ISTE 2011- A takeaway from a Vendor? Sweet... no... SweetSearch!

When I was at ISTE11 in Philly I did not spend much time in the vendor hall. I never feel comfortable talking to vendors since I have so little clout when it comes to what my district purchases. When I did go into the hall I was specifically looking for World Book to see what their new science module was all about. I was so focused on that mission that I almost missed the biggest library takeaway of them all. Mark Moran of SweetSearch lured me in to his booth with bookmarks, yes that was all it took, paper bookmarks (since I give out more than 400 book marks to students each week of the school year this was quite a prize). Anyway, the bookmarks give students tips for Internet Research. Mark who is the founder and CEO of Dulcinea Media, the parent company of SweetSearch, told me about this free search engine for students. It searches only credible web sites. The search engine part is free but there is so much more and it will have a pay component. I love how well researched this product is and I love that some of it is free in case the other librarians do not agree that this is as great as I think! I also just started following Mark Moran on Twitter. And a SweetSearch search came up with a webinar link that explains more about SweetSearch. The video below is what Mark was offering at ISTE11.



A YouTube search of SweetSearch came up with this tutorial from Anna Laura Brown the SocialNetworkingLibrarian.



What do I think of SweetSearch? I am ready to put the widget on my library home page!

Plurk

Are you an educator? Would you like to have a Personal Learning Network (PLN) with other educators? Are you a little overwhelmed by Twitter? You have heard me mention Plurk on this blog many times in the past. Well now one of my Plurk friends has come up with a cheat sheet so easy that anyone can learn to Plurk and start a PLN! Sharon Ricks, teacherricks on Plurk, has come up with this wonderful graphic showing how to Plurk. Check it out and check out her website on weebly! If you join Plurk be sure to friend me and friend Sharon! Make sure you remember to tell us in your profile that you are an educator!

Google+

My friend Cathy Jo Nelson, who I met in real life for the first time at ISTE, sent me an invite to Google+. I just posted my first post and fell on the floor laughing (not really, maybe it was a short chuckle) at this video posted by my real life (then virtual) friend Kristin Hokanson.

Don't get me wrong, Google+ is starting to grow on me and while many of those I am following and are following me are not my Facebook friends, most, if not all, are my Twitter or Plurk friends. I can see setting up Google+ as an educator and following only my educator friends on it but then isn't that Twitter or Plurk? It is going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out and who comes out on top. If Google is smart they will allow the privacy controls educators ask for and Facebook feigns. Google already has 5 Privacy Settings and Google+ isn't a week old yet. So far so good.

ISTE 2011

My Brain is full. My Mind is tired. ISTE 2011 ended just 6 short hours ago and already I am making plans for school year 2011-2012 that include what I have embraced over the past 5 days in Philadelphia. I can't process it all right now but as the song says: I Love School.

The music video features Temple University's Broad Street Line and the Alliance for Progress Charter School's 4th Grade Class. This video made me smile while I watched it and helped me realize what ISTE is all about.

ISTE 11 Conference Planner

I am officially starting to get excited and worried about ISTE2011. I am excited but also not sure how to get the most out of my ISTE experience. Today I found this on the 2011 ISTE Newcomers group on the ISTE2011 Ning. It helped me fill out my conference schedule and now I have to go see if I can download it to my iCal. The amount of junk mail I am getting from vendors is a little overwhelming too!

Vote Livebinders...

Have you ever heard of Livebinders? It is my new favorite tech tool. I am planning to use it heavily in the next school year and I am hoping to learn more about it during ISTE. I first learned about Livebinders from one of my Plurk Buddies, Dean Mantz. Then I saw how some teachers were using it when I attended a Discovery Education Pre-Conference Workshop during PETE&C. Now Livebinders is holding a contest. You can vote for your favorite Livebinder and the winner will be announced at ISTE during an ISTE Unplugged Session at 11 AM on Monday, June 27, 2011. ISTE Unplugged sessions are short half hour presentations that are scheduled to take place right outside the Blogger's Cafe at the Broad Street Atrium in the Philadelphia Convention Center. Below you will find a way for you to take part in the voting. I suggest you go to each of the LiveBinders and check them out. They are all pretty awsome! And if you notice, Dean Mantz has two LiveBinders in the running! I am not going to tell you my favorite because too many of them are too good for me to take sides. Let's just say I will be voting more than once!

