Hope this Candle Burns Bright

I have been looking for some animated gifs for my students to use on some wikis we want to begin in January. Someone on Plurk posted this link with holiday gifs and I am trying it out here to make sure it works... and it does. I am getting excited about showing these to my students.

Visual Blooms

I stumbled upon this Web2.0 App digital-visual representation of Blooms Taxonomy through a twitter tweet but it took a while to find the actual wiki it came from. This represents the levels of blooms that are hit with different web apps. If I want my students to work create, evaluate, analyze, and apply their learning. I must offer them some higher-level web apps. Some of these very web apps may be blocked by filters or considered unsafe or unreliable as sources. It is time for those of us in the library to step up and teach Internet Safety, find ways to get student accounts without the need for student e-mail addresses, teach website evaluation, teach how to properly use social networking with proper netiquette so that our students can use these web apps responsibly. Can I get a “woot” from school librarians? I don’t know about you but I want my students using Google Docs and collaborating on wikis. I want my student to blog about their research projects, to make voki books reviews, and put their digital photographs (notice I did not say pictures of themselves) up on web services like Flickr and Picassa. Come join me school librarians and let’s make digital blooms a library initiative in this new school year!

Week 7, #’s 16 & 17

I enjoy using wikis. I have used wikis to collaborate in graduate classes and I have set up a wiki for my library.  Arrowhead Library Wiki is yet another way I can help my students focus on information that is useful and worthwhile. I have not set up a wiki for students to edit yet.  That is something I have been trying to do in collaboration with teachers in my building.  I would like to see the next research project become a wiki.  I started researching Internet Safety and Cyberbullying in the hopes that I could get it to become part of the library curriculum.  I have not kept up the wiki but plan to use it during my district’s strategic planning to help technology committee members collaborate on Cyber-safety for our children.  Conference wikis like the one started by CSLA are fun whether you are able to attend the conference or not.  So much information is shared on the wiki that it can help you learn from the conference attendants and speakers without attending the conference.   I am a member of or have started 25 wikis on wikispaces alone.  I like wikispaces better than other wikis but if I am going to be able to use wikis with students it will probably be one like pbwiki because my superiors believe it is safer and offers less exposure for students.  I did check out the educators pbwiki.  It is filled with helpful information and links.  I can see using this wiki for my own professional development. 

I have several favorite wikis that I use as part of my own professional development.  One of my favorite two wikis on the net are the LM_Net wiki where LM_Net list serve members can post documents since the list serve can not handle attachments. 

The other wiki that I frequent often is Eduwiki.us.  It is so filled with resources that I can spend all afternoon exploring and never hit the same  website twice. 

I went to the California 2.0 Curriculum Connections Wiki on pbwiki and took a look at the 65 ideas listed for using a wiki for collaboration towards a common goal.  I love idea #5 where students become responsible for creating pathfinder lists of links to reference information.  By putting the links on the wiki all students in the group or class have access to the information.  As a librarian I love that the wiki models proper citation of sources and a bibliography at the bottom of the site.  I have to give more thought to starting a book talk wiki for my students to add their opinions about the books they have read.  Collaborative book reviews can also be posted to our Destiny library catalog.  I also added idea # 11 about Wordle to the Online application and Tools page. 

Where is Wikipedia?

For about a half hour now I have been trying to pull up a Wikipedia article on Michael Arrington for a Web 2.0 class assignment. It won't come up. Thinking the link may just be dead, I tried to pull up Wikipedia itself to search that way- nothing. Then I searched Wikipedia on Google News and found that China has lifted its ban on the English Wikipedia. Are the two connected? Brain ditto... or are you thinking what I'm thinking? Could it be that China has crashed Wikipedia on purpose or is it the pure volume that has Wikipedia out of commission this morning?

PB Wiki vs. Wikispaces

Ok, I have not made a secret out of my preference for Wikispaces over PB Wiki but today I got an email from PB showing me some changes they are making and asking if I wanted to beta test the new PB Wiki. Wow! The answer is YES! Just from looking at the changes they are making got me drooling! They seem to be fixing everything I had a problem with. Here’s crossing my fingers that I get on their beta list!

