The Reward

Love that new color!

The End?!?

When this project began I was excited but worried too. I have been learning a new position plus all this new technology. I admit that I did not work on it at first as much as I should have (actually at all), because I was so busy learning and keeping up with my new position. I wasn't sure if I would finish it or not. Now that I have finished I am grateful to have this project and my new position at the same time. Hopefully I will be able to implement some of the items, since I don't really know another way.
I found the set up for the project to be a little intimidating because I was afraid to ask for help when I encountered bumps in the road. That also caused me to work harder and dig deeper to answer my own quesions, so in reality I think I learned so much more than I would have in a tradional meet once a week class. I definately liked the format and would participate again.
Since so much of what we covered was new to me, it is hard to pick favorites. Just having a blog was huge for me, but now I feel pretty comfotable with adding anything to my blog in Blogger. I think I enjoyed del.icio.us, the image generators, YouTube, Animoto, Flickr, ZoHo Writer and RSS feeds the most. Actually it is hard to choose. As I read back over my blog, I am reminded of how many new things I learned! My next goal to work on embedding these tools into my daily life, both personal and professional. I no longer feel out of the loop with what the kids are involved with and might even appear cool for knowing a few new things. I have seen several sites I want to share with the teachers that they can hopefully pass along, Zoho Writer being one. If I can generate some excitement among students for their assignments using some of these tools, the time and effort are worth it.

Thing 23

This has been a difficult exercise. Copyright can be so confusing and intimidating. I think that is why so many people opt to ignore it. The short videos really helped me understand the idea behind Creative Commons. I had heard the term before, but did not really know how to search for items with Creative Commons licensing. I know feel like a whole new world of resources is available for me to use in preparing research for my classes and options for posting on the library website. I also like the theory of CC. In one of the videos it talked about standing on the shoulders of your peers. That creators are able to allow others to take their creations and build-upon them and share them, is just a wonderful collaborative community. I feel like this is the basis of most of Web 2.0. Collaboration is made easier through CC and much of Web 2.0 revolves around making a more integrated community. As I searched the creative commons area, I found a picture I wanted to post, but I am not sure how the attribution from Flickr would work. So I will be looking further into how to handle that aspect of CC. I still have much to learn and understand. I enjoyed the Disney video and found it an entaining way to cover copyright.

Thing 22

Animoto is so much fun! I think this might be my favorite "thing" on the list. I am amazed at how creative the video is after you upload simple pictures. The site was very easy to use. They guide you through step-by-step. I had a little trouble getting pictures from my library on my computer into a format that would easily download. The trouble was more with me and the computer than Animoto. I wish the music they have on the site was a more extensive selection, but with a little searching, next time I will try to download my own selection. I can't wait to show several friends this site because I think they would have a lot of fun with it also. I was also impressed at how esily it was to send post my video to my blog. The site made it super easy. I will probably be looking into the subscription because the thirty second shorts just weren't enough!

Italian Dream

Thing 21

I think I might have been a little disappointed in this thing. I have heard so much about podcasts, but I wasn't as impressed with the availability. I am sure it is like many other items on the web, it takes a lot of searching to find things you truely enjoy. The searching was the problem for me. It was quite time consuming. Even after I found a podcast that sounded interesting, many times they would not download or the download was very slow, from every computer I tried. I also could not find a way to know before hand how long the podcast was or the content of the podcast. I guess I am used to quick, esy searching, and the podcast did not seem to offer that. It made causual browsing hard.The EPN directory seemed to give me the most difficulty, but it also was the site where I found some useful podcasts. I am glad I know a little more about podcasts and I am sure I will hear much more in the future, but I'm not sure I will attempt to create my own any time soon. I found one technology podcast, and I have added the RSS feed to my side bar. I found the topics to be simple an easy to follow and understand.

Thing 20

I had barely looked at YouTube before. I had many videos sent to me through e-mail, etc. , but I had not searched the site for videos before. I had a lot of fun looking at all the creativity involved. Some of my favorite things to look at was clips from old television. I found the site to be very user friendly. I like the ratings on the videos and how many times they were viewed. I let that guide me at times on what to watch and what to skip. If there is a down side, it is that there are more clips than I could ever even imagine. Time would pass so quickly and I didn't even realize how long I had been exploring. I chose to add a Sesame Street clip of Cookie Monster in the library to my blog. I love that it is so dated (note the librarian stamping the dates on the books), but it still deals with all the available resources in the library. The video is just fun and nostalgic. I saw many other videos that were useful and I was able to see samples of video produced to promote the library. It gave me the idea of possibly letting my library helpers produce a video to promote our upcoming book fair or just to promote our collection. It could be fun to show school-wide and if students wanted to view it from home, they could use You Tube. I know I will continue to visit YouTube simply because I had so much fun.

Here is Sesame Street at the Library