Vote for Your Top 10 LiveBinders

Steve Anderson's "Twitter in Education"

Dean Mantz's "E-Portfolio"

MsPrince's "Technology in Education"

2sparkley's "Cool Things for Websites"

KB Konnected's "Amazing Animal Webcams"

Steve Anderson's "QR Codes in Education"

Dean Mantz's "Digital Storytelling"

Audrey Lash's "Leveled Library and Resources"

MThornton's "Student Digital Textbooks"

Lori Orrell's "Julian Charter School - Parent Binder"

Mike Fisher's "iPads in Schools"

Toby Price's "MAPS for Students & Parents"

Kim Caise's "Connecting Classrooms Globally using Web Conferencing Tools"

Snowtiger's "How to build a Ladder"

Hope's "Art Education ACING"

lmims' "Cybraryman"

Catherine Douthard's "Educational Websites for Elementary Parents"

Carolyn Starkey & Wendy Stephens's "eBooks and eReaders Go to School"

Doubletrkis's "Delightful Country Cookin' "

Michelle Green's "12 Ways to eLearning"

Temerick's "Share, Remix, Reuse: Creative Commons in Your Library"

Stephanies Gebhardt's "Museum Education"

Christopher Stefanski's "Free Online Resources"

Ann Marie Kennedy's "Fun Math Resources"

E Griffin's "Computer, Keyboard & Mouse Activities"

Nayoung144's "AT on the Cheap"

kbeane's "Science Games"

or View Results

Create your own poll at Flisti.com

ISTE and iPad

So now I am really getting excited about ISTE! I found this video posted by Paula Naugle on the ISTE2011 Conference Ning! Brad Flickinger, the author of Teaching with netbooks, presented 8 reasons why iPads are going to change education. I am excited because it was posted on the Elementary Educators group wall and I believe iPads may be the best platform for elementary students. The interface is simpler and kids pick it up right away. I think I would almost rather have a cart full of iPads rather than laptops! Now that Brad has been using iPads for a while I am sure he and Paula will have a lot more than 8 reasons to use iPads in elementary education. I can't wait to run into Brad or Paula at ISTE2011 in Philly! I am planning on learning a lot and taking my new found knowledge and skills back to my elementary library!

Learning to Change- Changing to Learn

A Plurk Friend of mine Clif Mims posted a link to his latest blog post today and it had the most interesting video attached that I just had to put it here for all of you to see. It made me think about why students seem so uninterested in school. Is school their most unproductive time of the day, their most unplugged? I have been thinking about this a lot lately and before Clip posted his video I asked the question of my Plurk buds... Should Social Networks be part of the curriculum and it raised a little bit of a fire storm. Some teachers felt they should not be, some were on the fence and some said sure... go for it. I asked the question because I for one am on the fence. Last week before Cyber-Safety expert Dr. Sameer Hinduja spoke in my district and opened my eyes to some of the seedier things going on via social networks. I want to be a vehicle of change, I want to change to learn so that I can teach the future. So, watch this video and weigh in on social networks in school. What does the video make you think about?

CIPA and Blocked Sites... the Truth!

In library classes and in technology integration classes for my library and technology teaching certifications I learned about the anachronisms for the various acts that protect our children online. The law of the land now is CIPA. The Children’s Internet Protection Act was enacted in 2001 by the federal government to make sure kids were not exposed to offensive Internet content on school and library computers. It evolved from COPA, the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 that was a direct response to the Supreme Court decision striking down the Communications Decency Act in 1997. While I learned a lot about how the acts evolved and what each was supposed to accomplish, nothing prepared me for the frustration of teaching with a website one day and going in to use it the next day only to find it was blocked by district filters. Recently in her blog post “Straight from the DOE: Dispelling Myths About Blocked Sites,” Tina Barseghian spelled out just what I was taught and wish administrators with the block everything mentality would understand: YouTube is not the enemy, websites can be unblocked for teachers, broad filters are not the answer, unblocking some sites will not cause the district to lose E-rate, teachers and librarians should be equipped to teach students to be responsible digital citizens, and teachers are not the bad guys and if they ask to teach with a sight they should be trusted. For more explanation read Barseghian’s post, it is a breath of fresh unfiltered air.

The little Engine that Could

I am not sure if this a comment on how I feel after the Pennsylvania School Librarian's Conference this weekend or a lesson plan in development. But there is a very nice kit for the book "The Little Engine that Could on teachervision.com and I just found this very cute video. I think I may have to read the book to my students during our book fair this week. Wish us luck with the book fair!

Glogster State Reports

My 4^th grade student just completed their State Report Glogs. It was a project that I had them complete in the library because there is just not enough time in a school year for teachers to get to everything and I wanted to give them another Web2.0 tool for their toolbox.

