Saturday, January 2, 2010

#21 Summarize your thoughts about this program on your blog



Congratulations!! You’ve reached the 23rd thing. Give yourself a pat on the back for completing the program.

Please give us your feedback on your experience by completing this online survey and by reflecting on your learning journey by posting a few thoughts. Here are some questions to prompt you:
  1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
  2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
  3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
  4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
  5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? If so, check out Discovering Assistive Technology.
  6. How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote Classroom Learning 2.0 learning activities? 
We hope this is not the end of our learning journey together, but the start of something amazing …such as:
  • maintain your blog as your educational journal
  • add your blog URL to your e-mail signature line
  • re-purpose it as your classroom blog
  • share it with your colleagues and administrators

#20 Explore eBooks & Audio eBooks



For this Thing, you will explore where you can get free ebooks and get an idea of the types of titles you can find here. Take a look around and locate a few titles of interest. Many school and public libraries have audiobook and ebook collections, so check what they have in their collections. Audiobooks are popular for ELL and Special Education students, as well as commuters who enjoy a good story during a long ride. There are a number of commercial audiobook and ebook sources, and many of these companies have exhibits at library and other educational conferences.

Discovery Exercise:
  1. Explore World EBook Fair' site for FREE downloads from the Gutenberg Project. Also just explore the site - there's much to check out.
  2. Create a blog post about your findings.
Discovery Resources:
  • LibriVox, audiobook versions of copyright-free books from the Gutenberg Project. Read by volunteers. Started in August 2005 by Hugh McGuire. Check it out!
  • British Library Online Gallery includes digitized original classics. An audio feature allows a visitor to have the book read aloud. Don't miss the original version of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures Under Ground. Mozart's Musical Diary includes 75 audio excerpts. Take the tour and encourage your students and colleagues to do so too! This resource is AMAZING.
  • Check out this site, too: "Best Places to Get Free Books"
  • Don’t forget to ask your school librarian for local and on-line audio book resources. Many school libraries offer the ‘core’ novels in e-book and/or audio formats.
  • And...your local public library. Does it have eBook and audioBook collections? 

#19 Podcasts: iPod not required


The word podcast is used to refer to a non-musical audio or video broadcast that is distributed over the Internet. What differentiates a podcast from regular streaming audio or video is that the delivery method for podcasts is often done automatically through RSS.

In 2005, "podcast" was named the "word of the year" by New Oxford American Dictionary and with the growth of podcasting over the last year and a half; it’s easy to see why. Podcasts take many forms, from short 1-10 minutes commentaries (like the ones used in this Learning 2.0 program) to much longer in person interviews or panel group discussions. There’s a podcast out there for just about every interest area and the best part about this technology is that you don’t have to have an iPod or a MP3 player to access them. Since podcasts use the MP3 file format, a popular compressed format for audio files, you really just need a PC (or portal device) with headphones or a speaker.

iTunes, the free downloadable application created by Apple is the directory finding service most associated with podcasts, but if you don’t have iTunes installed there are still plenty of options.

For this discovery exercise participants are asked to take a look at some popular podcast directory tools. Do some exploring on your own and locate a podcast that is of interest to you. Once found, you can easily pull the RSS feed into your blog reader (i.e., Bloglines or Google Reader) account as well, so that when new casts become available you’ll be automatically notified of their existence.

Podcasts have great potential for the classroom. Creating ‘radio’ requires students to write ‘visually’ so that the listener can ‘see’ the action without the use of pictures. Creating podcasts can meet many of the language arts standards that require concise language, interviewing, speaking and listening and research. Be sure to include your Teacher-Librarian when you create lessons requiring research and steps necessary to teaching information gathering skills.

Discovery Exercise:
  1. Take a look at one or two of the podcast directories listed and see if you can find a podcast that interests you. See if you can find some interesting educational podcasts here like book reviews or educational podcasts.
  2. Add the RSS feed for a podcast to your blog reader account.
  3. Create a blog post about your discovery process. Did you find anything useful here?

