Protecting Reputations Online

In light of the newest situation where a Bangor, Pennsylvania teacher's aide had a nude photo of herself passed around her school, it is becoming more and more important to protect your reputation online. Young people do not have any problems posting pictures of themselves and their friends online in less than flattering situations and sometimes compromising positions. While it may seem harmless now what are those pictures going to do to future reputations? I once heard New York Times columnist David Pogue say never to post anything that you would not want your grandmother to see and that things posted online never stay where you put them (people "borrow" stuff and re-post to other sites). There is a new Commoncraft Show Video called "Protecting Reputations Online in Plain English" It is aimed at young people to try to get them to be more careful about what they post. The video is for evaluation only but as usual, Lee Lefever gets it right.

Build a Squid

Not sure what the point of this is, besides fun, but I just built my own squid and played with it for a while until it went off to find new adventures. I think it could be educational if students were doing research on what can happen to squid. My squid swam through a cloud of plankton already and it's not even an hour old. Now Squiky, my squid, had a fight with a leopard seal. Poor guy. It is a pretty cool interactive game for those science minded elementary teachers. Check it out, it is from the Government of New Zealand. It is called Build a Squid. Again, my squid's name is Squiky. You can visit him by searching on his name. If you look at the picture on the right, it looks like Squiky is waveing to you! I did the screen captures using Jing and then edited the pictures in PhotoShop.

Educational Origami

Want to start a new technology integration project in your classroom? Want to use a cool new web application tool to do the project but don’t know how? Well, does Andrew Churches have the answer for you! Andrew is from Auckland, New Zealand. He is a computer curriculum manager and the organizer of a wiki called educational origami. Educational Origami is one of the best wikis I have seen for incorporating Blooms Taxonomy into lessons using technology. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License, Educational Origami allows teachers to use all the information in the wiki and remix it to fit their curriculums simply by giving Andrew credit.

But not only that, Andrew wants to make it easy for teachers to learn how to use Technology so he has created PDF files that he calls “Starter Sheets” that are just that, sheets that will help you get started with any product you choose. He also has a blog on which he posts videos similar to the “Starter Sheets” that instruct on the use of the most common Web2.0 Applications. This blog post is an instructional video on how to use Voicethread. The blog post even allows you to download the video so that you can share it during staff development time. It downloads as a QuickTime Movie and already has Andrew's name on the opening screen, so it already gives him credit. You also hear his incredible accent.

All in all I am very happy to have come across Andrew Churches wiki. It will be quite helpful to me when I freeze up and decide not to use something with my students because I am afraid I don’t know how. It will give me that little boost of confidence I need to use technology tools when I know it will be a boost to my curriculum. I am also following Andrew on twitter, his twiter name is achurches.

Now

Ok so I find this site a little weird but I still can't seem to take my eyes off it. I am adding part of it to this blog post but for the full effect of Now you have to go to the Sprint Now website. To get a taste of what you can see on the site click the shuffle button on the bottom left. Strange but compelling. Not sure how I feel about this page.

Teacher Appreciation Week

If you are reading this, thank a teacher. This week, May 3-9, 2009, is Teacher Appreciation Week. What kind of teacher are you? Here is a great video embedded from youtube that personifies my hope that I never stop learning.

Here's to all the students you touch in your classroom or library every day, may you be the difference in their lives.

:-)

Kathy Schrock is a Digital Pioneer

Yes, I agree with Kathy Schrock's video that I came across today.  She and many of us digital immigrants are not really immigrants but digital pioneers.  Not that I am counting myself among the elite digital librarian pioneers of our day.  I am a follower of those pioneers and love to sit at their feet, or attend their conferences and learn. Watch Kathy's Digital Pioneer Avatar.

Digital Pioneer: The Movie from Kathy Schrock on Vimeo.

Distraction Free Writing or a Blast From the Past...

I had a colleague in one of my graduate classes recommend a product for Mac called “WrightRoom” and I downloaded it to give it a try. Wow did it take me back. It was very old school even the font looked like something out of the move “War Games.” I am not sure I am ready to go backwards. I like the bells and whistles and upgrades that have happened to word processing in the past 30 years… why would I want to go back? The entire time I was thinking... what would Will Richardson think?

