December in our library

We now have a new interactive board in our library Kiva area for enhaced library lessons that all of our students can interact with. We are so excited to begin the new year of 2012 with this technology!!!

This Week in our Library - 2/7/11

Well after the disappointing lack of snow on Friday, we are back in school and ready to continue celebrating Black History Month and preparing for our Valentine's Day celebrations. In the library we will be reading about the history of Valentine's Day and why we celebrate it each year. Have a great week Savannah Suns!

Thing 7

1. What were your favorite discoveries?
My favorite discoveries are Teacher Tube, the many school related Wikis at wikispaces.com, subscribing to RSS feeds, my two favorite Google tools (Books and iGoogle), and last but not least, the tools offered by Flickr ranging from making, sharing and finding pictures.

2. Were there any outcomes from this program that surprised you?
What surprised me the most was how easy it was to use these tools and incorporate them into Blog and Wiki pages in order to use as resources to train teachers and students. I was also amazed by how many resources are available in the World Wide Web. As a library media specialist I will need to choose carefully and carefully ensure that I am showing teachers and students how easily these tools can be incorporated into lessons.

3. After looking through the list below, what other Web 2.0 Things sound intriguing?
I was amazed to discover how many of these sites I have used before, such as Goodreads, Photo Story, Twitter, Wikipedia, Wordle, etc. I was also equally amazed to find myself overwhelmed with the incredible amount of information tools and resources that I did not know about but hope to learn to use. I plan to further investigate more sites such as Skype (video and internet calling), Quizlet (already made or create your own flashcards on any curriculum subject), Second Life (virtual world to live), and Animoto (education account in order to create full-length videos for free), to name a few sites I plan to investigate further.
This course has been quite an experience in showing me how much there is out there in the web 2.0 world. I have my hands full and am eager to begin using the tools for the benefit of my students and teachers.

Thing 6

Write a post for Thing 6 about your video finds. Embed at least one of the videos you selected into your post.


I already had a YouTube account which is great for everyday entertainment; however I wouldn’t feel comfortable using these videos at school for our students due to censorship issues and possible “hidden” content. I would recommend YouTube to teachers who want to share videos with their friends and family outside of school.

Teacher Tube was new to me and I immediately made an account and started searching everywhere. I discovered many excellent resources, especially Teacher Vision, which gave grade appropriate videos by curriculum content area as well. I chose the video above from the Teacher Tube account I created in order to show the students on my campus an introduction about Internet Safety. I suspect my teachers will love this site as much as I have. I will support my teachers by assisting them in using this tool in the support of curriculum and research projects with their classrooms. Great resource for all teachers, parents, students and librarians alike.

Thing 5

Write about what you found at Flickr. Add the photo you downloaded to your post.

This is a picture of my oldest daughter, Natalie, at one of the San Marcos rivers. I thought it would be an excellent choice to show how fun family pictures can be shared using the Flikr account. You can share pictures with family far away and even set up different albums of specific events or groups of people. I had a lot of fun playing and searching this site.

I also found many sources of copyright friendly pictures that students can use on projects, etc. The site is easy to use and I can see teachers using this website with their students throughout the year in many different ways.

Thing 4

The two tools that are my favorite are "Books" (of course since I am a librarian) and iGoogle.

In the "Books" Google Tool, you can keep an online library (list) of books you are reading, books you have read, and reviews for books that you have taken the time to review. As if this was not great in itself, you can also read entire works (books, magazines, articles, etc.)in all genres and topics that have been uploaded free of charge. Copyright laws must be observed, however these works are available in their entirety and free of charge to Google "Books" users.

As for the second favorite choice, I chose "iGoogle" web page tool to introduce to my teachers. Even thought this tool would be great for older students to create their own web pages to keep track of projects, I would probably begin with teachers first and make sure they are comfortable with using and supervising the use of this tool in their classrooms.

Thing 3

Tell how you might use your wiki with students.

I discovered that Wiki web sites can be used as an "unlocked" site to share ideas with your friends or plan activities. This can be a temporary or permanent Wiki depending on whether or not you plan to use the activity again. I can see making a Wiki like this to have teachers add their opinions about specific topics that pertain to each of their grade levels or classrooms.

A Wiki can also be a "locked" web site used to create lessons that teachers, administrators, librarians, etc. plan to use again and again to instruct specific topics and audiences. The Wiki I created was about a lesson on teaching teachers and students what questions to ask in order to validate the information on websites. I decided to lock this document because I did not want anyone changing the information, documents or pages of my lesson by accident. The option to leave a discussion question is still available, but as a librarian I can reuse this Wiki following school years to come.

I am very excited about using this Wiki this year as well as learning more ingenious ways to incorporate them into my library lessons. The link to my Wiki is: http://sle-library.wikispaces.com/

Enjoy!