Discovery Resources:
Curriculum Connections:

  1. Idea #1: Interview candidates for local office, or town officials about top issues in your community. Air their interviews alongside those of students.
  2. Idea #2: Create a daily school news podcast, including an issue of the day such as copyright/music downloading/file sharing, Internet safety tips, or newest web 2.0 applications. School news podcasts can include jokes, stories, a daily history fact, puzzles, and other fun items of interest to students. Don't forget student surveys such as: Should we have a dress codes; Should the school sell sodas or reinforce a healthy food policy; How many hours of homework should there be each week day?
  3. Idea #3: Language Learners [English Language Learners or Foreign Language Learners] can interview each other in their chosen language. Student can then listen to the interviews in class and translate, or discuss, or continue the conversation. You could make this a ‘round robin’ conversation with the recorder going around the whole class and everyone contributing.
  4. Idea #4: Create oral history podcasts. Allow students to take home voice recorders to tape family members stories.
  5. Idea #5: Create a tour of the school for new students. This is an excellent job for an activities / leadership class.
Do you want to learn how to be a podcaster ? Here are optional resources for those who want to learn to create podcasts:

1. Beginners guide to Podcasts & Creating Podcasts 
2. How to podcast tutorial

#18 Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos



Within the last two years online video hosting sites have exploded allowing users to easily upload and share videos on the web. Among all the web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog serving up over 1 million video views a day and allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also embed clips into their own sites easily.




While most of you are already familiar with YouTube, take the time to do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find everything from 1970s TV commercials and 60s music videos to library dominos

  See also:
Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer. :)

Discovery Exercises:

  1. Explore YouTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
  2. Create a blog post about your experience. What did you like or dislike about the site and why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any features or componets of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites?
  3. OPTIONAL: Try placing the video inside your blog using the copy and paste code for the "Embeddable Player.” Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.
Discovery Resources:
Other popular video hosting sites:
NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light Internet usage times.

#17 Check out LibraryThing


Are you a booklover at heart? Do you enjoy finding lost and forgotten gems on the shelf to read? Then LibraryThing may be just the tool for you. Developed for booklovers, this online tool not only allows you to easily create an online catalog of your own, it also connects you to other people who have similar libraries and reading tastes. Add a book to your catalog by just entering the title or connect with other users through your similar reading tastes. There are lots of ways to use LibraryThing. You can even view your books on a virtual shelf, add a widget to display titles that are in your catalog, or install a LT Search box on your blog.

Not just for personal collections, classrooms  have started using LibraryThing as well. “Small libraries are using LibraryThing to catalog their collections. Libraries are using the LibraryThing widget on their web pages to recomend books and list new titles.”  Being a non-commercial site makes LibraryThing a good option for classrooms.

So why not join the ranks and create your own library online. With over 95,000 registered users  and 6.7 million books cataloged, you’re bound to discover something new.

Discovery Exercises:

  1. Take a look around LibraryThing and create an account.
  2. Add a least 5 books to your library.
  3. Other social book sites to explore are Shelfari and GoodReads.  Check them out too!
  4. Blog about your findings and be sure to link to your LibraryThing catalog. How popular were your books? Did you find any discussions about your favorites?
Discovery Resources:

Curriculum Connections:

  1. Idea #1: Have your students count all the books in their house (see Curriculum Connection idea for THING #16), then create a LibraryThing catalog of at least 25 books.
  2. Idea #2: Students could create a LibraryThing catalog of your classroom library. This is also a great way to teach organization skills, sorting, cataloging, etc. You can have the students decide how to best organize those materials. Have your school teacher-librarian help explain why libraries catalog using the Dewey System. Create alternative systems and see how they work. This assignment can work at all grade levels; just create your lesson around the skill and ‘big idea’ level you’d like to work with. This lesson could also be used with CD titles. [In the old days, we used records for this assignment!]

#16 Take a look at online productivity tools (word processing, spreadsheets, and more)


One major benefit to web-based applications is that they eliminate the need to worry about different software versions or file types as you email documents or move from PC to PC. Another bonus is that they easily accommodate collaboration by allowing multiple users to edit the same file (with versioning) and provide users the ability to easily save and convert documents as multiple file types (including HTML and pdf). And, you can even use many of these tools, such as Zoho Writer and Google Docs  to author and publish posts to your blog. Another new free and open productivity suite is OpenOffice.com.

It’s this type of integration with other Web 2.0 tools that also makes web-based apps so appealing. For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at a web-based word processing tool called Zoho Writer, create a simple document and then document your discoveries in your blog. If you are up to the challenge, you might even export your document as an HTML file or publish it through Zoho to your blog. With Zoho and web-based applications, the possibilities are endless.

