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.

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.

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. 

I've also been using social bookmarking, specifically Delicious and Diigo for almost 2 years now. I have to say I LOVE the convenience of being able to assess my bookmarks anywhere and booking marking things, so matter where I am. 


Two issues I have is that 

 
1). I bookmark so much and use tons of tags, but still feel that they are completely unorganized. Sometimes I just have to guess a what I might have tagged something if I want to find it again. This can easily be solved if I were to go through my bookmarks and reorganize them (like I know my husband has done), but I don't really have the time or patients for that, especially since I will continually be bookmarking things. 

 
2). Other than actually making the bookmarks, I use them very rarely. I would say I have about 5 websites that I go to regularly (including Netvibes which brings everything else to me) and those 5 become shortcuts on my browsers toolbar. Everything else I bookmark and forget about for a long long time. Now this might change in the near future as I transition to my role as K12 librarian, but I for now, I bookmark and forget. 

 
One thing that I have really enjoyed is the group dynamics of bookmarking when people are activeley bookmarking. I am part of the Technology Leadership Team at my school and we have a group diigo account. There are 3 to 4 people who regularly add things to this account and then I get a weekly email with a list of all the websites they have already read and recommend to me. I pick the once I really want to read or that pertain to me and then move on. This is great because I know I'm reading what others are reading and that what I'm reading is worth reading, because I trust those who recommend them.

 
For anyone interested, I tag a lot of library related and tech related things, as well as a bit on education, cooking and scrapbooking. Here is my delicious account: http://www.delicious.com/ElizabethKR

I've had a chance to look over the K-12 Online Conference, and I'm really excited to explore it some more. It's really amazing what we can do with technology and how we can connect to other educators all around the world. If you want to learn about something, it's most likely out there. 

While I haven't had a chance to do any of the sessions on the site, I have been participating in another online conference over the last few days which I think is the same kind of experience. The librarians at the school and I have been a part of an online conference through Your School Library called E-Book Futures. The format is usually a VoiceThread presentation that we can post to as well as a discussion board for each one. 

The thing that I find most helpful is the discussion boards, because that is were we as librarians really begin to hash things out. What is possible and what is note. What works for this library even if it may or may not work for another. The conference as a whole is giving us a much better understanding of ebooks and libraries, where we stand now and what we should be doing in the future. 

The hardest part about the online learning, is time! Unlike a conference you go to in person, you don't have a designated time to be there and it's easy to not get around to it. There is so much available that you can see and read, but when you are still working full time how will you get to it all? 

The thing that I'm most excited about it knowing that this resource is available to both me and my colleagues. It's the perfect thing to share with others when they need just a little bit of PD in an area. It's also great to share with administrators who need to understand more about where you are coming from. 

I think one of the most important things to consider when using many of these tools, is how are the enhancing, or adding to what you are teaching. I've seen many a tech-savvy people get really, really excited about tools that I personally feel add little to the educational experience. For example, many of the photo editing sites such as Be-Funky, Blabberize and Picknik are most of the time just arts and crafts time wasters. I do think there is a fine line between engagement and entertainment and as educators we need to be aware of this. If these tools help students become engaged in their learning, great! If however, they are just a distraction from the real task we need to beware.

On the other hand, there are some fun and engaging tools that can add something to a lesson. Tools like DoodlePoll or PollDaddy that let you get instantaneous usable feedback can bring a new dynamic to a class or lesson that you couldn't use before. A quick example I could use in the library is to create a poll that asks students what their favorite book genres are. If I've prepared book talks on a large number of books, this poll can help me with each class that comes in to focus on books that they are interested in instead of wasting both our times talking about something no one wants to read.

I also have to give a shout out to Weebly as I love it and use it for my personal site.  I think on of the advantages of this is that it really is quick and easy website creation so any student can easily make a website and update it. You shouldn't have to waste time on the web-design piece and can jump right into a usable blog, e-portfolio or any other number of uses for a website.

I used PhotoPeach to create the above slide show. My favorite thing about photo peach is that ability to link it to a Youtube video to get music that you link. I somewhat stole this idea from my husband who did a 12 days of Christmas video. I was also trying to come up with a way I could use this with my students. I think this would be a really fun project at the beginning of the year to both teach about creative commons, slide show makes and get to know the students. If they each made something like this, we could learn more about each other while work on some of those tech skills. Here is a list of the Photos I used in my slideshow:

Maʝicdölphin
Hannah Swithinbank
Ali Edwards
CleverCupcakes
27147
ktpupp
victor bayon
Dude Crush

I have to admit that sometimes I can get frustrated when things aren't as easy as I would like. For example, I have always found Flickr NOT user friendly. Yes, there are a lot of tools, a TON of photos but I hate to use it.

Every time I go straight to Flickr, I get lost or overwhelmed. I often have tried to search for  photos using the creative commons search function, but it's so easy to "wander off" that you soon find yourself with pictures you can't use.

However, that being said, it is a powerful tool that can be used any number of ways. I admit I loved using the Spell with Flickr to create my name and think my students would get a kick out using that for their projects.

There are a ton of tools that would help in many ways it just takes time to sit down and try them out, or even a good friend/colleague/tech teacher who has had the chance to check them out and recommend them to you. Some tools that I recommend are Comfight.com and Flickr Storm for finding great, usable photos. In fact I used the former to find "My Favorite Things" photos that I'll be using in a future "Thing". Here is one of the many things I love:

In fact, after all this hardwork and searching on Flickr, I think it's time to head out and get me one of those! Yum