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!!

Kids Can Talk Podcast Series

A World of DinosaursClick on image to link to my podcast
You can also go to my PodOmatic.com home page found at: http://www.podomatic.com/profile

Wow…podcasting…what a great opportunity to explore your own interests and areas of expertise and an amazing platform for creating your own show on virtually any topic under the sun. The story shared by Richardson of one of the first podcasts he heard by a 13-year-old Matthew Bischoff who started his own radio show from his bedroom was so motivating…it made me want to start my own radio show. What an amazing opportunity for all individuals to have their voice heard without having to sell their idea to a big radio station or television network. The only downfall of the widespread use of podcasting is just that. There is so much out there that it is difficult to sift through and find the best resource to suit your needs. I have to explore the medium much more to narrow down what is available and worthwhile to subscribe to. I have not as yet linked up with RSS feeds and podcasting, which I definitely will do very soon.

My Own Personal Learning

To create my very first podcast I took the advice of Richardson and created an account on PodOmatic.com, which was pretty easy. The only difficulty I had was when I started putting together my first episode it would never save my first page and I had to create the title and description portion about 3 times over. When I went back to it I could never find the “my podcasts” link. I realized that I had to create my own URL but I ended up doing this at the end of the process, after completing the uploading of my audio portion of the podcast and then it finally popped up on my home page with the option of creating episode 2.

I also had trouble uploading my podcast until I realized I had to convert the file into an MP3. Which I probably should have known because when I went back to the readings in Richardson, one of the 4 components in creating a podcast was an MP3 file! Can I also mention that I hate converting files…it’s probably the easiest thing to do but I always seem to forget how to do it when faced with the situation. Finally figured it out with a couple of questions to my tech adviser (aka: my husband) I did not like that PodOmatic.com did not make the problem clear to me, the prompt that came up was ‘server error’ when it should have been something like: ‘does not recognize format.’ That would have saved me some frustration.

I created my MP3 file using the program GarageBand that was not too bad to utilize being my first time using it. You can also edit within the program and I did some minor editing deleting long pauses and a section in which my guest (interviewed my daughter) would not answer because it upset her to think about the prospect of Spinosaurus getting hurt and possibly dying if it fell on it’s sail-like spine which is attached directly to it’s vertebrae.

I also added an image to the podcast from my own files which was easy to do through the option of uploading images and then adding it as media when publishing the podcast.

I am quite impressed with the final product although thinking about it more there is even more I could have done like add another background track with dinosaur sounds or possibly music. I would also like to figure out how to add video or change the images while the podcast is running. Time permitting I will go back and enhance the podcast and I would like to take the opportunity to continue interviewing kids on topics they would like to talk about and create more episodes of KidsCanTalk.

Teaching and Learning

In the school environment there are many opportunities to explore podcasting and the great thing about it is that there are so many other classroom teachers around the globe that are creating their own class podcasts, which opens up the door to sharing ideas and information with a larger audience; creating the ability to connect, communicate and corroborate with other students’ experiences and learning.

I browsed through the many podcasts available through PodOmatic.com and there were great resources within many subject areas such as Arts, Education, Government Organizations, News/Politics, Science/Medicine, Sports and Rec and Technology. Their most popular is of course music and the site promotes and highlights popular music genres from around the globe. I got to listen to some funky DJ’s while working through this latest blog, which was great. I’m sure students would be inspired by the possibilities here!

Ideas I had for use of podcasts within the classroom and school library would include:

· Sharing ideas, concepts and reading with each other as students progress through their assignments as mentioned within the article, “Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education” by Gardner Campbell. The students also created a movie-trailer style podcast on Nietzsche and Also Sprach Zarathustra (more commonly known as the 2001 Space Odyssey theme song originally written by Strauss) this would be neat to hear!

· Many forms of oral presentations, which may or may not include images, video or music. For example presentations on historical or fictional characters, political debates, radio style commercials, radio dramas, short subject documentaries.

· Sharing of original stories, poetry, letters, personal accounts, etc

· In science, lab results that could be accompanied by a live presentation of the experiment.

· Poetry readings

· Book talks

· Sharing a quote or excerpt from a book to generate discussion

· Music presentations

There are so many possibilities available which are limited only by your imagination. I find that this platform has the ability to enhance creativity while incorporating a lot of learning and personal expression.

Social Bookmarking...helpful or hazardous?

All my Delicious bookmarks are gone!!

Has Delicious been shut down already. Just signed up on Delicious last year. Thank goodness I didn’t post too many bookmarks on the site. It was part of a class assignment but when I went back to check on them they were gone.

I was going to transfer them onto Diigo since I know that Delicious may not be around too much longer but I guess they are gone forever…? That is my fear with these on-line bookmarking sites. I need to do a bit more research to see if there are ways to save them elsewhere, possibly on your own drive instead of just having them float around in cyber space.

My Own Personal Learning

Well, beyond that…I signed up for a Diigo account and I do like the features on it so far. I wasn’t sure whether you could organize categories by topics but discovered that you can do this by creating your own lists and naming them. I was a bit confused at first on how to add a bookmark to my particular list but realized that I had to install the Diigo Toolbar, then it worked out swimmingly. I created two category lists named ‘Boys Reading’ and ‘Digital Literacy.’ I will definitely add more lists in order to organize my bookmarks further. I find it much easier to locate them when divided this way instead of having this big long list of bookmarks. I had them in one long list on Delicious and did not like this option, maybe I missed something in the organization? The only problem now is going through the thousands of bookmarks I have collected on my computer and adding them here. May be it is best to start fresh and then begin to scan my older, existing bookmarks and bring over the ones are most current and relevant. Thus will be an on-going project that will take a little bit of time.

