Twitter Bug

I must say that I found twittering a difficult task. I like to follow people to see what kind of resources and even personal thoughts or events they are participating in but to respond back seemed weird to me. I think if I was teaching right know I would have more interesting ideas or links to resources or lesson plan and project ideas but I felt that I didn’t have much to contribute at this point. If you can find amazing people to follow I agree with Richardson when he says, “Following other educators on Twitter creates a ‘network at my fingertips’ phenomenon, where people ask questions and get answers, link to great blog posts or resources, or share ideas for projects as they go through the day.” (Richardson, 2010, pg. 86) I really enjoyed seeing and spending time finding these kinds of resources and I would definitely find it beneficial on a professional level. Although it would not be a place to find particular resources because it would take up too much time to do that kind of search, someone’s blog may be a better place for this. It is also overwhelming, and I know you can’t read all the tweets all the time or else you’d just have to spend your whole day ‘tweetling’, but it seemed super time consuming for me to be a regular twitter participant. Maybe as I get more used to the medium I may find that I am able to sift through information more effectively and take what I need from it.

There believe there are benefits in using Twitter. It allows you to find interesting information that you may not have come across otherwise. I think that this is it’s greatest quality...it forms a network of ongoing thoughts, ideas, resources and visuals…that over time contribute to your own knowledge base. Will Richardson says, “you get smarter,” and I think this is true on some level, I wouldn’t go as far to say that it is a ‘sixth sense’ as others have described it to be. (Richardson, 2010, pg. 87)

Also Twitter serves as a great collaborative environment amoung your own colleagues where you can come together and develop ideas, share interesting projects or educational sites or have discussions on particular subjects in order to make connections for example.

I also explored the “Twitter for Teachers” site and watched the video for “Twitter in the Classroom” http://twitterforteachers.wetpaint.com/page/Twitter+in+the+Classroom, which was interesting. I liked the idea of having a college or university class participate during a class discussion using twitter. It allowed for more interaction and participation than would normally happen within a lecture atmosphere and when the professor was away she could still participate and respond to discussions from a different location. The word limit on Twitter (140 characters) also forces students to create succinct comments that related to a particular topic.

I also explored the “Twitter in Academia” http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/ post at the AcademicHack blog (tinyurl.com/25u2cx) by David Parry mentioned in the Richardson text on page 88. He had some great ideas on how to incorporate Twitter into a classroom setting. I think most of his ideas would definitely work with students in the intermediate grades 6-7 and especially high school and beyond. I liked the idea he had for using Twitter instead of the traditional telling of a story idea where each student contributes a sentence to create a class story. It would definitely be interesting to try this on Twitter. Also using Twitter to study grammar structure, share short inspirations in a writing class, following a professional or famous person or writer as part of an assignment or project, get a sense of the world after a major event has occurred and tracking a word would be a neat activity to explore. He has some great ideas here.

All in all using Twitter on a more professional level would make most sense to me. On a personal level I find it interesting to follow famous book writers’ sites to get a glimpse of their lives and things that interest them or give them inspiration. Other than that I think my usage would be more related to education.

You can check out my Twitter page by looking me up, Linda Di Biase, or at: www.twitter.com/libraryfish1

Reference:

Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other powerful web tools for the classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2010.

I am an Uncommitted Facebook User

On Social Networking

On Facebook

I was quite intrigued with the whole idea of Facebook upon hearing about it. My husband had joined initially and I felt a little left out and socially out cast, so I had to join. Slowly my husband the unsocial butterfly that he is, became quite annoyed with the whole thing and eventually dismantled his page and I kept on finding more friends and spending time catching up with all kinds of people finding out what they were up to and how their lives had changed. It was fun while it lasted but alas I felt like it began to take up too much of my time and the more friends you accumulated the worse it got. I just hated receiving all those silly group invitations and would always delete them…I know that there are many useful links/groups to join but I feel like I am not on enough to participate. My husband ended up rejoining the end of last year because there were many working colleagues that used Facebook to communicate so he jumped on board again but it did not last long as he has recently dropped out again feeling that Facebook is not an appropriate venue for work collaboration. My usage has slowly become less and less as well.