Actually, I can see some benefits, if you want students to simply write what they think without the red underlines or the green underlines of word processors it would be fine. To prepare them for standardized tests that have just them and the blank screen, it may be a good idea. But I am glad I just did a free 30-day trial because I don’t think this is something I would use enough on a regular basis to buy. Besides, I like the crispness of black text on a white page, green on black or any of the other combinations provided just seem strange to my eye which is used to black and white. But I do like the fact that once you close the screen, your text is right there in a simple black and white text file so you can copy and past it into a word processor and edit, or can save it as simple text. So, if you want to see what your students can do without all the bells and whistles of word processors or you want to give them a good chuckle and tell them this is the way all computers used to write, by all means try “WrightRoom.” My colleague says it was a "huge" success with his students, "because it allowed the kids to concentrate on their ideas and the writing process." I want to at least show it to my students and see what they think.
And to my colleague Scott, I did this Jing Screencast about my first experience.

More Free Open Source Sites...

Wow... just heard about this wonderful new site for finding and uploading music. Jamendo is open source. Their tagline says: "On Jamendo artists allow anyone to download and share their music. It's free, legal and unlimited." It's nice to have a leagal source for music when creating videos with children. Some of the pictures from the album art on the site are not for elementary school students, so make sure if you are having them use these materials that you download the music for them to use.

Another site that touches a librarian's heart is webcitation. Have you ever had a student cite a website only to have that website not come up or give you an error message when you tried to check the source? Well, webcitation can solve all that. I have just signed up but have not used the site yet. Bacically it works by adding a bookmarklet to your citation page instead of just a URL. The bookmarklet will lead you back to the actual page, as it looked, on the date the student accessed the page. Now there will be no more padding of citations, students will actually have had to use the site... or will at least have to visit the site to have the proper bookmarklet.

Bibliographies and Works Cited Pages have never been easier!

Finally, a way to put together a citation without the pain. I am very excited about this new site I found called bibme. It is free and I hope it stays that way. It is great for students (and librarians). It seems pretty easy. I found the site on Digg which described BibMe as "a new web app offering students a quick and simple means to create bibliographies. It mashes up data from multiple online services to provide AutoFill functionality when adding new citations. It can output MLA, APA, Chicago, & Turabian." I wonder if it will make into the Diggnation podcast? That would be pretty cool.

I checked out the site and put in the ISBN number of one of Kate DiCamillo's Mercy Watson books. It came up with two hits, the library binding version and the trade version. At the top of the post is a picture I took of the site using Jing.

Digital Batteries getting more charged...

Special thanks to Kristin Hokanson of "The Connected Classroom," who asked Steve Dembo of Discovery Education, for his permission to stream his Tuesday keynote for those of us who only attended one day of the conference. A two hour delay morning allows lots of time for recharging batteries. Please check out Steve's keynote on UStream.TV.



I can't wait to check out Curricki.

Recharging my Digital Batteries...

So, I am finally getting to blog about this thanks to a two hour delayed school opening. I took a personal day on Monday and paid to go to one day of my state’s technology conference. Why you ask. Well, simply because the best technology journalist in the country was the keynote speaker on Monday and I got to meet him. Am I gushing? Come on, he's from the NY Times! I used to be a reporter and now I am a librarian. I know how tough it can be out there establishing contacts to get the best stories. And, this guys has the contacts, gets the best stories, and gets them right. I could not wait for my fellow educators to hear his view of technology.

I have been a big fan of David Pogue for a while and now thanks to Pogue’s inspiring keynote so is the technology coordinator in my school. In fact, my tech coordinator took this picture of me with David. I am such a technology geek. But you know how it is, you read someone’s blog, read their column, and listen to him or her on various podcasts for so long and you feel you know them. (Sounds like what used to be said about television.) And, David Pogue gets it. He knows people know him from the web and he’s OK with that. He is friendly and besides, he appeared on Cali Lewis’ podcast, he actually met Cali! And, if Cali gets her mobile home and travels around the country like she and Neil are planning, she may get somewhere close enough for me to meet her too, podcasting from the road, it doesn’t get much better than that! Anyway, back to David Pogue’s keynote… it was enlightening as well as entertaining. He changed the words of “My Way” and sang about the iPhone and really nailed it about the cool factor. It is cool to have an iPhone! But more than that, he told this group of educators what the future looks like.

He called his presentation, “The Digital Generation Grows Up.” The first two things he says will mark the future are Internet phones and wireless everywhere. First, he sees landline telephones going away as more and more people use voice over IP or the Internet as a phone. T-Mobile was the first to introduce wireless cell plans that include free calling when in a wireless Internet hot spot. This goes hand in hand with his second biggie, he foresees wireless Internet everywhere and more collaboration on a worldwide stage because of it. And, of course all-wireless Internet phones like the much hyped currently vapor-ware Google Phone. He pointed out that just those using VOIP now have driven down the cost of landline calls by 30 percent.

