#21. Podcasts (You don’t need an iPod!)
I found through The Education Podcast Network the Tech Teacher Podcasts that have some interesting episodes, such as this one about "Podcasting in the Classroom": http://www.garageband.com/mp3player?pe1WdjZPXLrvP2rZFO2YmFh.
I tried the California School Library "23 Things" link to http://www.podcast.net/, but it was a dead link, as was the link to Yahoo Podcasts.
I went to iTunes to use the Podcast directory to find library-related Podcasts. I found "Library Geeks" by Dan Chudnov. I'm listening to the November 14, 2008 Podcast about "Jangle", which is described as "a new specification for using the Atom Publishing Protocol with library resources." Frankly, I'm bored stiff. I guess I'm not as much of a "Library Geek" as I thought I was.
So, moving on, I tried "Teacher Librarians" by Julie (Lawrence) Darling. but found it to be just an uploaded file with the AASL 21st Century Standards -- not a Podcast at all. Then I tried "Got Books", a Podcast by middle school students about middle school books. You can use this link to get their blog page that has links to the Podcasts: http://got-books.blogspot.com/. This is not something I would subscribe to, but it does make me applaud the librarian who worked this out for her students to do!
Several years ago when I took a day-long Podcasting course for Act 48 credit, I was introduced to the Podcast Directory in iTunes and I spent time looking then for library-related Podcasts that might interest my middle school students or teachers, but I never did find any. From my hour-long exploration just now, I'd say that iTunes is not the best place for me to find Podcasts that would be of interest to school librarians.
Since I'm directed to add an RSS feed to this blogspot, I went back to where I began, the Education Podcast Network, and found what I thought was Podcast by Greg Schwartz: "Open Stacks - Home of Greg Schwartz: Promoting information access and literacy for all" and subscribed to it through the RSS feed. It turned out to be a blog rather than a Podcast, but within the blog I found the URL to get his Podcast "Uncontrolled Vocabulary", and finally [WHEW!] found, by trial & error, how to add it to this blog through an RSS feed. This last step has been the hardest challenge of this project. I have a lot of feed readers, and in the process of trying to get the Uncontrolled Vocabulary feed into this blog, I've added it to about 6 other places.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Week Nine, Assignment #20
Week 9: Podcasts, Video & Downloadable Audio
#20. Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos.
Ahh, YouTube -- now we're on familiar territory. I like many things about the site. The only thing I don't like is that some of the videos require inordinate buffering time, even with a high speed connection.
This is one of my favorite videos on YouTube:
The reason it's a favorite is because it was the first video I uploaded to YouTube. It shows my husband demonstrating his knowledge of Tai Chi to our son, in Central Park.
Here's our son's response to what he was seeing his dad do. He said he realized that he wasn't going to have the specific choreography of it, but this was how he was interpreting the movement of energy:
I also discovered, just yesterday, http://www.veoh.com/, where one can watch not only videos but also TV shows on one's computer. I've just signed up, and this morning I installed the viewer required. I looked over the list of TV shows available, but didn't see anything I was interested in watching yet. (I'm not a big fan of TV.) It allows uploads of videos, too, but I don't have any that I'm interested in uploading.
Here's a YouTube video that could be used on a library Web site:
I tried to embed the following YouTube video about Google Docs into the blog on my SchoolCenter Web site, but it didn't show up there. SchoolCenter must not support embedding objects this way, with just the inclusion of the html code.
#20. Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos.
Ahh, YouTube -- now we're on familiar territory. I like many things about the site. The only thing I don't like is that some of the videos require inordinate buffering time, even with a high speed connection.
This is one of my favorite videos on YouTube:
The reason it's a favorite is because it was the first video I uploaded to YouTube. It shows my husband demonstrating his knowledge of Tai Chi to our son, in Central Park.
Here's our son's response to what he was seeing his dad do. He said he realized that he wasn't going to have the specific choreography of it, but this was how he was interpreting the movement of energy:
I also discovered, just yesterday, http://www.veoh.com/, where one can watch not only videos but also TV shows on one's computer. I've just signed up, and this morning I installed the viewer required. I looked over the list of TV shows available, but didn't see anything I was interested in watching yet. (I'm not a big fan of TV.) It allows uploads of videos, too, but I don't have any that I'm interested in uploading.
