Introducing Alice

This week Mr Stewart and I have introduced our plans for using digital narratives to his grade 6 language classes.
Both groups participated in a quick introduction to our Weebly website host and to blogging. The Brainpop Blogs video got a few chuckles. We looked at flickrcc and Google advanced image search for reusable, modifiable images to enhance their sites.
A letter of permission was added to the teacher site and forms have been sent home for signatures.
Instructions were given  for creating their web page.

Your new website is about reading. Create a Home page which reflects your understanding about reading and your interest in reading.
Include words and images.

We used Kist's Snowball activity to develop guidelines for blogging and commenting. Interestingly the guidelines for each class that does this acitivity are very similar.

607 Guidelines for Blogging

1. disagree respectfully (always comes out first)
2. comment with details
3. make sense and add details
4. use good English spelling, grammar and punctuation

Planning a Grade 6 Science Blog

The following assignment is a Web 2.0 adaptation of

Planet for Sale!

Part One: I am a Scientist web page

• My Science memories
• What I learned about air and flight
• My favourite Science invention
• My favourite online Science sites

Part Two: Planet for Sale Blog 

POST #1   Introduce yourself and your realty company

1. your first name
2. your company name
3. a logo for your company
4. graphics
5. date of last revision

POST # 2   Describe your planet

1. planet name
2. number planet from the sun
3. distance to earth
4. closest planet-how far?
5. interesting characteristics
6. atmosphere: temperature, weather, etc.
7. surface: crustal activity, quakes, volcanoes

POST # 3   Clearly describe the characteristics of your planet which are most appealing to buyers and explain why the features are important.


POST # 4   Clearly describe suggestions for buyer as to how they might use or enjoy the planet based on the characteristics.

POST # 5  BUY comments 
Try to buy a planet! These comments must communicate to at least 3 other sellers that you want to buy their planet. Your comments will help you find out if their planet is the one for you. Write clear comments and intelligent questions. Check back to see what their answers are.

POST # 6 SELL comments 
Sell your planet! Respond to questions and comments made by possible buyers of your planet. You want to convince them that your planet is the best choice for them to buy.Try to make a sale.


Students are encouraged to include:

• links to sites that assist in demonstrating understanding
• graphics of their own creation
• pictures from Flickrcc, Wylio.com or Google Advanced Image Search (Only images labeled for reuse)

My 3 Blogging Hats

Teaching Hat:

• engaging students in meaningful writing for authentic audiences
• student portfolio development
• literature/discussion circle
• "supports critical thinking, encouraging students to think and reflect prior to writing."(Trexler, 2010, p105)
• engaging students and teachers using technology
• allows all members of a class an equal voice
• sharing ideas and understanding
• school library blog
• student reading group blogs
• sharing passion for technology in education and school libraries
• offering PD to teachers

Learning Hat

• Personal Learning Community (without a doubt)
• professional resources available through searching credible sources
• links to new resources through the blogs I follow
• collaborate to present ideas to colleagues/followers
• using Google Reader for updates from blogs I follow
• life long learning will be up to date, relevant and accurate
• RSS feeds how did ever live without you?

Personal Hat: 

• possibly create a blog to share my interest in watercolour painting (might have to wait now I am on this journey to Web 2.0)
• developing my voice
• Should I delete my Facebook account due to a few negative experiences and focus more on blogging?
• feeling validated by repeat viewers from around the world
• I think therefore I am a blogger

Google Reader-Reading Blogs: Step Seven

Reading
Don't tell anyone...I follow my own blog on Google Reader. It is just to see how it looks when I update with new posts...but is it really? I am usually pleased to read the new post, and if I'm not it is simple to edit and update.

It was easy to find blogs to add to my list. Colleagues who read blogs willingly suggest those they follow and my TLDL instructors have offered suggestions too.  I follow some book reviewers, a number of podcasters and the blogs of my group members in TLDL Web 2.0. Presently, Joyce Valenza, Buffy Hamilton, Will Richardson, Dean Shareski, Doug Johnson, Judy O'Connell are some of my favourites.
Adding a new subscription is as easy as copying the URL from a chosen site and pasting it in the Subscribe box, clicking on the RSS button on a blog and pasting the code in the box, or searching using the Subscribe box and key words. Selection based on content and the average number of posts per week seems to make a difference. Google Reader keeps me in touch with the educational and educational technology writing of quite a few professionals in the field. I follow Google news feeds using the search terms: teacher, web 2.0 and Web 2.0, education.
Google Reader allows users to organize their feeds in folders. I have created four.