Discovery Exercises:
  1. Create a free account for yourself in Zoho Writer
  2. Explore the site and create a test document or two.
  3. Try out Zoho Writer’s features and create a blog post about your discoveries.Optional: If you’re up for the challenge, try using Zoho’s publish options to post to your blog.* Note: You can also explore Google Docs, Google's online word processing, as an option for this exercise.
  4. Check out the Google Sites tutorial.
  5. If you’re up for the challenge, try using Zoho’s publish options to post to your blog.
* Note: You can also explore Google Docs (formerly known as Writely), Google's online word processing, as an option for this exercise. All these tools keep getting better and better.
BTW: Here’s a Zoho-created document (viewable as a webpage) about some of the beneficial features of Zoho.

 Discovery Resources:

 A short list of web-based productivity applications – Note: This list was authored in ZohoWriter and exported as HTML. Try OpenOffice.org -- it is ideal for using with netbooks because you can be productive without being online.

Curriculum Connections:
  1. Idea #1: Have your students count all the books in their house (not including cook books.) Have them sort them by type (fiction/nonfiction, mystery, sports, subject, size, color -- their choice) and list these on a spreadsheet. [Note: you may want to limit the books to 200.] This could yield a powerful picture of student access to reading materials, especially if looked at statewide or districtwide. Compare the results with district, school, or classroom overall literacy levels.
  2. Idea #2: Use Zoho for class assignments. This makes it easy to work on materials anywhere!
[Note: Remember to include  THING# in your heading posts.]

#15 Add an entry to "Sandbox" Wiki



A sandbox is a term that wikis often use to describe the area of the website that should be used for pure play so for this discovery and exploration exercise, go to the sandbox portion of the California Classroom 2.0 Curriculum Connections wiki -- go ahead and play! The magic password is "cl2.0"

Discovery Exercises:
  1. Visit the California Classroom Curriculum Connections wiki and go to the section devoted to one or more of the topics covered in the 9 weeks of the Classroom Learning 2.0 course.
  2. Create a post in your blog about the experience. How might you use wikis?
Discovery Resources:

· PB Works Tips


As a public document, teachers are often concerned about using wikis for classroom discussions or notetaking. There is also concern about kids who post inappropriately. You can assign students numbers or login names [or let them choose their own] so that you can keep track of who is contributing to the discussion. As teacher, you have the power to moderate what goes on. Make sure that you receive an e-mail notice whenever there is a new addition to the wiki. This way you can maintain a useful and appropriate wiki. The following ideas can be used for any subject.


Curriculum Connection:
  1. Idea #1: Select one of your favorite curriculum ideas from your own blog. "Copy and paste" it to the California Classroom 2.0 Curriculum Connections wiki or the curriculum blog created for your group. Remember, the magic password is "cl2.0"
  2. Idea #2: Create a “kid-o-pedia.” Make a kids ‘Wikipedia’ with fun facts. Make sure that every fact is checked and verified and cited. This can be done with as a Language Arts assignment and each page can be a different content area. [i.e., Science fun facts or American History fun facts] or it can be a specific content area [i.e., Physical Science – with each page a different set of facts.] These facts can be extra credit and can be used for other assignments or you can allow students to use these facts on their test.
*NOTE: The Classroom 2.0 Curriculum Connections wiki was created using the free version of the Bay Area based PBWorks, a tool that lets you create webpages that anyone can edit.

#14 Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that educators use them



A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. The popularity of these tools is exploding.

Some of the benefits that make the use of wikis so attractive are:

  • Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit, or delete content.
  • Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.
  • Earlier versions of a page can be rolled back and viewed when needed.
  • Users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.
As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, schools and libraries all over the country have begun to use them to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, conference wikis and best practices wikis.  Most wiki sites offer both free and for fee access, depending on your needs.  One of the most popular sites is pbworks (formerly known as pbwiki).



Discovery Exercises:

  1. For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at some school and library wikis and blog about your findings. Here are a few examples to get you started:
    Educational Wikis
    Book Lovers Wiki - developed by the Princeton Public Library..
    Sample school wiki
    Sample Literary Circle Wiki (10th Grade English)
    Sample AP World History Wiki
    pbwiki for educators

  2. Create a blog post about your findings. What did you find interesting? What types of applications within libraries and schools might work well with a wiki?
Discovery Resources:
Use these resources to learn more about wikis.
Curriculum Connections:
Wikis can be made for any classroom!