Where did you get your professional development today?

It is called eduwiki.us. I was checking out some of the workshops that will be available during the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference (PETE&C) coming up in February when I came across this little gem. It is a wiki but it is so much more than that, it is a gateway to finding and using technology in an education environment. It also has a book club, and lots of how to videos. I have spent about 2 hours on this wiki and I have only scratched the surface! There is an online virtual meeting on January 16th. I think I am hooked!

Wiki social software or collaborative notebook?

I have several social software sites to which I belong, one or two to share my family photos, two specifically help me keep up with my children and their friends, and some for professional and educational reasons. I also have a wiki and belong to several. In my mind I do not count Wikis as social software but that is just my affinity for compartmentalizing functionality. To me Wikis are great for collaboration and getting information out to the web as fast as possible. Wikis are not for building community, they are for building webpages for sharing information. They can help build community but they are more functional than social.
Social software by its nature is for community building. No one ever accused MySpace of being a collaborative tool for committee work, whereas I know wikis are good for such collaborative efforts. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this video I found while using Blip.tv over the summer.

Click To Play

Ok, so what is blip.tv? It publicizes itself as the world's leading videoblogging and podcasting service. It is a free video sharing service that is still in beta. Of course as I go to Blip.tv today, the beta version seems to be gone, it is in the process of changing it’s name and putting advertising on its videos, but it looks like it is still free, so what’s a little advertising between friends? By the way, the new name for Blip.tv is shortbrain.tv. I liked the name blip better. It was shorter and easier to remember than shortbrain.

Anyway, back to the videos. The wiki video above was done by “The Common Craft Show”. The video above is a simple, easy to understand explanation of wikis and their collaborative nature. The Common Craft Show also has a simple explanation of RSS. It is also on blip.tv. It actually is one of my favorites of the Common Craft Show videos.

Click To Play

How wonderful these videos would be to show to students and teachers to alike. Bravo Common Craft Show!

Apple Tip I just Love...

I am trying to update the Arrowhead Library website and wiki and add pictures. Usually it takes me a long time to open the pictures in PhotoShop or some other program, not to edit the pictures but just to make them smaller for the web and save them on my flash drive to transport to school. A recent Apple Quick Tip of the Week is now saving me a lot of time. All I have to do now is open the picture in Preview and drag the little icon at the top of the Preview bar into an e-mail. The Apple e-mail application then gives me the choice to resize the picture in the e-mail. It does not change the size of the original picture on your hard drive. I can then e-mail the pictures to myself. And, when I am sitting at my school computer updating my website, I can open my e-mail and ta-da… the pictures are there! I can then upload them to the school website. Of course my school district could make it easier for me if they allowed me to update my website from an Apple but that is another story! The pictures in this post are some of the pictures I e-mailed to myself using this tip.

Introducing the Arrowhead Library Wiki

I know now that the link to the MCIU wiki is password protected and you need to be invited to see it. So, if you tried to go and see the page I created, I apologize. But, here is a new link to the Arrowhead Library Wiki.  I am told everyone can see it.  It is very new, so there is not much there yet but I like what I've done so far, if have some suggestions I am open to them.  Check out the wiki at: http://arrowheadlibrary.wikispaces.com/.

Which Wiki is Right for Me?

Shonda Brisco is one of the most techie librarians I know. Well, I don't personally know her since she is in Texas and I am in Pennsylvania, I virtually know her from my great library list-serve LM_Net. She wrote a wonderful article for School Library Journal about choosing the right Wiki. Since I am interested in starting a Wiki, I loved it. If you are just starting out with Wikis, maybe you would like it too. I think my favorite Wiki for elementary students is pbWiki and I want to introduce it to my students next year. So, I will be playing with it quite a bit this summer. What is your favorite Wiki?

Will Richardson visits the IU! IU 23 that is...

So, how great is it that the author of my text book for next semester is doing a workshop at my Intermediate Unit and I got to be here thanks to a wonderful principal?

Will Richardson the author of "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other powerful Web Tools for Classrooms" is here in Montgomery County today and all is well!!

How will I explain to my principal what I learned today? Simple, I will send him the link to my blog!!!