My remaining subscriptions appear alphabetically. I will need to use more files as my collection of feeds grows.
The number of unread posts is indicated beside the title of the feed or the folder. Once the updates have been read the number disappears. I enjoy finding bold numbers beside my feeds, skimming through the reading list and watching the numbers get smaller and smaller until they disappear. I have even used the Reader Play feed setting which is similar to a slide show of the feeds.No matter which setting I use I always find something I want to read more carefully.
Being Read
Clustrmaps keeps track of visitors to my blog. I am astonished to see that because I have connected Clustrmaps to Twitter the Twitter logo appears on my map when I am mentioned in a tweet.

As amazing as it seems the above chart shows the country totals of viewers of my blog between November 9 and November 16. Add my blog to your Reader and see your dot appear and help raise the numbers.

Fun with your Blog: Step Five

I am pretty sure I have a strong visual tendency and I feel that graphics enhance my blog posts by creating visual interest. I get excited by some of the silly visuals and some of the interesting graphic representations I have found online.

Robohash generates robots using your IP address:

or text:

Middle School Teacher Librarian and lifelong learner.

Voki.com creates avatars that say whatever you like. Students love to create these avatars to add to their wiki projects.

 

I wish I could embed another Clustrmap here. I was amazed and thrilled when my first red dots appeared. Check out the embedded clustrmap at the bottom of this page. Which dot are you?

Tagxedo produces joyful tag clouds using text, twitter, or blog account links. I keep finding cool

Blogging Frustrations: Step One

As a beginning blogger one of my on-going frustrations has been the school board internet filter which blocks access to any site that is blog or forum related.

December 2010 -Google's Blogger platform was initially unblocked so that is where I began my blogging path. I created a school library blog with pages for reviews, a wishlist, pathfinder links, and library news posts. I added GirlZONE (girls' reading) and BBAT (boys' reading) blogs. I thought I was off to a great start.
THEN "this site is blacklisted" started to appear when I attempted to access the sites at school in order to create posts or show students the resources I had linked to the blog. Needless to say my blogging slowed down and eventually stopped at fewer than 50 posts. I requested unblocking and was told Blogger allows adult content so it would not be unblocked and to use Edublogs.org instead. The only other possibility was to borrow the principal's override code (changed monthly) to access the site or continue school related blogging from my home computer. Unfortunately, this was an additional step I wasn't prepared to add to my attempts to blog.
September 2011-Blogger and my blogs are no longer blocked and I created a new Awesome blog to chronicle the good things that happen at our school. I was excited to continue my school library blog posts, updating and adding content upon request or need.
October 2011-A new internet filter is up and running and everything is blocked again (slight exaggeration but this time even Glogster EDU -a favourite online poster making site is blocked). Our new filter does allow use of an existing teacher username and password override and I can now easily access the blog although students do not have this ability.
 

As an aside, I agree with Davis (2011) who wrote in Cool Cat Teacher Blog: The Case for Digital Citizenship in Schools:

We have driver's education because we want to protect kids from themselves. A car is a powerful machine and can kill.Sex education cannot stop sex among teenagers but it can prevent STD's and have students take it more seriously.  

Digital citizenship education cannot STOP the headlines of people who do scarring things through improper use of their technology but I believe it can reduce them.

Digital Citizenship Education can and should take the place of internet filters.
What is happening in your schools?

Today-As you will note I am using Blogger for my Steps to Web 2.0 blog. I thought I would try Edublogs.org as recommended by our board`s technology department but was immediately frustrated during a long evening of attempting to embed my Voicethread, Autobiography of a Technology User on my Edublogs page.
I felt I knew Blogger and experienced success immediately when I embedded my Voicethread in a newly created Blogger blog.


A few additional frustrations:

1. Using two different Google accounts to access Google Reader and Google Blogger doesn't allow cross posting of sites I find through Google Reader to my blog.
2. My University of Alberta account does not support following Blogger blogs stating `this service is not available.`
3. AND the odd time I just can`t get a post to update, load, save or publish. 