Here's a YouTube video that could be used on a library Web site:
I tried to embed the following YouTube video about Google Docs into the blog on my SchoolCenter Web site, but it didn't show up there. SchoolCenter must not support embedding objects this way, with just the inclusion of the html code.
Week Eight, Assignment #19
#19. Take a look at LibraryThing and catalog some of your favorite books.
I created an account at LibraryThing. I added 6 books that I own that I have either read recently or I plan to read shortly. I found LibraryThing easy to use. I'm considering using it to list all the secondhand books I've bought that I've set aside and forgotten. I have a box of them upstairs, and a selection of them on the downstairs bookshelf. I forget about them -- you know, too many books, too little time. LibraryThing should help me remember what I'm planning to read. Here's the link to my account: http://www.librarything.com/home/joanneLMT2
The mystery novels had a lot of people sharing the titles. The tango books were another story. Two other people shared my interest in one title, and no one else but me was listing the other one.
I found that LibraryThing has a widget I can embed on my blog. Here it is:
On Del.icio.us, I discovered this article about LibraryThing and its making available a million bookcover images to users: http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/08/million-free-covers-from-librarything.php. Since we usually encounter copyright restrictions on using book cover images, I thought there might be some professional interest in this open source distribution.
I created an account at LibraryThing. I added 6 books that I own that I have either read recently or I plan to read shortly. I found LibraryThing easy to use. I'm considering using it to list all the secondhand books I've bought that I've set aside and forgotten. I have a box of them upstairs, and a selection of them on the downstairs bookshelf. I forget about them -- you know, too many books, too little time. LibraryThing should help me remember what I'm planning to read. Here's the link to my account: http://www.librarything.com/home/joanneLMT2
The mystery novels had a lot of people sharing the titles. The tango books were another story. Two other people shared my interest in one title, and no one else but me was listing the other one.
I found that LibraryThing has a widget I can embed on my blog. Here it is:
On Del.icio.us, I discovered this article about LibraryThing and its making available a million bookcover images to users: http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/08/million-free-covers-from-librarything.php. Since we usually encounter copyright restrictions on using book cover images, I thought there might be some professional interest in this open source distribution.
Week Eight, Assignment #18
Week 8: Online Applications & Tools
#18. Take a look at some online productivity (word processing, spreadsheet) tools.
I've set up a Zoho Writer account with the username joanneLMT2. I've imported a few documents that I might want to access from other computers.
Here are my discoveries. Zoho's Sheets are equivalent to Excel Spreadsheets. (I had no idea what "sheets" would be. I'm not used to this open source stuff.) Zoho Show lets you do prsentations (equivalent to PowerPoint, I expect). I sampled Zoho Mail. When I get to school, I know I will find this access point is blocked, as per school district policy. I'm embedding my Zoho Chat box here:
I'm finding this chat box very interesting. I've logged in and out to test whether any viewer can see the messages being sent. It appears they can't, that I have to be logged in to review what was said.
I've used Google docs in the past. We learned about this more than a year ago, from our library supervisor.
#18. Take a look at some online productivity (word processing, spreadsheet) tools.
I've set up a Zoho Writer account with the username joanneLMT2. I've imported a few documents that I might want to access from other computers.
Here are my discoveries. Zoho's Sheets are equivalent to Excel Spreadsheets. (I had no idea what "sheets" would be. I'm not used to this open source stuff.) Zoho Show lets you do prsentations (equivalent to PowerPoint, I expect). I sampled Zoho Mail. When I get to school, I know I will find this access point is blocked, as per school district policy. I'm embedding my Zoho Chat box here:
I'm finding this chat box very interesting. I've logged in and out to test whether any viewer can see the messages being sent. It appears they can't, that I have to be logged in to review what was said.
I've used Google docs in the past. We learned about this more than a year ago, from our library supervisor.
Week Seven, Assignment #17
#17. Add an entry to the Pennsylvania Curriculum Connection wiki.
