I haven't blogged at all this semester about my classes at Syracuse, and now that I'm officially done with all my classes and waiting for my Diploma, I thought I should at least write one reflective post about my experience.

This has probably been on of my favorite and most helpful semesters, especially as School Media Specialization student (although I really liked my reference class a lot too). This semester, I had 663 which was about managing school libraries, and 661 which is about Managing School libraries. Both of these courses were specific to what I'll be doing, which makes everything you learn that much more helpful.

I especially appreciated that these courses were actually taught in a manner similar to how they teach us to teach. Novel idea I know, but I've heard many a educator say that their experience in Undergrad or Grad school programs were notoriously bad at "walking the walk and talking the talk".  Mine were great this semester which I really, really appreciate.

I also had some really great classmates that I got to work with and will miss having regular interactions with in the future. Thank goodness for Facebook letting me stay in touch with them anyway.

So here's to the end of Grad School although it doesn't really feel real since I'm not going to any ceremony. Maybe brunch with family over Christmas break will make it feel more official, or perhaps the first day of my new job.

Well, this is it. The final "Thing". It is also coming at the very end of my Graduate School Experience and right before a big winter/Christmas break so I just have to say WOOOHOOO!

Ok, now that that is out of my system, I really enjoyed this experience. I liked the reflective piece of learning out these tools. Although I knew about a lot of them before, it has been great to have a written explanation of the experience and my thoughts on them. Who knows if anyone will ever read this, but it has been a great exercise for me.

I will obviously continue my learning from here. Hopefully I'll continue to blog about it as well. I'm really excited to start using many of these tools in my new job as K12 Librarian.

When I first heard about Twitter, I was definitely one of those people who scoffed and said "Why in the World would I use Twitter?"  It wasn't until someone shared with me the professional and personal learning that goes on in Twitter and other Social Networks that I got into it. Now I understand and use Twitter and other Social Networks like the TeacherLibrarian Ning to my benefit.

I admit that I'm still not an avid user of twitter like some people are. I rarely post things and usually it's a retweet. I've stopped posting anything personal, mostly because I don't think what I'm doing right now matters much unless I'm sharing something educational. I.E. I don't tweet stuff like "Off to Lunch!"

I do however learn a TON from twitter and I hope that in the future, when I'm actually working in the library I'll use it more, share more etc. My favorite people to follow are the ones who share fun an interesting ways they are using tech in schools or libraries. But I admit I also follow a few other types. There are some fun YA authors that I follow. I also have some scrapbooking people who share tips and tools.

I have not figured out the best way to use these tools with the kids yet. In fact, I'm not sure how much students use Twitter. I think there are tons of ways to get information out to people and that is one that may work for some and not others. As for other Social Networks, such as Nings (these are great for specific communities and we use them in our school) and Facebook (which can reach a ton of people) there is potential for both professional growth and connecting to our students and their families.

I actually think my parents can handle all these things, but I still love it and think it's funny. 


http://www.teachparentstech.org/

I started this project thinking big. I wanted to create a Map of all the places I've traveled around the world with photos. After some time, just trying to figure out to start (for some reason, the tools were not working), I thought I would do a walking tour instead. I wanted to create a walking map of my time in Spain. That quickly went by the wayside when I could not identify any of the important locations, or at least some of the smaller ones. 

 
Finally I decided to do a walking tour of my favorite walk at home. I found it incredibly frustrating just creating this small map. I'll admit it is late and I feel like I just want to get it done tonight and I think if I took more time, it wouldn't be so bad. Anyway, I would probably not use this with younger kids right away until I figured it out some more. Anyway, here is my first attempt. Hope you enjoy (ha!): 

OK, first, I LOVE GOOGLE. I love what they makes and in general I love the way they do business. (Note: all large companies, including Google, mess up sometimes. See Google Books Lawsuit. This is obviously not the place to go into it in depth, but this is a really complicated situation. Ask me some time if you want to talk about it.)