I will visit my page a few times a month when I receive a message and take a bit of time to see what friends are up to but I have not posted pictures in a while and I begin to feel bad when I don’t because there are many friends I left behind in Vancouver that would like to see recent pictures; there is a sense of obligation which I feel puts pressure on me which I don’t want to have. Also, there must have been an issue the last time I tried to post pictures because they would only upload one at a time. I got frustrated and have not tried to post pictures since then. I really do need to be more patient when it comes to technology.

For educational purposes I would probably choose another type of tool rather than facebook. I find that the development and creation of facebook is to be a social place and just too personal for use in the classroom. Although I do agree that you can create a more educational forum on facebook but the social connotations are just too strong. If I were to use it I think that it would be beneficial to use it as Richardson has explained. Teachers or librarians could create a class site where students can communicate ideas, developments on projects, share images on topics and share what they are learning together as a group. They could also join a particular group of interest based on particular topics, e.g. ‘Bring Back the Wild’ campaign organized by the Royal Ontario Museum to preserve Canadian wild life. Other tools I would use would be Wikis, Blogs or Nings because they also provide collaboration opportunities and the students would be less familiar with them as solely a more personal social network.

On Nings

All the nings that I have explored feel a little overwhelming to me. There is just so much information on them, which makes them difficult to navigate. I was also unimpressed with the ‘Most Popular Ning Networks’ list, which included musician 50 Cent, The Tyra Show, and the rap-rockers ‘The Hollywood Undead’. A couple that were more useful included, ‘The Modern Metropolis’ for art enthusiasts and ‘PickensPlan’ dealing with U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Again, I guess I need to resolve in the fact that these tools are highly popular and based on mainstream culture, but this is not their full potential when thinking about using them as educational tools.

I looked up teacher librarian related sites and found many. One in particular, ‘Library 2.0’ was interesting but many of the comments I found by its members included topics with no responses, and many Nings were no longer in existence. I did find a great Ning while searching Facebook groups called, ‘Teacher Librarian Ning.’ It is an amazing, well-established site with many useful links that are current and easy to access. There are great ideas and book selections presented in the video links section, the forum section includes a post by Joyce Valencia which asks other librarians what kind of plans they have for the upcoming school year, and a number of useful groups you could join such as, ‘Web 2.0 in the Library World.’

Find this Ning at: http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com/

I think Nings would be less overwhelming if I were to create one for my own purposes. This would be a great tool to develop with individual classes on particular subjects of interest. A place where students could contribute by adding their findings such as information links and websites, photos, videos, have group discussions, post questions of interest, invite other professionals, create resource lists…the possibilities are almost endless. There is so much you can add to your NIng. Again it can become overwhelming so organization is key and navigation through the site can be revisited as new information is added.

On Book Related Social Networks

I also checked out Shelfari (http://www.shelfari.com/), LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com/) and weRead (http://weread.com/), which are all amazing resources. I love that you can create your own bookshelf, check out other peoples bookshelves and recommendations, write reviews, access e-books, start book conversations, create and participate in book quizzes, search popular books and award winning books, look up books by subject or series and look up feature authors and their profiles. It is a great extension to the library that students can access at home and contribute to. In my travels for kid’s websites I have come across ‘cool-reads’ (http://www.cool-reads.co.uk/default.asp) which reviews books for kids ages 10-15 and the reviews are written by kids aged 10-15. It’s a neat site in which you can look for books under subject headings, latest reviews and kids aged 10-15 can contribute by submitting their own reviews.

It would be neat to create a site using one of these social networking book sites for the whole school community with students' favorite reads, reviews, events, book discussion forums etc…I think many students would really be interested and for others it would serve as a great resource to see what their peers where reading and encourage a love of reading.

Many possibilities are available with social networking in your school; it is just a matter of deciding on a few choice tools and running with them…

Social Networking or Educational Netlearning

Present This...

These are all really great online resources for presenting information.

I was not familiar at all with Animoto (http://www.animoto.com) but found this presentation tool quite easy to use. I think to gain the full benefits form this program it would be best to go Pro because there are many more options that look more professional and are higher quality. The presentations are quite simple but for it’s purpose quite useful. I would have to explore it further to see if you can create more complex and interesting presentations. I guess it is your content that really makes the presentation interesting.

I created a very short 23-second presentation using animoto. I would use this type of presentation for sharing special events with family and friends, like vacations, birthdays, baptisms, etc. I liked that you had the option of choosing your own music or selections from their archive. They had a wide range of options and music themes to choose from.