Joyce Valenza: See Sally Research

I met Joyce Valenza (well I didn't really meet her) during my first TLDL course. I have been reading and enjoying her blog Never Ending Search and following new posts since last winter.
I was searching for the reference to the library as a kitchen not a grocery store when this video appeared on my desktop-not once but in every search result. See Sally Research clearly, intelligently, and simply shows us where researchers are and where libraries should be today AND beginning at 14:30 she tells us a library "is more kitchen than grocery store."

Delving Deeper into Diigo: Step Three

Updating my Diigo profile included adding a photo, my Diigo network groups and followers, a short bio and links to this blog, my YouTube channel and Twitter account as well as my top and recent tags. Access to this information through Diigo will hopefully encourage other Diigo users to follow me and increase the potential of my PLN.

I was able to search Diigo Groups using key word search terms and located groups reflecting my interests.  As a group member I am able to see statistics for these groups which indicate some have lost momentum and other groups have members who are regularly tagging and sharing. I will need to weed my list to remove groups with no activity.

I have become a member of the following groups:

Classroom 2.0
Comics for Learning
Cool Tools for Educators!
Discovery Educator Network
EdTechTalk
educators
elearning 2.0
Graphic Novels
LearningwithComputers
Let's Manga
Middle School English
Purposeful Learning Technologies
Social Bookmarking
teacher-librarians
Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0
Technology Integration in Education
Web 2.0 tools for teachers
Web2.0 at school

I have created a Diigo group which will provide sources of material for a column I will be writing for The Teaching Librarian. I am hoping to draw other teacher librarians as members and benefit from crowd-sourced material shared in my group. Berger (2010) suggests social bookmarking should be used in education because it "allows users to tap the 'collective intelligence' of the web,"(p.51) valuing more the sites tagged by more group members.

In order to access my Diigo in Education group on my home computer I added the RSS feed for this Diigo Group to my Google Reader. To encourage readers of my blog to tag, save and share my posts I added a Diigo widget to my blog.

One Diigo web service tool allows a user to automatically post Diigo links to a blog daily or weekly. Or users can post an enhanced linkroll which will feed recent bookmarks and annotations to a blog. It is HTML code and can be embedded to the blog layout or to a post.

My Diigo

Digging Diigo : Step One

In Curriculum 21 (Jacobs, 2010), Jacobs discusses the need for multiple associations by professionals in education within a school (p.71) and Wilmarth contributes that "Digital social networks may be the biggest game changer in learning and what it means to be educated."(p.85)  Learning by both students and teachers will change extensively. Social bookmarking encourages multiple global associations and keeps us connected.  Diigo is a digital social network where learning occurs as "connections are being made within the tagging community membership."(Berger, p.45)

  Diigo= Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff.

Although I have only put Diigo to limited use it has offered me an opportunity to access professional development through the groups I belong to. I joined Diigo with a free account in February 2011 and added the default Diigo toolbar to my browser. I have shared many of my finds with teachers at my school and teacher-librarian colleagues using the save and send feature. I have introduced Diigo to one grade 8 teacher who required his class to collect, annotate and share research for a Body Systems assignment.  I have used the capture feature to add content from web pages to this blog. But that is it!

Reviewing Diigo tutorials online gave me some insight into Diigo tools I had not investigated.

• follow other Diigo users
• add options to my Diigo toolbar
• follow more education, library and technology groups
• edit my profile -add a photo, my blog link, about me, why I use Diigo
• consciously tag each item
• highlight and capture as well as bookmark pages of interest
• bookmark, tag and share with my groups
• add the RSS feed for a group to my Google Reader
• add a Diigo widget to my blog

I have been anticipating digging more deeply and improving my understanding of Diigo uses and as a result opening "the door to new ways of organizing, classifying,and sharing Web content while also encouraging student and faculty collaboration and higher order thinking."(Berger, 2010, p.45)

We are not going back!

This post on the blog Hey Jude: learning in an online world caught my Teacher-librarian eye. 
Teacher librarians are important.
I especially liked this image:

Image cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photoshared by mikefisher821

But, more importantly these words:

"Be sure you are understand online learning environments and the extra-ordinary potential of the social-media mind. Be sure you are involved with and present new ways and new information strategies to your teachers when working within the curriculum and the full knowledge dimension of learning. Be sure you bring with you a full understanding of information literacy and information fluency as the underpinning of all that you do."

GOOD NEWS!

Happily, I am able to report that yesterday I successfully negotiated with my principal and opened a Campus account to allow 750 students and 30 teachers access to Weebly for class websites and blogs. We are not going back!