I also added images and notes to ‘my library,’ which is a neat option. I couldn’t figure out if you can upload images from the Internet though. I must investigate further…I also liked the option of highlighting text and did not realize that it would be placed right below the original bookmark for easier access. I created a sticky note for the highlighted section as well, great for people who have a terrible memory like me, and this is an added bonus for reminding me why this particular site was important or why and how I wanted to use it.

I like the option of including a read later section so that if I cannot get to a site right away I will not forget about it when I include it in my read later section.

I also joined a group; this is always useful in order to follow groups of particular interest to you. I joined the group Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers. It linked me to some good information that I will explore further.

Teaching and Learning

For students there would be many ways to use Diigo as an organizational tool.

· I would be able to create lists for my individual classes organizing their bookmarks for class library projects. I could also create subject categories for classes who are working in specific subject areas or particular topics, e.g. ancient civilization, human body, plants, etc.

· Students could organize and collect the various images they needed for a particular project or assignment and log them on the Diigo page until they needed to use them or include them within their work.

· I could highlight specific areas for students so that they new what information was the most useful and also create sticky notes with pertinent information.

· Students could also post notes on the Diigo page that I could respond to and address for further clarification.

· We could also connect to other groups and communities to access web pages that may be beneficial to use; we could share and pool resources this way.

· Tags created also are a great help for students to locate the information that they need and we could review them in order to help them with their searches. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to learn how to search and what to look for. This will help students problem solve and think about vocabulary and how best to find information on specific topics.

Here is my link to my Diigo page: http://www.diigo.com/user/lindadibiase

I look forward to organizing it further and hopefully it will be around for a while.

My First Ever YouTube Video Upload!

I borrowed this video from one of my husband's collection of work related videos. He has quite a few exciting stunt shots...enjoy! He would have loved to be this guy.

WOW…this was easier than I thought! Just uploaded my first video to YouTube without pulling out any hair and YouTube just sent me a Congratulations e-mail too.

Now I am thinking that I should create my own private sharing account so that I can share recent family videos with family and friends. YouTube is quite easy to navigate and I found useful tools easily with short, uncomplicated instructions that give you the option to use the tool more in depth when you click ‘learn more.’

My Own Personal Learning:

I learned how to create your own channel, which I will explore further because at this point I have only one video upload. This option allows you to compile all of your videos and create a personal channel, you can choose categories for your channels and as a user you can find specific topics when searching through the various channels that others have created. You can subscribe to particular channels of interest and YouTube will send you all of their recent activity. I subscribed to NYSSBA0IT's Channel that is put together by the New York School Board. Here is a link to one of the videos that I watched:

I learned how to embed videos to my blog and I created a JPEG image to link the video. I also linked my YouTube video uploads to my Twitter homepage to share my recent videos there. You can also link to a variety of other social networks like: orkut, Myspace, Face Book, StumbleUpon, Digg, reddit and tumblr. I also created my own playlist where you can organize and compile all of the videos you have watched and would like to watch again or share with others. You can create a favorites page with all of your choice videos as well. You can purchase, download and watch movies, I wonder what the copyright regulations would be on this and if you could watch them at school? You can also add captions or subtitles to your videos, which I thought is quite useful. Another feature is to add music to your video for free and the ‘insight’ option allows you to study the demographics of the viewers who are watching your videos, quite useful if you want to try to target a particular audience.

Teaching and Learning:

The implications on teaching would be beneficial due to the visual possibilities available to you, your students and their teachers. For research alone YouTube serves as a great visual guide to any kind of video you would like to watch from educational videos that teach the alphabet to medical research. YouTube can be viewed or it can also be used to view your own creations offering so many possibilities for classroom and library use.

When thinking about safety and security within the school environment YouTube allows teachers to create their own private sharing accounts where only invited students and teachers may watch videos that are created. You can also choose whether you want your videos to be public or private.

There are numerous ways in which to incorporate YouTube in an educational setting, these are some of the ideas I brainstormed:

· For primary use teachers can access a variety of videos to share on the white board to promote early literacy and learning. Some examples include: alphabet learning, shapes, colours, counting, language learning (great visuals for ESL learners), animal videos, songs, music and art.

· YouTube provides an exhaustive and extensive library of visuals for any research project and with a quick instruction lesson students would be able to find what they are looking for quite easily.

Again it is not difficult to discover inappropriate material and language at times so hopefully the school blocker is one that filters well without putting too many limits on searches.

· Students can create their own short films for projects and post them on YouTube to share with the class

· Also YouTube could be an alternative to in class presentations. Students could video tape their own presentation and show them in front of the class instead of having a live presentation. This could allow the students to perfect their presentations and many may feel more comfortable with this kind of option. They could record research presentations, book talks, debates, etc…

· Students could also create their own music videos for projects in language arts or music class.

These are just a few ideas and with a little research on video sharing sites I am sure you will find many concepts to inspire and engage student learning.