For educational purposes

· it would be neat to present recent field trips. For example if students went to the art gallery they could create short visual presentations on a particular artist or art theme like impressionism.

· for history students could create visual presentations on a particular civilizations or peoples using images from the ‘creative commons’ galleries.

· In marketing they could create their own businesses and use this presentation format to advertise or promote their company.

Check out my 23 second Animoto presentation above. Thought this would be appropriate now that the days are getting longer again...Daylight Ends

The first time I saw an Xtranormal (http://www.xtranormal.com/) presentation was a couple of months ago. I looked up the movie again and there were dozens of other ones in the same vein. They were pretty funny involving a conversation between the cute little bear creatures from Xtranormal about the iPhone 4 in comparison to various other types of cell phones. The one salesperson character had an extensive list of features for other phones that were overwhelmingly better than the iPhone 4 but there was no convincing the customer of wanting anything other than the iPhone 4 even if the price starts at $20 and you can call all over the world for free or that it transforms into a jet and flies you anywhere you want to go, it also has a 36 megapixel camera and is cheaper than the iPhone 4. Sometimes you just can’t convince someone otherwise! Click on the image to your right to view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNz9gfs5Dw0&feature=related

I then decided to try this out and create my own Xtranormal movie, just a short little film where one bear invited the other to their birthday party. I did manage to save it on the site but in order to publish it I had to pay at least $10. I didn’t think there was a fee for most of these services. I searched the site for their policies but couldn’t figure out how to produce a free movie? Therefor I could not share a link with you here.

For personal use these movies could be fun ways to send invitations, create little skits with your children or share funny anecdotes with your friends or family.

In an educational setting Xtranormal presentations would be a fun way to present any kind of information on a specific topic. The site allows you to choose characters, settings, camera movements, gestures, sound effects etc…which can add to the learning experience of looking at how we communicate with each other and how to create mood, comedy, tension etc. within a visual presentation.

Lastly I experimented with Prezi (http://prezi.com/) I was very impressed with the capabilities of this web application. Whoever developed this concept was a programming genius. I love the format and the look of the presentations that you can create. I put together a short resource list of fractured fairytales based on an annotated bibliography I had put together for my other online course (LLED 462). Click on the image below to view.

This program is so intuitive and I was able to figure things out even though I did not remember some of the features within the tutorials I watched, e.g. how to undue a mistake. The one thing I could not figure out was how to go back into your text and make edits. It is probably the simplest thing but I had to create another text box and just re-write it again. Beyond that I just loved using their ‘zebra tool’ and found it super easy to navigate offering logical and fun options to create an interesting presentation. The organizing icon used for developing the whole site was awesome and super easy to use. This non-linear style application keeps you interested and is able to link with images and video that are so easily added to your presentations.

For personal use this is a great medium for sharing ideas and concepts with people, telling a story, I even thought about using it for an online resume.

I would definitely use this as a presentation tool in the library. It would be great to enhance book talks, to explain a concept, to model a presentation that students could put together. Students could easily create presentations on any topic, gathering information, collecting images and links to videos that would make any presentation interesting and unique.

These were great ideas I found on the website: drkisane – coach to women entrepreneurs

http://drkisane.com/using-prezi-to-create-stunning-presentations/

Things You Can Do …

• Tell A Story … e.g. A Day In The Life Of…
• Teach A Subject … e.g. Marketing Online
• Describe A Concept … e.g. Network Marketing

• Illustrate An Attitude … e.g. Gratitude
• Describe Something … e.g. Social Media
• Provide Tips … e.g. Different Formats For Same Content
• List Things … e.g. WP Plugins

I will definitely use this program in the future.

The New WWW -- The Wondrous World of Wikis.

I was amazed by the variety and scope of all the Wikis available online. It was quite overwhelming because beyond using them as an information source I have never really looked into their development, have not contributed to one or developed one of my own. I know…it’s terrible but now I feel like I have missed out and want to begin looking into useful Wikis within my personal and professional life.