I went to the PA Curriculum Connection wiki but I couldn't immediately play in the sandbox or edit a page because I didn't have the invite key. I emailed the administrator to ask for the invite key and she sent it to me. I then had to look around a lot before finding a place I could make an entry. There's supposed to be a sandbox, and I expected to find one with lots of other people's comments, but there's only a sandbox homepage with a welcoming message and a link to PA Curriculum Connections. It didn't look like a place for me to make a comment or to "play" with friends. I finally found a page under "Online Learning" where I felt I could make an entry and not mess up the main design of the site. I added the PA Online Web 2.0 link on this page: http://pacurriculum.pbwiki.com/ONLINE.
In May when someone e-mailed me for permission to add to this page, I looked around and saw that the page itself was redundant. Someone else had set up the page, but their postings were listed on other pages, so I deleted the "Online" page. Other people who wanted to post there would be better advised to post on one of the other available pages.
I'm wondering where other people who are following this "23 Things" online tutorial plan for PSLA are making their entries on the PA Curriculum Connection site.
I went to the PA Curriculum Connection wiki but I couldn't immediately play in the sandbox or edit a page because I didn't have the invite key. I emailed the administrator to ask for the invite key and she sent it to me. I then had to look around a lot before finding a place I could make an entry. There's supposed to be a sandbox, and I expected to find one with lots of other people's comments, but there's only a sandbox homepage with a welcoming message and a link to PA Curriculum Connections. It didn't look like a place for me to make a comment or to "play" with friends. I finally found a page under "Online Learning" where I felt I could make an entry and not mess up the main design of the site. I added the PA Online Web 2.0 link on this page: http://pacurriculum.pbwiki.com/ONLINE.
In May when someone e-mailed me for permission to add to this page, I looked around and saw that the page itself was redundant. Someone else had set up the page, but their postings were listed on other pages, so I deleted the "Online" page. Other people who wanted to post there would be better advised to post on one of the other available pages.
I'm wondering where other people who are following this "23 Things" online tutorial plan for PSLA are making their entries on the PA Curriculum Connection site.
Week Seven, Assignment #16A
#16A. Take a look at California's Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki.
I took a look at it. I can't say I want to play in the sandbox, but I did it anyway.
You can see my sentence with a link to this blog here: http://calcurriculum.pbwiki.com/SandBox
I took a look at it. I can't say I want to play in the sandbox, but I did it anyway.
You can see my sentence with a link to this blog here: http://calcurriculum.pbwiki.com/SandBox
Week Seven, Assignment #16
Week 7: Wikis
#16. Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them.
I went to pbwiki.com and found the note, "You don't have permission to comment on this page." I thought pbwiki was something I had access to. When I went to Joyce Valenza's session at last year's PSLA Conference, I found out about her pbwiki and I was able to access information on it.
I set up an account with pbwiki, so now apparently I can create a wiki, but since my school district bans access to any and all wikis, there's not much point in my trying to find a way I can use this in my school library.
I just went looking at Joyce Valenza's TeacherLibrarian Ning site, to see what I could find about pbwiki. I used the "search" feature, but only came up with the suggestion that librarians use the pbwiki for their libraries. I hate when I have to spend time searching for stuff like this. There's definitely an overload of librarian possibilities in my brain. On the positive side, along the way I saw some things I might want to go back to look at again.
#16. Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them.
I went to pbwiki.com and found the note, "You don't have permission to comment on this page." I thought pbwiki was something I had access to. When I went to Joyce Valenza's session at last year's PSLA Conference, I found out about her pbwiki and I was able to access information on it.
I set up an account with pbwiki, so now apparently I can create a wiki, but since my school district bans access to any and all wikis, there's not much point in my trying to find a way I can use this in my school library.
I just went looking at Joyce Valenza's TeacherLibrarian Ning site, to see what I could find about pbwiki. I used the "search" feature, but only came up with the suggestion that librarians use the pbwiki for their libraries. I hate when I have to spend time searching for stuff like this. There's definitely an overload of librarian possibilities in my brain. On the positive side, along the way I saw some things I might want to go back to look at again.
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