cell phones, so texting is not something that would come to my library any time soon. Interestingly enough, I just learned that texting requires much less signal than an actual phone call, so if I'm ever lost in the woods, I hope that I remember to text because the message will be much more likely to get through!

I have attended several Minitex webinars and have found the information to be useful. I really do like being with other people when possible, but the webinars are more practical than driving somewhere. I also went to the OPAL archives and listened to a YALSA Teen Tech Week presentation about using videography with teens. We have 3 0r 4 teachers who assign video projects and many students use the video cameras that can be checked out through the library. I do many 7-minute tutorials on video shots and video editing for kids.