  1. Idea #1: Collaborative note-taking. Everyone pitches in and adds a fact or two about a topic. Teachers can encourage students to include opinions, challenges, and appropriate criticism. Students would then write essays using only these notes. Make sure that each addition includes a citation to website, book, or database, including page numbers so that it can be checked.
  2. Idea #2: History. Students can compile a wiki of famous artists, architects, writers, and other key historical figures from a city, state, or country.
  3. Idea #3: Create a "top 10" lists and supporting material. This could include scientists and their discoveries, top writers and their books, ... you get the idea.
  4. Idea #4: Mission trading cards (see Week 3), once completed, could be added to a class wiki.
    So what's in a wiki? Find out by doing some exploring on your own.
[Note: Please remember to include  THING# in your heading posts.]

#13 Copyright, Creative Commons, and What’s Coming Down the Web 2.0 Road



Putting the ‘social’ into social networks allows us to freely exchange information. But with the free exchange of information comes the responsibility of how we share it, and how we give credit to the author of that information. Check out this video, “A Fair(y) Use Tale” and learn some history of copyright.



In the school library and classroom, we are often faced with the copyright challenges of when it is acceptable to copy something and how much of an item [book, website, music etc] we can copy. Faced with declining budgets and little time, we are tempted to go ahead and make the copies. But with the advent of file sharing, downloading and RSS, we must acknowledge and teach the ethics of information gathering and sharing.

Creative Commons is a copyright license that allows us to choose to share our intellectual property. This course is designed under a Creative Commons license and is an example of how one can take a piece of information or a product and re-work it to make it fit your needs. By acknowledging the original authors, they have given permission for you to share. Check out this slideshare called What Every Educator Needs to Know by Rodd Lucier (from the Clever Sheep website).  This explains how the Creative Commons got started, how to use it, and what sites allow you to access works tagged with the Creative Commons license.  It is also a great example of an audio slideshare.


Discovery Exercise:

 Read two or three of the perspectives on Classroom 2.0 from the list below. Create a blog post about your thoughts on any one of these 3: Classroom 2.0 - It's many things to many people. What does it mean to you? What does it mean for schools?

Discovery Resources:

    * Online copyright comic book developed by students at Duke University Law School
    * Creative Commons website
    * “Wanna Work Together?” YouTube video about Creative Commons
    * California Technology Assistance Project, Region IV cybersafety website. See Piracy.
    * The Horizon Report: educational technology trends in higher education. "Must" reading!
    * Did You Know 4.0 (update to "Shift Happens" video)

We hope you're enjoying all the exercises you've done so far. Keep having fun exploring and thinking about Web 2.0/ClassroomLearning 2.0

Friday, January 1, 2010

#12 Learn about tagging and discover Del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site)

Tagging is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content (webpages, pictures, & posts). Unlike traditional library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines (e.g., Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data in any way they want.

In the past few weeks, we’ve already explored one site – Flickr - that allows users to take advantage of tagging and in week 3 many of you even used a common tag to create an association between photos that we individually uploaded. This week, in addition to exploring Technorati and LibraryThing tagging, we also want to take a look at the popular social bookmarking site Del.icio.us (typed as http://del.icio.us/.)


Why social bookmarking? Well, have you checked your list of favorites or bookmarks on your internet browser lately? If you’re like me, your favorites list may need some pruning or organization. Or, if you don’t happen to be on your regular computer, how do you even remember all the sites you’ve bookmarked?

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize your bookmarks.  For more information on how to use Del.icio.us and what the benefits are look at this page from How Stuff Works.

Many users find that real power of Del.icio.us is in the social networking aspect, which allows you to see how other users have tagged similar links and also discover other websites that may be of interest to you. You can think of it as peering into another users’ filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool each user's filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network. For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at Del.icio.us and learn about this popular bookmarking tool.

Discovery Exercises:

   1. Take a look around Del.icio.us using the GRMS Staff account that was created for this exercise. Note: In this account you will find some resources that have been highlighted or used throughout the course of the Classroom Learning 2.0 program.

   2. Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by a lot of other users. Can you see the comments they added about this bookmark or the tags they used to categorize this reference?

   3. Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool. Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere? How can educators take advantage of social bookmarking sites?

   4. OPTIONAL: If you’re up to the challenge, create a Del.icio.us account for yourself and discover how this useful bookmarking tool can replace your traditional browser bookmark list. (Note: del.icio.us is a Yahoo company, so you will have to create a Yahoo account if you don't already have one.)