The next thing he anticipates is a greater expansion of Web 2.0 but not without challenges, as more and more people supply content to the Web. He wanted teachers to tell their students that once things are online, they are there forever and they don’t stay where you put them. He also put a plug in for copyright because a college survey showed him students think everything on the Web is free and out there just for them to download. He realizes the question of legitimate sources is a real one and he’d like to see a code of ethics for bloggers. So, David Pogue gets it, he knows what librarians are saying is true. Our new library standards include ethics and bias. So maybe the best thing we can teach our students is to judge for themselves (Is that not what we are doing when we give them an Internet evaluation form?) what is worth reading and a little discernment.

EBSCO RSS = One Happy Bloglines User!

Wow... look what I found... just in time for learning how to use the different aspects of my new Bloglines account. The RSS aggregator is a little overwhelming for reading blogs but I think it is about to earn it’s “saves you time” reputation. I just found out that EBSCO will let me set up an RSS feed. That means that I will be able to see all the new information that comes in about my projects for my grad classes. The new information will come to me! I won’t have to go out to EBSCO and search over and over for the same information only to find there is nothing new. I found this video to show how it works.



I tried it and now I have a new folder on my Bloglines that says EBSCO and in there I have a list of new articles about Internet Safety, my new pet project. When I click on one of the articles in the list it asks me to sign into EBSCO. So, the information is not really being delivered to me, I still have to Log into POWER Library to get the articles. The RSS Feed just tells me when there is new information. Still, it is a nice feature and a good reason to have a Bloglines account!

Internet Safety PSA

Students in the UK are getting some good messages on Internet Safety from their peers. As part of A level practical projects in Media Studies students are being asked to create a Public Service Announcements (PSA). The students who created this PSA received a perfect score for their effort. It is a great example of what high school aged students can do to help their peers and younger students to stay safe. This is also a good example of fair use because the students use a Linkin Park song in their PSA.



After watching this PSA, I was wondering what younger students can do. I plan to introduce the idea of Internet Safety to my students and I have been thinking of what kind of multimedia project elementary students could produce. I need to explore this idea further. I am planning to create a webquest and want a multimedia product as the end result. If anyone has ideas, I would love to hear them.

RSS Aggregator = Compulsive

Perhaps it is too new for me to judge but I am feeling overwhelmed with my new Bloglines account. I only subscribed to 10 of the blogs I usually read on semi-regular basis and I am not convinced that an RSS aggregator is the best way for me to keep up on the blogs I like to read. I can see other uses for an aggregator, news on specific topics, keeping up with website changes for organizations I belong to, setting up a podcasting directory for podcasts I am not subscribed to on iTunes, and maybe keeping up with new information on projects I am working on for grad classes. However, I am a bit of a compulsive Internet junkie, a creature of habit, I like going to the actual blog sites that are on my blogroll. I am sure it is just a matter of getting used to a new way of doing things. I am not sure how much time the aggregator is saving me right now since I am spending more time scanning the blogs. In addition, I don’t like reading the blogs in the little aggregate reader window; it feels like I am missing something, it lacks the texture of going to the actual blog site. Yet, knowing if there is new material out there is a plus. But my biggest problem is that I have too much new stuff out there. I like to browse at my own pace, and what seems overwhelming is the aggregate’s count of all the blog posts I have not read. I tend to get behind and new stuff out there builds up! I don’t like seeing how many blog posts I have not read yet!

Information Literacy-Preaching to the Choir Again

There are many ways to define Information Literacy. Why do librarians care about this so much? Check out the video on this site: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/298/04/Information_Literacy_Video.avi.

With so much information out there that is wrong... it is up to school librarians to help students and teachers alike to find and use appropriate information wisely!



The future of lifelong learners is in the hands of their elementary school librarians!

Yeah! I have a Website!

I have felt frustrated most of the evening because I have not been able to publish my website to the St. Joe’s site. What a difference a half hour makes. I took the directions for the Mac and got published with virtually no glitches. Of course the website has to be update already but at least the initial publication was completed and I feel fairly certain I can do it again. FTPing and Telnet(ing) into Polaris may not be as difficult as it sounds after all! At least not once I got on a computer where I have permission to do what needed to be done! ☺ Hopefully I am now getting the hang of it!

Be Careful What You Put on the Internet...

There are some videos out on you-tube that I wish everyone could see before they post something on the Internet. Remember, whatever you post on the Internet is out there in cyberspace forever even if you take it down or delete the website, it is still there somewhere, wither archived by Google or downloaded by someone. It is never really gone. So, think before you post. Check out this You Tube video called "Think Before You Post." I think every student in America should see this...



Here is another...



The Internet gives us a sense of familiarity with others that we really don’t have. Think before you post. A warning and a message to the wise.

RSS

Wow! Who knew RSS could be explained in English?
Check this out...

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.