Consider the following questions:

What was the most useful tool you discovered through this class?

Delicious is an every day tool I can to publish relevant web sites quickly and efficiently for students and teachers. Google Reader is a great organizational tool I can use every week too.

What was the least useful tool you discovered through this class?

Jon Canfield is a featured photographer for Photodex. Students in photograpy class will begin studying landscapes this week.

One of my tech-goals is to introduce teachers and students to new services and resources that will enhance and enrich learning. I try to ‘gather the goods’ and then de-mystify use and application. I focus on easy access and integration of resources and materials students and teachers can use at school. YouTube is blocked – as well as My Space and FaceBook. Some sites require too much bandwidth – and load too slowly at school.

Teacher Tube – is free and accessible from school PCs plus it offers wide variety of instructional videos and student presentations. In this short presentation you can learn how to save your PPT slides as *.jpg files, upload them into PhotoStory, add your narration and background music – and save the whole presentation as a movie. I find movie files load faster and easier in Edline than PPT slides. The format seems more appealing as well.
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=8b00b943b2af4d7d8aa4

Voice Thread – is an free interesting service with options to upload slides, movies, handouts in various file formats, collaborating and commenting , even ‘doodling’ – I found it useful for ‘how-to’ presentations for students. Having the option to narrate – EBSCO’s LRC – http://voicethread.com/share/42010/ or provide text narrative – Twayne’s Authors Series – http://voicethread.com/share/37727/gives some versatility.

VeoTag – http://www.veotag.com is free. They seem to be marketing more to business, but the tools are great. VeoTag offers free video uploads, interesting caption and title features.
VeoTag is good for performances, lessons, lectures, special events, interviews. I wish I had more time to work with this toolkit.
Music in Our Schools – Gospel Choir performance Wade in the Water
http://www.veotag.com/player/?u=vtiwcmsnib
Student Presentations look good in the VeoTag flash media player. Still Life Photography Exhibit – captures exemplary work and comments on rubric for an assignment;
http://www.veotag.com/player/?u=uvoktwhiwt

Students enjoy reporting about news and events around the school. Although I still enjoy producing television shows for the local cable folks to broadcast – the versatility of digital video is great for teaching and communicating with students and parents. PhotoStory and Moviemaker are installed on most PCs and are easy to use. Here’s a short student news broadcast.

http://www.veotag.com/player/?u=rwutikhbwe

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=51aeb480ecbd988cd8cc

I’m not sure if the link appeared in any pages or articles – We’ve read and reviewed  quite a collection of material. Teacher Tube has some very interesting videos.

The web sites Kathy recommended have ideas for design and suggestions for application. I clicked deeper and deeper into the library sites and lost track of time. I then tried to focus on the school library sites.

The Montrcrief Library drew my attention – especially the wiki pages designed to explore and explain the online databases, many similar to MBLC/SEMLS offerings. Since the EBSCO Literary Reference Center is a recent addition to the statewide databases, I was interested to read the comments :

“This database is kind of hard to use because not all of the information is easy to get to. Also, there are not many search features that allow you to find the kind of article you are looking for. However, the glossary feature helps make this database easier to use. I think this database would be most helpful in a literature class or in a class where the student needs to learn the history behind authors and their works.” 9/25/06

Twelve revisions are noted but none includes reference to “Advanced Search” – an essential feature for students to master and utilize, particularly when they begin to gather appropriate and relevant sources for a literary paper. Our juniors complete a literary research paper about an American writer. Most English teachers do not accept book reviews or general biographical sources, but direct students to select literary criticism. The Advanced Search feature is extremely important to maximize use of EBSCO’s LRC. The concept of wiki pages to explain and explore databases is relevant for a school library, but designers should be careful to include all essential features. Most of the Montcrief wiki pages are dated 2006 and seem to be repetitive in design – almost as if an assignment was given an a ‘deadline’ had to be met. Sometimes ‘less is more’…too many wikis might overwhelm the patrons. Interesting – Grandview Library wikis – included in “Make Way for Wikis”  is also among the examples of library wikis. The grade 3 library wikis are ‘cleared’ at the beginning of each school year, so teachers and students can begin a fresh look at these research topics. This seems to be a good idea, especially at the elementary level (http://www.grandviewlibrary.org/ThirdGradeWikis.aspx )  The design and content of the library page is simultaneously inviting and organized. I would like to ‘work a wiki’ with the project organizers, and I would certainly love to hear Mrs. Chauncey read a story! Web 2.0 tools – wikis among them – enhance the librarian’s palette to create an information-literacy landscape for students and teachers. 

Connecting and integrating all the Web 2.0 tools will be a challenge. In school libraries -where most librarians work alone without support staff – selecting a specific project might be a good place to test a wiki.

Since I am always looking for ways to streamline research and writing for students – I adopted the template of a Pageflakes current science pagecast from The Unquiet Library. I collected some relevant RSS feeds to magazines and journals – and arranged these on a pagecast.

http://www.pageflakes.com/cronan/25008282

I tested the feeds and discovered the school web filtering software is blocking parts of the pages. I’ve sent the pagecast to science teachers to review – and if they approve of the RSS feeds I will post the pagecast at the library site after ‘unblocking’ is complete. Working with the RSS feeds was new for me, but I like the potential these have for current events. The EBSCO LRC offers an RSS for searches, so I will test this feature. RSS is another tool with great potential – so I need to explore more feeds and develop ways to incorporate these.

Flickr has been integrated into the Photography course for three years. The photostream for the class and the sets provide students a peek at exemplary work from previous semesters as well as links to master photographers and amateurs. Students maintain Flickr and Glogster accounts to store and publish their photographs. Students view the work of their peers and provide comments. Karen Hughes and I are collaborating to design more Flickr and Glogster projects for students in Photography.

Last spring I created a Goodreads account and started to upload some books I had recommended to patrons – students and faculty.   I need to explore the tools and features of Goodreads further to maximize its use.

my ‘read’ shelf:

Library Thing has some amazing tags. I chose to create a new books list first. The site is easy to use, easy to read and offers options for information and format. I will probably return to LT as time allows. http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ChristineRonan

• Start out with some reading and then go to Delicous to create an account:
  http://delicious.com/cronan I discovered some very interesting sites to add. Delicious is easy to use and integrate into school library web resources. 
• Check out Kathy’s tags and learn from others :
  http://delicious.com/kmlussier  You can get lost reading, and reading more, going deeper into sites and articles.  I found ideas for Flickr-ing and using other Web 2.0 tools.
• Move on to Technorati – exploring some folksonomies.
  Review, re-read – hope my head does not explode. Technorati was not as user-friendly, still not semls20 tags.  I would need more practice here. 

I am looking forward to reading the articles and the comments about them….CFR 

Milton High School Library

‘The more you read, the more you know.’ 

https://www.edline.net/pages/Milton_High_School/Library