YouTube - Confession Time!

OK..I am almost addicted to YouTube!!!  Oh my goodness, people can create the funniest darn things and post them up there for all the world to see!  Let me tell you about one of them....

Every year on Christmas Eve, my family hosts a come/go Christmas get-together.  Folks come from all around, we have more food than we know what to do with, and the evening ends (for most of the folks) once the fireworks (illegal, of course, but so much fun!) are finished.  HOWEVER, once everyone has gone home, and we've cleaned up the house, our family all gathers round the piano and we sing Christmas carols.  Years ago, I made a booklet that has the words to about 50 songs in there and we just go through and everyone calls out songs, I play them, and we sing until we get tired.  But, our next-to-the-last song of the night, every single year since we started this tradition, is "The Twelve Days of Christmas."  Because there's always 12 or more of us, we all get a "day" and when it's our turn, we must act out that day, as best as we can.  It is downright hilarious and one year, my brother secretly videotaped it and posted it on YouTube.  Of course, the quality is not the best, because the camera was hidden behind his big butt most of the time, but the end result was fantastic!!!The video alone was funny enough, but the comments that viewers posted were even better!!!  Sadly though, I will not tell you how to find it, only that it's there.  Ha ha!!!

However, I will give you the link to one I posted last month as part of the Google Academy for Administrators application.  I did not get in, but it was fun to see mine up on YouTube, even though it's not great at all...obviously, or I would have made it into the academy!  Still, if you want to see it, the link is:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzALw84QFEE.  Once again, not top-quality, but for my first attempt, it'll do.

I see huge potential for electronic book trailers....look at what a movie trailer can do...why not harness that power and use it for the good of books!!!!  If I had my wish, I'd love for all the elementary librarians to take ONE of the 2010/2011 TBA nominees and make a 1 - 2 minute electronic book trailer about it (I'd take #20 so they could all be done) and then we'd make a page for them to be accessed started in the fall of 2010.  What do y'all say??? 

~kiera

Online Apps and Tools

OK...I admit, I did deviate a bit from the assignment.  I've been working with one of our IT Specialists to create a Google Apps class for summer and decided instead of spending time with ZoHo Writer, that I would use this post to focus on what I learned about Google Apps, to me, the ULTIMATE in online apps and tools!

Google is phenomenal...the fact that they can put such high-quality information out there FOR FREE, is mind boggling.  When I think of what they could be making if they charged for even half of the features in Google Apps, I cannot even count all the zeros!  If you haven't had a chance to look at them, now's a great place in the modules to do so.  However, in the interest of time, I'm going to only talk about two of them - Google Docs and Google Labs.

Google Docs is a "place" where folks can collaborate online, provide instant feedback, work on documents as a group, etc.  In the spirit of learning to work with Google Docs, I decided to place a document up there and direct some colleagures of mine to the spot where they can suggest changes, modify as they see fit, and post comments.  I am eagerly awaiting the exchange of information that we can do via the computer, instead of trying to find one time we can all get together to discuss it.

Google Labs is a playground for the folks at Google to experiement with new and upcoming ideas.  If you go to the site, you'll see some items still in beta and others that have been approved and are being rolled out at a slower pace.  Check out Google Swirl, Google Goggles, and Google Squared, three of my favorite playground pieces.   Web address is http://www.googlelabs.com/ and of course, everything is free!!!

Web 2.0 - Where to start?

CHEESY POST....IF "CHEESY" BOTHERS YOU, STOP READING NOW!!!

I would have loved to have been able to look at every site that they showed, but time doesn't permit.  However, the Web 2.0 I chose was actually an honorable mention site, not a winner, but it was one that I heard about in a workshop last week.  The site is One Sentence - True Stories, told in One Sentence and the address is http://www.onesentence.org/.  As I read some of them, which ranged from hilarious as all get-out to downright chilling, I wondered if I could do that.  Could I write my life's story in one sentence?  Would it be possible to boil everything down to a few words?  I highly doubted it, but felt I had to give it a try.  But, instead of focusing on my whole life, I felt it best to focus on one part of it - my family.  Here goes.....

Seven children minus two parents, rest their souls, equals togetherness.

I know, kinda cheesy, but a microcosm of our family's story.  When I look back to how far we've come, and what we've managed to accomplish since my mom passed away in 1995, I am blown away.  I am proud that all seven of us have college degrees (earned with much blood, sweat and tears), are fiercely active in church, and can still manage to all get together and have a good time.  It's also good to know that we've got each other's backs, even if we don't agree all the time.  We were blessed with great parents, better than any of us deserved, but didn't realize their greatness until they were gone.