My Own Personal Learning

I found that I did a lot of browsing to really get a feel for this Wiki thing and the browsing led me to more and more ways in which you could use Wikis in a variety of ways. From Wikipedia to Wookieepedia (The Star Wars Wiki) there is a world of available Wikis to explore, contribute to and create. I liked the possibility of using it as a group organizational tool after watching commoncrafts’s “Wikis in Plain English.” I never really thought of using a Wiki in this way…it would have been a good way to organize my up-coming 40^th birthday/10 year anniversary because I wanted to get feedback from my Toronto friends on good places to go since I haven’t been in the city for the last 15 years. For some reason planning events like these has just gotten more difficult but with the development of all these new technologies like texting and facebooking it has made it easier to keep in touch and communicate with friends, family and colleagues, although I feel I have to tap into more of these resources.

After reading Chapter 4 in Richardson I decided to add to an existing wiki. On page 58 he mentioned the Recipe Wiki @ recipes.wikia.com, this is a great resource and collaboration for great food recipes. I recently received one of those recipe e-mail chain letter, where you are supposed to receive 30 recipes. I only received one and it has been over a month now and I really do hate participating in these things, I find them to be a bit of an inconvenience and waste of time. Instead a Wiki would be a great forum to organize something like this. You could start one with a few of your friends, family or co-workers and then they could invite their friends, family or co-workers and it would spread from there. All would be in one place and easy and convenient to add to at each participant’s leisure.

I added my Spinach Gnocchi recipe to the “Recipes wiki” on wikia, you can find it @ http://recipes.wikia.com/index.php?title=Spinach_Gnocchi&cb=1186. I also created a wiki on wikispaces just to try it out. There is nothing on it but I’d like to think of ways in which I could use it; since I’m not working right now I may try to set up something personal or I would also like to continue with my KidsCanTalk podcasts so maybe it could a forum to share and discuss similar concepts with teachers I know. The link is: https://wikitalk2.wikispaces.com/.

Teaching and Learning

Chapter 4, “Wikis: Easy Collaboration for All” of Will Richardson’s book, had such a wealth of information and amazing ideas for incorporating Wikis into your classroom or library. I’ll provide a brief list here of the ideas presented.

1. Students could add entries to Wikipedia or Simple English Wikipedia after producing a research project on various topics, e.g. global warming, and track whether there are any modifications that could be studied critically.

2. Can be used as a venue for the publication of student’s work where the class as a whole could be responsible for the monitoring, editing and revising of the Wiki.

3. “Collaborative tools among teachers or districts to collect and share information.” (Richardson, 2010, pg.61)

4. Create your own class Wikipedia by generating an “online text for your curriculum that you and your students can both contribute to.” (Richardson, 2010, pg.61)

5. Have students create or edit books on Wikibooks or Wikijunior.

6. Collaborate with other classrooms around the globe in order to investigate each other’s cultures.

7. Build a text for you course by tracking work from class, sharing links, posting results from experiments, etc.

8. Use a Wiki as a yearlong study guide for tests and exams.

9. Produce a book study, which could include interviewing storytellers, creating presentations that are similar to your book and references pages that explain parts of the text, (so many other possibilities here)

I also checked out Wikibooks – open books for an open world and Wikijunior (an offshoot of Wikibooks). These sites were great…I learned a little about lucid dreaming by clicking on browse on the left scroll bar where all books are listed by subject, by completion status or by reading level. There is a cookbook section, some headings include techniques, recipes and ethnic cuisines, and you can also search featured books and are able to choose a random book to explore. There is a link to Wikijunior, this site offers students the ability to contribute to a large range of books in varied subject areas and has great information to use as well. I love the Fun Science Experiments page, which includes slime recipes, red cabbage indicator and pinhole camera on its feature page. It is well organized and so simple to navigate through with resources at your fingertips. The main page lists their main topic headings like discovery and innovation, the natural world, our world of people, school time and pre-readers. It also has a visually appealing bookshelf of titles to choose from. On the right you can choose their full collection, which they divide into two categories, well-developed books and developing books. The site makes it easy to find books that are being developed and encourages your students to contribute to them; the dinosaur page is a great one to look at and has lots of possibilities for new contributions.

If that’s not enough Wikibooks is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, which also hosts:

Wikiversity, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquotes, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Commons and Meta, and that’s only one organization!! There is so much to explore in the WWW…I will keep on venturing into this new territory to make new discoveries.

Oh…if you’re wondering what I’m planning for my 40^th/10 year anniversary this Thursday…unfortunately no concrete plans have been made. I think the three of us plus baby in the tummy are going to try to escape and take a little trip…should have used a Wiki!!