Reflection on a learning journey

I begin my reflection with kudos to Myra! She has such a far reaching understanding of all things web that I am in awe of her familiarity and knowledge of the internet. She presented each lesson in an organized manner with links to sites, and videos which provided more than enough information to fully explore each “thing”. Her instruction was concrete sequential and infused with an easy going manner, humor and personality. This has been, without a doubt the class in which I have been given tools that I will use for personal and library applications. It has whetted my appetite for more information. I smile as I re-read “thing 1 and thing 2” when everyone saw me as an overachiever, it turns out at the end that every one of the women in this class is an overachiever. It was a mind expanding journey that I shall miss. I hope that we have the opportunity to further explore Web 2.0 and continue learning as the “things” are evolving at a blinding rate.
There are several "things" that that I will continue to use personally. First is blogging, I have even created a personal blog, A View From The Ridge. I have always loved to write and have folders full of my ramblings, now I have an outlet for that creative urge. Second, I love Flickr and appreciate the capability to store all my photos and have them available on any computer. I look forward to having time to further explore, download, share and manipulate my pictures. My personal Wiki projects went nowhere, there are only three persons on the school retirement committee so e-mails worked fine and the Gore Range Rendezvous folk were not at all receptive to the idea (dinners and in person planning is more their style!) I am experimenting with Google Draw as I do love plotting gardens; rearranging and designing rooms.
For school use there are so many things that are interesting and some that I hope teachers will want to know more about and use in their classroom. Of course my favorite is Library Thing. I have added many of the books that I have read and am in the process of updating my book reviews. When I am asked to do a book talk I can go to my account, pull up the book read my review and be prepared for the class. As a group, we are developing a media clerk manual using a Wiki. This collaborative effort will serve as an indispensible means to share what the media clerk’s job in 2008 truly entails. It has been a great exercise to put into words what we do on a daily basis. The Wiki could be used to train new clerks. In Teacher Tube I see the opportunity for students to produce book reviews, reports and other productions, record them with our new flip camera and post them to teacher tube. Wikis would be useful for students working on a group project. The use of web 2.0 in classroom setting is limited only by the fact that most people do not know about them and have not time to explore and implement. I hope to see professional development incorporate some of these in the teacher training days.
Finally I hope that more classes and PSTs are offered in this area. It would be wonderful to have more in-depth focus and time to use and experiment with each new thing. I am excited to continue to search for web tools and find ways to utilize them in my personal life and as a media clerk. In order to have the library media center remain a crucial part of the school, we must find ways to integrate technology in ways that excite our students. That will require better delivery systems and staff that have knowledge of information technology applications.

Thing #23 Expand Your Mind

I have been an Atomic Learning user for some time. I like the way the lessons are presented and the quick tutorials are informative, concrete sequential and user friendly. I have enhanced my usage of Word, Excel and PowerPoint through Atomic Learning. I am investigating Photo Shop and Windows Movie Maker. I notice that there are now tutorials on Moodle, iTunes, Podcasting and Dreamweaver to name a few up to the minute web 2.0 things. If you haven't used this site, I highly recommend it to you.

Thing #22 Your Cell Phone as a tool

Remember this lunking big thing? I really thought I was doing well knowing how to send and receive texts (the abbreviated language still eludes me!) Now I find that my skills and use of the cell phone are woefully lacking. I have a very functional, yet old model that does not take pictures much less the "my location" feature. It continues to amaze me how a devise that is only ten years old has become an indispensable tool in our lives. As far as an educational tool I am sure it will happen, I just see it as a superfluous thing. For one it will further divide the haves from the have nots. Another is cost, who will pay for the use fees? The videos all present very sound reasons for use in the classroom, but I am not convinced as to the overall benefit. It will be most interesting to see where the cell phone takes us. It is already being used to write novels!

Thing #21 Copyright and freedom of information

Some of the more important factors in education are copyright and freedom of information and usage of all forms of media. We do our students a huge disservice in not instructing and instructing and instructing them in these areas. Research is a major portion of all educational processes and we should teach the ethical use of other's work. I am appalled at how easily students cut and paste, never giving a thought to the fact that someone else put time, effort and thought into the piece. Teaching ethical use must begin with knowing about plagiarism and the consequences of plagiarizing work. We are sending students to college without the proper preparation in creating their own research papers. They need to know that at the college level plagerism, improper citation and copyright infringement is cause for expultion at many schools.I like the copyright comic book as a teaching tool, however I doubt that we have the bandwidth capability and the flash player to run the site.

Thing # 20 Social Networking

I looked into a NING and found a very interesting group "Library Technician United". I see potential for this type of social networking as a way to enhance and gather new ideas for our jobs. I wonder about the usefullness of social networking in schools, there is so much potential to go the wrong way and to not be safe in information put out on the web. Would the students see it as an invasion of their "space", would they view us as trying to be cool? How would it be regulated and kept in an educational context? It would require very close monitoring by the teacher / librarian. The jury is still out on this "thing".

Thing # 19 Microblogging

Twitter - sharing life's moments 140 characters at a time. I have tried, but I really do not see how Twitter will help me be more productive, plus I frankly don't care to know what someone is doing every moment of every day. I much prefer longer conversations, snippets just leave me wanting more. I do think Twitter may have some use in a classroom or library if students are studying another culture, they could Tweet students from another country or even another part of the state, sharing in real time. Sorry, but this thing leaves me "twitterpated".

Thing # 18 User Generated Video

WAW William Allen White TSCPL Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library book reviews Sandy Lane Robin Clark Kansas performing arts
As part of our library web site, we invite our students to post book reviews. We have found that many times the students will use the "cut and paste" method choosing reviews from
Amazon or other sites. With the use of our flip camera I envision some very exciting ways that students can go beyond the typical book report by creating video reviews. I found several that had used various mulitmedia sites to produce truly inovative reviews. I chose these middle school students from Kansas as they are well prepared and I love the idea of the masks protecting their identity.