So, not much education-wise, but http://www.onesentence.org/ is a Web 2.0 tool and I can see unlimited uses in creative writing assignments, book reports, etc.   

TCEA Time-Out

OK...before I go any further in HEB23, I think I ought to share some of the fabulous new stuff (just three little things!) I learned at the TCEA (Texas Computer Educator's Association) conference last week...maybe we can turn these into HEB23 - Part 2!!!  (Just kidding...well, maybe not!)

My favorite website of all has to be Blabberize - the address is http://www.blabberize.com/.  You can select an animal, person, object, etc., and then record a message and the thing "speaks" it back to you.  I did one of Bart Simpson about our meeting this past Wednesday, but was too embarassed at my version of his voice that I couldn't play it for y'all.  Still, I think it would be hugely fun to have the kids make commercials about the library, new books, important dates, etc., using Babberize - trust me, it's a huge attention-getter!

The second thing that blew my mind was learning what a GLOG is...not a blog, a glog.  The web address is http://www.edu.glogster.com/ and the potential for student and teacher creativity here is amazing.  Try using this with book reports, instead of a video or a standard paper/pencil report, and you've got something totally cool and awesome.  Introduce your kiddos to this site by letting them do a "Who I Am" glog all about themselves.  The possibilities and endless and oh-so-fun!

My last site to share is called Seat Gurus and the web address is http://www.seatguru.com/.  This website has the seating information on almost every commercial plane out there and if you are trying to find which seats are the best on a plane (furthest/closest from/to the restroom, close to exits, nearest the galley, etc.), then you need to check this one out!  When you book your next flight, before you pick your seats, if you have that option with your airline/booking agency, open another browser winder and see what the Seat Gurus suggest...there were so many things I had never thought of that come into play when choosing a seat on a plane. 

I'll stop here because no one will probably even read/comment on my fun sites, but I did learn so much at TCEA and like Brenda said in one of her posts last week, our jobs are not disappearing, they are expanding.  We need to broaden our minds at the same time.

Wiki Woman...

Sorry...we've just gotten into this thing in our Friday meetings when someone says something that can be related to a song, we all burst out singing!  It's become quite funny and some are really quite a stretch, but it does keep us entertained when the meetings go 4 and 6 hours!!!  (Someone PLEASE tell me they know the song I referenced in my post's title!!!)

Anyhow, all of that to say, I love wikis!!!!  I can so see how they can be used in the classroom and in the library.  Just listing favorites as a way to get to know your students, creating pathfinders for research in the library and in the classroom, and I love, love, love, love, love the Library Success, best practice wiki.  It seems like they are a great place to bounce ideas off of your colleagues and to gain knowledge and information from all over the world!!!

We live in a wiki world...we need to embrace it!

And come on, don't just post two things about yourself on the HEB23 Fave Things Wiki, be brave and answer them all...I did!!! And I love seeing what everyone else writes as well.  So far, no comments on my "favorite animal", but I know Mari hasn't gotten to the module yet! 

Del.icio.us - Tasting a little better

OK...to be fair, I needed to try and set up a delicious account and spend a little more time before passing such a harsh judgement.  Sooooooo, I went in and created http://delicious.com/heb23 which has a link to all of our blogs in it, plus a few others that George has created and tagged.

See if you can add to the "heb23" tag and let's keep the list growing and growing.  I could have added more tags to it (web 2.0, moodle, etc.), but I thought I'd save those fun tags for others.

Go forth and tag it!

Del.icio.us - Not so very much to me....

I have spent many hours exploring Del.icio.us, but haven't found it living up to all of the hype that came with it.  Sure, it is a great resource for finding a lot of the same information in one place, but then again, so is Google!  The thing that drives me the most insane is the tagging....I searched for everything in a "Web 2.0" tag, and found everything from Sketchpad to Digg to Web 2.0 Suicide Machine to bildu.net: Zure laster-markak gorde, elkarbanatu eta etiketatu, whatever the heck that means!

While I can see potential for tagging and social bookmarking, the reign is too wide right now for me.  I need a little more definition of the tag and some filters in place to more carefully regulate what goes into one bookmark.   I guess what I'm saying is that the tags are not specific enough for me and if I were gutsy enough to set up one, it would be very specific to whatever research topic I was working on in the library or something of specific interest to me.

All in all, Del.icio.us it not so delicious, but that's just my opinion.  Worth absolutely nothing....