Week 6, Thing 14 Voice Thread: Adding to Your PLN

Spent the last 90 minutes playing around in Voice Thread and stumbled upon this one about PLNs. I was kinda excited so I joined it. Voice Thread seems like a great learning too, but I am trying to figure out how to use it with classes - especially at the high school level. Do you just have all your students join on their own? Most of the kids at our school have their own email address, although I know of a few that don't. I can't see them operating out of a teacher's account. If you are using Voice Threads at the high school level - fill me in!

Week 5, Thing 13, Google Docs

Google Docs are really amazing. Here is the special Google Docs icon I created last year for the library webpage, it is hotlinked to our District's special Google Docs account page. Last year I had instruction on Google Docs and I sat down with a few teachers and explained the concept but I it didn't really go anywhere. TEACHERS: imagine giving a group assignment (power point, reserach paper, short story, spreadsheet) and all group members could work separately on the assignment but at the same time! As long as they have internet access, they could work on it. No more emailing half of the assignment to each other and trying to come up with one working document. No more - I can't do the presentation because my partner is absent or forgot their flash drive. "Talk to me, Goose. Talk to me!"

Week 5, Thing 12, Wikis

Wikis are pretty cool. It is a way for you to post and share information and have all the others who are need to also have the ability to post and share. I created a wiki for my library webpage. It is designed as a forum for students to comment on the books they are reading. It is truly a work in progress at this point. I have only added a few genres and books, but i will be working on adding more. I need to get a trusted student/staff to help in administration so they can create some new pages.

I also made a comment on our Web 2.0 tools Wiki Sandbox. I added my Glog that I made for Week 2. I really see a lot of potential for Glogs and I am already working with a few teachers to replace traditonal posters and Power Point assignments with glogs.

Banned Books Week!

Banned Books Week: September 26th - October 3rd. Here is the display I created for our library. I used many of the books found on ALA top 100 Challenged book list. I was surprised at how many we had on hand. I also plan to post a list up by the circulation desk. Last year the students were amazed at how many of their favorite books had been challenged over the years.

Week 3, Thing 8, Comment

I made a comment on Warner's Wondering because I was specifically looking for someone who had already done a Glog - hers was great! So far, I have enjoyed Glogster most of all the new programs that we have studied.

http://warnerswonderings.blogspot.com/

Week 4, Thing 11, Wordle

I was impressed with the finding the value of a word based upon how many time it appeared in the website, article, story, etc. I made the following Wordle using the text of the US Consstitution. I find it interesting that the most prominent words are States, United and State. This would have been neat to use on the September 17th for Constitution Day. I did play around with the font and colors.

Week 4, Thing 10, Delicious

Okay - I've created my Delicious account. I didn't add much other than the bookmarks in my Favorites. I was able to Tag most of them. I really like the tag option because then I can quickly search a website I am looking for based upon the tag. I was a little put off by the use of "freshest" to describe websites - that is a term my son uses to describe shoes.