When we do a project in the library it always takes so much longer to complete because we only meet once a week and many times the students have other commitments during library special like band and orchestra or speech. If there is no school one day that puts us back even farther. Students have been working on gathering their information and pictures, and playing with the Glogster tool since mid January. The last class finished last Friday. What is a glog you ask? A glog is an interactive electronic poster. It has so many educational uses that one Glogster account is not enough for a librarian. The way it works is a teacher and/or librarian signs up for an educational Glogster account. Glogster then gives you 50 student logins. You can have your students create their login or you can do what I did, I had each student create a login with their first name being their classroom number and their last name being the classroom teacher’s last name. Not only did this offer an additional level of security for my under age-13 students but I will be able to use those accounts over next year with the same classes. It also provided an interesting grading outcome. I graded each glog against the same rubric not knowing which student did the glog. All I knew was their classroom teacher and their class number. When I was putting the grades in my grade book I noticed that many of the special education students had actually done better with the project than the gifted education students. Embedded here are several glogs, see if you can tell which students are gifted and which are in special education.

While this was not a scientific experiment by any means, I can’t wait to see if the results are duplicated the next time I assign a Glogster project. The students also enjoyed the Glogster network and looking at the glogs created by their fellow students. Great tool to introduce social networking in a controled environment, a walled garden so to speak.

I'll Fight You For the Library

As most of us know, April is Poetry Month. Welcome to my new favorite poem to share for Poetry Month. I love my PLN (Personal or Professional Learning Network) on Plurk. I discover the most wonderful things when my Plurk buddies share. This YouTube video was shared by my Friend Scottie Miller from Oriental, North Carolina. Like me she is an elementary school librarian. Hope you enjoy this and realize that teachers care about the education of their students!

Twitter Sheep

Bahhhh....

Who is following you on Twitter? Who are you following? What would your tweets and the Tweets of those you follow look like in a Wordle-like program? If you want to get a clear picture of what you are all about have I got a fun Web App for you! It's called TwitterSheep and it is a lot of fun even if it does not paint an accurate picture of you or your interests. I used the App on my Twitter account and got the results in the picture to the right. Hope you have fun with this! Bahhhh... Enjoy!

Google Head

I admit it, I am a Google Head. My students will tell you that. The day I took off to take my daughter to the doctor after she delivered my second grandson I was there at the doctor's office but my students thought I was at “Google Fest.” When I got back to school I had to check out what “Google Fest” was all about. Go Ann Arbor!

Hope you enjoyed your flash mobs and hope you get your Google Fiber!

Anyway, my students know that Mrs. Conger uses Google and GMail, and GoogleDocs, and they also know that Mrs. Conger teaches them how to Google and will be looking over their shoulders while they Google. Friday was Crazy Hair day at my school so since I am a self professed Google Head I made it real, Google Head real. (See picture above). Now Kathy Schrock has come out with this new picture of how Google and Google Apps fit into the new revised Bloom's Taxonomy. She has been getting wonderful feedback on Twitter and Plurk for what she is calling Google Tools to support Bloom’s Revised Technology. Notice that several Google Tools fit into more than one category and notice that Google Advanced Search is considered a tool under the category of Understanding. I have been teaching my students to search using advanced search and I have been thinking that I am doing such a wonderful thing and here we are only in the category of understanding. I got depressed when I thought of all the work my students were doing and the more I thought about it, the more I realized they were going beyond understanding and applying what they knew and transferring that knowledge to new situations. They were doing things that not only met the new AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner; they were becoming 21^st Century Citizens. They were utilizing digital tools to gather information on things they wanted to learn about, they were emerging into life-long learners. Isn’t that what we want them to do? Ok, so some of them were checking the scores on the NCAA tournament but they asked my permission first! :-}

So, I am going out on a limb here and disagreeing with Kathy Schrock, but just a little. I believe that Google Advanced Search falls under more than one category. In applying advanced search principals my students are no longer using copyright sensitive materials, they are applying the skills I have taught them to make decisions regarding materials they are choosing to use in their projects and reports and for their own use. And if Google Advance Search can fit under more than one category can other Google Tools fit into more than the categories assigned? I am taking Kathy’s Google Bloom’s and using it with a grain of salt, realizing that it too is a tool!

Tony Hawk's Reading for Scholastic

Scholastic Inc. has a new (well, new to me) YouTube Channel with the unforgettable name "The Scholastic Channel's Channel," and it's all about reading and Book Talks. Well, maybe they could have been a little more creative with the name but there are also channels for Scholastic Kids and Scholastic Teens. It is super exciting for a librarian to have YouTube Channels directed at getting kids to read. The Scholastic Channels also have author interviews and so far the comments seem positive! Too bad YouTube is blocked in my district. But the good news is that the powers that be are thinking about unblocking it for teachers so librarians like me can use this wonderful tool to promote reading!