Sunday, October 26, 2008

WEEK 3 #5,6,&7

I found a new wiki this week thanks to twitter (twitter name: congerjan). Someone posted a link to a wiki being created by David Warlick called Warlick’s CoLearners. It has some wonderful links and information but the first thing I thought when I saw it was how did David Warlick take a picture of his Second Life (SL) avatar and have it facing the camera. I have tried and tried to take a picture of my avatar and she is always facing the other way. If you have a suggestion I would love to hear it.

Explored a little more on Flickr and tagged the two photos I uploaded today: School Library learning2.0.

Oh, I was also amazed that David Warlick does not have his own Wikipedia page. Think we should start one? Just looked up Joyce Valenza and she doesn't have a Wikipedia page either. Something wrong with this picture?

Week 1& 2 Thing 1,2, &3

Please excuse me as I begin a new adventure into Web 2.0. If you are used to reading this blog you know I am always trying new things. Now my librarian's association is joining me on this new Web 2.0 discovery venture, or am I joining them?

71/2 habits of a lifelong learner.

If you think you can’t or don’t have time to learn something new this tutorial will help you realize that you learn something new every day. The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County put together the tutorial and it reads like it came from an Instructional Design class. The 7 and a half habits are: begin with the end in mind, accept responsibility for your own learning, view problems as challenges, have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner, create your own learning toolbox, use technology to your advantage, teach or mentor others, and play. This tutorial is great for beginning your trip down the road to lifelong learning. Check it out and get in the habit of learning!

Check out my new avatar to the right. I never had an avatar on this blog before and I am happy to now have this avatar as a starting point buy what I really want is a voki. I will learn how to create one and add it to the blog when I do. :-)

Baby Name Wizard on Jumping Monkeys

I do lessons with third grade students to teach them to use PowerPoint. We take pictures of each other and insert our own picture into the PowerPoint along with information we find about our names using a website called Behind the Name. It is great for even the most unusual or ethnic of names. It gives the history, origin and pronunciation of the name as well as derivatives and some famous people who share the name. Almost everyone can find his or her name there. In fact, I have never had a student not find their name there in the three years I have been doing the lesson. I love this lesson because it is all about the kids. They learn to use PowerPoint while finding out about themselves and their name. But I am always looking for ways to make the lesson better and thanks to Leo LaPorte and Megan Morrone and their podcast “Jumping Monkeys,” I think I found a way to do just that. Their guest on the October 4th program was Laura Wattenberg who wrote the book the Baby Name Wizard and created Baby Name Wizard.com. No only is the website fun but it will give the students a wealth information about their name and where and when it was popular in the United States. According to Wattenberg even more tools will be coming onto the website in the next couple of months so by the time I use the site with my third graders in March it should be all new. Wattenberg uses US census data to populate her statistics and charts. I am very excited about this website. Try it and look up your name. My name peeked in the 1940’s and it’s been all-downhill since then. So, is it better to have a popular name or an unusual name? Is it better to have a name that is popular at the time? Why are we drawn to the names we give our children? Is it what is popular at the time? I can’t wait for my students to start looking at their names and seeing if their names are popular, unusual, even on the charts. I hope we get some synthesis and analysis out of this lesson this time around. How exciting to add a new tool to this lesson this year. I hope my students find it as exciting as I do and will want to keep on learning. After all, that is what I am tying to do… create lifelong learners!

Yahoo Avatar

I created this Yahoo Avatar and clipped it using the new clipmarks feature that I blogged about before.

clipped from avatars.yahoo.com
blog it