Note: If you do setup a Del.icio.us account, here’s a quick word about the Del.icio.us Buttons. On PCs that have the toolbars locked down, these will install as options in your browser bookmarks. Use the “Post to my Del.icio.us” link to add the current webpage to your account (you may need to log in). Use the “My Del.icio.us” link to view your online account.

Discovery Resources:

    * Us.ef.ul: A beginners guide to Del.icio.us

    * See also http://www.diigo.com/ as an alternative to Del.icio.us

CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS

   1. IDEA #1: Search De.licio.us to find links for student assignments.
   2. IDEA #2: Create your own De.licio.us bookmarks for various subjects/resources to use with student assignments.

[Note: Please remember to include THING# in your heading posts.]

#? Explore Technorati and learn how tags work with blog posts



So now that you’ve been blogging for awhile, you might be wondering just how big is the blogosphere? Well according to San Francisco based Technorati, the leading search tool and authority for blogs, there are “over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.” Technorati tracks 62.5 million blogs. If the blogging trend continues, it is estimated that Technorati will have tracked its 100 millionth blog in just 5 months.

Yes, these numbers are astounding, but as you’ve already seen for yourselves, blogging is so easy that these publishing tools are being taken advantage of by almost every industry, including libraries.So how do you get your blog listed as part of the blogosphere and how can you tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search? The answer to the first question is that your blog is probably already being captured by Technorati due to the fact that you’re already using Blogger, the most popular blogging tool. But if you want to join the party and have your blog officially listed on Technorati and also take advantage of the watchlist and other features, you’ll need to claim your blog yourself. As for tagging posts with Technorati tags? This is easy too. All you need to do is add a little bit of HTML code to the bottom of your post (see example below) and Technorati will pick up these tags when it spiders (or web crawls) your site.

There are a lot of features in Technorati including the capability to search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, limit a search by language, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like photography or libraries).

Recently, Google has added a blog search. This is another place to search blogs or blog postings - http://blogsearch.google.com/

Discovery Exercise:

   1. Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for “Classroom Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags, and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different?
   2. Create a blog post about your discoveries on this site.
   3. Now that we’ve worked with tags in Flickr, Del.icio.us, and Technorati, what are your thoughts about tagging? What are its advantages? What are its disadvantages?
   4. OPTIONAL: If you're up for a challenge, learn how to tag your posts with Technorati tags so they can become part of Technorati tag searches. Create a post about something. It can be anything you want and add the HTML code to the bottom to tag it as “ClassroomLearning2.0.” You may also want to consider claiming your blog and creating a watchlist.

NOTE: When adding HTML code, you'll want to make sure you're in Blogger's Edit HTML window. There's a lot to explore.

Discovery Resources:

    * Technorati Tour – videocast of new features & new look
    * Technorati Discover & Popular features

Curriculum Connections:

   1. Idea #1: Use these tools to locate blogs and other sites relating to election or other issues.

#11 Explore Web 2.0 award-winning applications and Ning



Throughout the course of the Classroom Learning 2.0 program we’ve explored just a small sampling of the new internet technologies and websites that are empowering users with the ability to create and share content. But given time there are so many more we could explore! A recent estimate placed the number of Web 2.0 tools at somewhere between 300 & 500 with only a handful emerging as market dominators. And although time will only tell which of these new collaborative, social networking and information tools will remain on top, one thing is for sure, they're not going to go away anytime soon.

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to select any site from this list of Web 2.0 Award Winners or CNET Award Winners and explore it. With so many to choose from, it might be handy to first select a category that interests you (like Books or Personal Organization) and then select a tool/site to explore. Be careful to select a tool that is Free and that doesn't require a plug-in or download. The majority of these are free, so this shouldn’t be a problem. Another site that has gained  popularity is the social networking site called Ning. With Ning, you can set up your own social network such as an after school or book club. To learn more about Ning, join one of the Ning Social Networking groups or search for an area of interest:

Classroom 2. 0
School 2.0
Education Blogs by Discipline
Gale Ranch Teachers Ning

Discovery Exercises:

   1. Select any site/tool from the list of CNET Award Winners or Web 2.0 Awards winners (If you prefer to select from just the winners, here’s a link to the short list.)
   2. Explore the site you selected.
   3. Join a Ning network.
   4. Create a post about your discovery. What did you like or dislike about the tool? What were the site’s useful features? Could you see any applications for its use in a classroom or library setting? Web 2.0 – with so much to explore, just start with ONE. :)
   5. Play -- check your Travel IQ.

We hope you're having fun with the exercises.

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