THING 13

This is a good tool and one that I want to use this school year. At my HISD elementary school, I see all the students each week on an ancillary schedule which provides the planning period for all classroom teachers. The 3 ancillary teachers (libarian, PE coach & computer teacher) did a couple of projects last year when we combined our efforts.

With the 4th grade students, we divided them into pairs and had them create a breakfast cereal (PE = research into nutrition) for which they came up with a commercial. The commercial had to feature each student in an oral presentation in English that was taped and shown. This gave our Spanish-speaking students an opportunity write in and to hear themselves speak in English.

With the 5th grade students, each was to memorize a poem or speech and was taped presenting it. They then voted on the students who did the best and these 3 performed at a program.

We have been talking about doing research projects and I believe that the bookmarking & tagging will allow us to develop a project incorporating social studies topics that can be accessed by students in different environments. I don't have a complete plan yet -- but I'm seeing it!

THING 12

OK --here I am posting about THING 12 although I really haven't completed the mission. IMPOSSIBLE, you say? Well, I guess so but something's not working for me because I don't know which "profile" to choose to that I can comment on the blogs I'm trying to follow. If anyone knows, I'd LOVE some input here.

I'm gonna start THING 12 & add to it later.

1. After reading the articles about blogging & creating communities, the 2 points that made the most sense to me are: a) One should respond creatively and thoughtfully to a blog. "Yeah!" or "You go girl," while being supportive and affirming an opinion, really do not add to the discussion which is the point of having a blog in the first place. b) I like the idea of responding to those who leave comments on one's blog. ( Which is something I would do if I knew which profile to use -- see gripe above!!) I did receive a comment about my posting on THING 11 but have been unable send my response yet. Surely, I'll figure this out.

3. I have been following 2 blogs that are not part of Library2Play. One is written by the HouChron columnist, Leon Hale. I've read his columns since I moved to Houston & am always entertained by them. The other is name Lisa's History Room and has musings about history and current events. It had a few too many entries about Michael Jackson that I didn't spend much time on but usually has interesting tidbits.

4. I have posted comments on 5 L2P blogs -- The Dancing Librarian; 2 many books 2 little time; sic em bears; Becky's 23; Book Egg. There is good information on each of these -- but following blogs is awfully time consuming. 2 many BLOGS! 2 little time!

THING 11

Now this is neat! LibraryThing may save my marriage because it looks like a wonderful way to catalog our personal library. My wonderful husband, Jim, often points out that our library is completely unorganized and he doesn't understand why since his wife is a librarian, his daughter is a librarian, and his next-door neighbor is a librarian. We really need to find a way to know what books we have. Earlier this year, we found 3 copies of the same book -- so we really need to figure this out.

Looks like LibraryThing will do it. Particularly since it can be accessed from a cell phone so that we can see if we own a particular book before we buy something.

I liked the way I can tag books, too. I have a KINDLE which I bought for my husband but he doesn't use it so I do. He has very strong ideas about NOT putting bookstores out of business. So this way, I can tell if we have a hard copy or not.

I looked at the groups -- oh, my!-- one could be overwhelmed! Crime, Thriller & Mystery is my favorite because I was able to learn when the next alphabet mystery by Sue Grafton is going to be published. I've read them all.

This was fun -- and I wasn't frustrated like I was for THING 10.

THING 10b

Well, I'm moving on. Can't get anything to go to my blog. Either the website doesn't exist or -- like WORDLE -- I can't get it to show on my blog. At least I know how to print a WORDLE which is how I'll probably use it at school anyway. I think it will be a great way to introduce -- or reinforce -- vocabulary words for science.

THING 10

Well, no, I haven't published my WORDLE yet. What am I doing wrong???

OK -- Have I done this thing? I've been trying to publish my WORDLE for hours & do not seem to be successful. So let's see if I've finally done it.

THING 9

RSS more. . . .

I think that THINGS 8 & 9 have taken more time than any of the other THINGS -- and, really, this is one of the problems w/blogs & the internet for me: I can spend hours on it & have a wonderful time but all of a sudden -- I've lost a day! Both of these assignments have been educational (is is OK to admit that I didn't know what RSS meant before I started these assignments?) but they did take a long time.

I tried to use the same topic, Windfall Exemption Provision, whenever possible in order to have consistency in using the search engines.

1) Which SEARCH tool was easiest to use? I found Bloglines and Edublog both easy to use;

2) Suprglu and Topix.net not so much. Suprglu didn't really have anything that I found helpful and Topix was too inclusive in its search.

3) The most useful one was Edublog. I added 2 blogs from it to my RSS account.

THING 8

1) RSS Time! I think this is going to be very helpful although, I fear that this will lead to the demise of the traditional newspaper delivered to my door every morning. AND I do love reading the newspaper! My husband gets his news via the internet but I've held out for paper -- at least for right now. I do like the fact that I can have GOOGLEREADER send me information on the topics in which I have interest -- particularly the Windfall Elimination Provision. This law seems so unfair to me because it limits the amount of social security payments I can receive if I choose to receive payments from the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. I keep thinking that someone will decide the schoolteachers shouldn't be punished & am grateful that Google will track this topic for me.

2) Actually, right this minute, I'm not sure how often I'll look at GOOGLE READER at school. Time is so fleeting there! But I know how to access it so can do so if I ever get caught up or bored.

3) I have to think about how RSS can be used in school. Frankly, I think that one could spend a lot of time reading blogs -- and, frequently, I find that I'm not interested in the stream-of-consciousness musing that goes on in many blogs. I've also just finished the new Michael Connelly novel, The Scarecrow, in which the bad guy figured out one character's passwords because of the information on the character's blog. Blogs are out there for the world to read.

However, I'll keep thinking about using this technology as an educational tool; often, my creativity has to perculate for a while before it kicks in!

THING 7

OK -- now I'm in love. I've known that Google was cool -- but now I know HOW cool since I have discovered PowerPoint presentations about Dewey for elementary students already on the web! And my lesson plan for Aug is ready because I have the lesson & a SMARTBoard was hung in the library during remodeling. Really neat.

AND the 2nd Google Cool Thing is maps on my phone! I'm not sure how much it will cost me to connect to the internet this way -- but I love having maps! I've got a Magellan but somehow don't always have it with me -- or charged! -- when I need to know where to go.

I'm really having a lot of fun w/this program!