 
Back to Google Docs. The concept, is great. Like I said, I love Google and most of the things they produce. The problem I have now, is that while they have developed so many great things and done it quickly, Google Docs is WAY behind in functionality. I do use it on a regular basis, and I just used it to write a group paper in grad school, but when it comes to actually creating documents, especially spreadsheets, I always, always have to download the document to edit them. Very frustrating!


Alright, so here are my three things to use Google docs for:


1. Collaborate on a group paper
2. Collaborative homework problem/discussions
3. Surveys using Google forms

 
This last one, is something I do use all the time, but again, I'm going to have to start using something else until Google gets it's act together and make it much more usable. 

First I have to stay that I love the tip to put a timer on when doing this task. I'm not as bad as some people I know, but it is definitely easy to get lost in YouTube world. There are tons of fun and entertaining videos out there as well as many, many educational Youtube videos. The great thing about YouTube videos is that you can find something that is strictly educational, such as a video on how to do a math problem, but you can find other videos that you can apply to what you are learning, even if they were not made for an educational purposes. 


Here are a few of the video's that I found during my serach:

 
This is a book trailer for Scott Westerfeld's book Leviathan. This is a great way to get kids excited about books, especially those who are not readers. This is an example of a very professional book trailer done by the publishing company. This is one of the ideas that I talked about in a past blog post. Having kids create their own book trailers. 

Here is another type of video that can be great. It's not necessarily the best example of book reviews, but I happen to link this vlog. I haven't seen it a lot, but one of the authors I follow on Twitter (Maureen Johnson) was a guest vlogger on here and I really enjoyed watching her and the guys who do this vlog. Again, students could do something similar to this creating book reviews for books they have read and want others to read. 

There are many, many how to videos out there. I particularly like Howcast videos. There are a number of inappropriate ones that are actually humors, but I chose one to share about travel, since our upcoming 20+ hour flight home is right around the corner. 

Finally, I'll share my two fun videos. One is again library related and what I originally was going to share. The other is one example of a video that my husband made me watch, which got us side tracked for 45 minutes watching more.  Enjoy and don't get too lost in YouTube land.

I have had the opportunity to use podcasts in education. While it didn't last long as it was a one unit project, I think the kids really like it. I think the challenge with using podcasts in education is sustaining it's use. Because like the wiki said, a podcast is not just an audio recording, but an RSS feed too. Finding a true purpose to have an ongoing podcast can be a challenge. I also think that if you are going to have an ongoing podcast, you have to devote time to it, because it can't something you just record and through up online. You and your students have to put some thought into what you are going to say and how you are going to produce it. 

So here is my podcast. I just took a few minutes to record a booktalk/book review of a recent YA fiction book I've read. I did do a couple of takes, but no editing, so there are still a few "um's" in there. I decided to use audacity because it is on my computer and it's pretty easy to use. (Plus, I really didn't want to go near iTunes, because I really, really dislike it! ) Anyway, the process was easy enough.

I was really impressed with Podbean and this is the first time I've experimented with an RSS feed creator for podcasts. We do have something the school has set up, but its just the basics and not as easy to use so I was surprised to find how easy this was and how many different features it has. It was a good experience and made me think that podcasting might not be as time consuming or difficult as I thought. I mean the planning and editing will still be time consuming, but there is something out there to make it a whole lot easier.

This weeks task is to explore LibraryThing. While it has been a while since I've looked at it, I still think I prefer, at least at this point, Shelfari. As I've already set up an account in the past, I'm going to continue to use it until I feel there is something else worth switching to.

 
Not that I think LibraryThing is bad. They all do a similar thing. What I like about Shelfari, is the ease of use and the fact that I can share my list, via the Bookshelf, on my blog. Which, as you can see, I've now added here. 

 
I think something like this is especially important as I begin my career as a librarian. I think it's important to model to students that we are readers as well and this is one public way of sharing what we are reading. I also really like YA fiction, so I think it's great to share with my students that I'm reading some of the same books they are reading. 

 
Obviously, I have a lot of work to do on my account, maybe that can be one of my winter break goals, to input as many books as I can remember that I've read.