My 3 Podcasting Hats

My Learning:

-follow episodes of TED Education, The Audacity to Podcast, and Clever Sheep
-unlimited possibilities for professional development (if I only had an ipod)

Teaching:
-engage auditory learners

-alternate presentation task

-read aloud books for English Language Learners and add to library blog
-enlist students to read aloud for school library podcasts

-engaging students in learning through use of Web 2.0 audio files

-sharing with parents
-presently collaborating with a grade 8 teacher to produce podcasts for water issues project (6 more microphones are on my shopping list)

Personal:
-send audio messages to friends and family

-promote my storytelling as a business

-add 'think aloud' podcasts to my artist website

-blog posts as audio files

Thinglink in your Future: Step Four

This new tool, Thinglink has created interest in education and technology blogs alike. We read about Valenza's experience "...annotating and enriching (a poster) with presentations, documents, and media from school library programs all over the country."  
Van Grove (2011) presents Thinglink on the Mashable site. "Thinglink changes how people interact with photos by transforming them into a navigational surface for search, commerce, and social connection."  It's tagging allows users to create new experiences for viewers of their image by simple addition of links to a variety of media.

Thinglink is easily added to blogs and web pages. It links sound, video, social networks, and web pages to digital images. The possibilities for professional use and for uses in the classroom are limitless. Baumbach lists 21 + Interesting uses for Thinglink in a Google doc presentation and illustrates some uses on auntytechideas . |I can't wait to introduce Thinglink to my colleagues and my students. 

The only concern I can see is the use of Thinglink in school boards where internet filters block personal websites and blog hosting sites as the tool must be embedded on a web page or blog.

Embracing a lack of knowledge

My Web 2.0 experience, although more than many of my generation is very limited. In the past I produced a number of school library web sites for the students at my middle school; the first used a template on a free site especially for teachers. Following professional development where I learned to use Dreamweaver MX I created another short-lived website. In early 2009 I attended the Ontario Library Association (OLA) Superconference and heard Will Richardson’s keynote address. I purchased Richardson’s (2009) book, Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms and avidly read the book, sticky-noting pages as I went. I marked pages referring to students “becoming ‘experts”...by using blogs”, (p. 32)  “Getting started with blogging...is not difficult”, (p. 44) setting up an aggregator: “I would suggest Google Reader”, (p. 73) “RSS is a powerful, flexible tool that I think will be changing our information gathering habits for years to come”, (p. 83) and podcasting; “easy to create, they are easy to consume as well”. (p. 111) Overwhelming to a teacher-librarian with limited access to the computer lab and therefore little experience with or opportunity to use these tools the book sat close by and untouched once the initial effect of the experience faded. Inspired by another OLA Superconference session where the presenter referred us to connecting educaton.com, and I read further about “portability (netbooks) & cloud computing (Google Apps)”, (Nevin, n.d.) I purchased five netbooks and by Fall 2010 had twelve netbooks and a wireless connection in the school library.

This YouTube video shows Nevin explaining how he set up netbooks and cloud computing in his school.     

I embraced my lack of knowledge and began to investigate the potential of Web 2.0 in my school. In October 2010 I registered my first blog @ Lougheed Library. Although the site has been intermittently blocked and unblocked by the board of education I promoted it and published some posts and a few pages. I introduced a library blog for girl readers and a blog for boys and have recently added The look of awesome @ Lougheed, a blog mimicking 1000 awesome things. With the arrival of the netbooks and a wireless connection I was able to encourage some teachers to come to the library to use Web 2.0 tools for podcasts using Audacity, for glogs using Glogster Edu and wikis on pbworks. My personal journey has included creating many wikis, a couple of glogs, and subscribing to Will Richardson’s  and other educator’s blogs using Google reader.

I have been lucky to be joined on my path by a colleague who is also registered in the University of Alberta Teacher Librarianship- distance learning program of the Master of Education Degree. We have been sharing web tools and web sites of interest and have decided to create a blog to lead teachers and teacher-librarians into the 21^st century. We value the tools and the journey and hope that we will be able to encourage others to engage in Web 2.0 experiences. This inquiry project and blog will provide the opportunity for me to learn more regarding the tools I have read about and explore in more depth the tools that have piqued my interest. I hope to become comfortable enough to model and provide training in Web 2.0 tools.