MashUpMania!

Week 6: Thing 7

There is no personal experience behind this image, none whatsoever at all! 

Skype Me!

Week 5: Thing 6

I have actually used Skype before. My family lives in Hawaii, and it has been fun to hook up with the cousins! :) We also used skype this last summer when my son's best friend traveled to Paris for a month, and they were missing each other! What a fun experience that has been!

I enjoyed reading about the many ways to use Skype in the classroom. I even noticed that Skype has a page where teachers may post their Skype projects and request help from other Skype users. The other page that I thought was really helpful and insightful was the 50 ways to use Skype in the classroom.

During this whole assignment, one thought has been recurring for me. I am so surprised and impressed by the many ways that people utilize technology. I feel like a complete DIGITAL immigrant! :) I consider myself fairly tech literate. But I realize that I have no idea how to think creatively and out of the box with technology. As an example, I recently downloaded a book on our Ipad for my little 2 year old. I was so surprised to see that not only did it read to my son, but every other page was an interactive educational game. Really?? I had no idea Red Riding Hood could be educational.

On the Skype idea page, I saw the suggestion to use Skype to include a sick student who was unable to come to school. Wow! What a great idea! In my mind, Skype  was for author visits or talking to other classes. They also suggested that parents could skype with classes to see what their students were doing. Another great idea! I look forward to being in a library and having the flexibility to really incorporate and create unique learning opportunities!

Wiki Wonder?

Week 4: Thing 5

I watched the CommonCraft video on Wiki's, which I really enjoyed... that is a great series of videos! I keep wanting to use one of those in my own class. I love the combination of low tech and high tech in the videos.

Anyway, I found the video very helpful. I actually played around with a wiki, before I set up a class website, and I did not enjoy it. I did not really like the "look" of the wiki.. it is just not that inviting to me. But that is a really minor point. My biggest worry about wikis are that kids can post, and edit the page. I didn't feel as if the site was very protected, which may or may not be true, but it just made me nervous enough that I actually never opened it up to my students. So instead I just set up a webpage.

I spent sometime checking out many of the educational wikis that were showcased, and I can see how they would be helpful. One of the wikis that I saw was about teaching history. They had topics about AP classes, elementary classes, important people, US history and world history. I could see that it would be really helpful to many educators. I also thought it was cool to know that it initially started out as an activity for a university class and then expanded to include educators from all over the world.

I also looked at a few wikis that were created for school libraries, and I liked how they could set up online book clubs and book reviews that the students could participate in. I did notice that many of those pages though, had very little activity. I could not tell if that was because I was not a member, or if it was because it had not been maintained and supported. Either way, I thought it would be important for a visitor to the site to be able to see what was going on, because that would encourage them to join the wiki.

Even though I saw some cool things, wikis are still not as appealing to me as many other websites.
But thats OK, right? To each their own! :)

Picture This!

Week 3: Thing 4
I really enjoyed the Flickr experience! I got a little over excited and uploaded a bunch of my own pictures to Flickr, but it was fun. I chose to include this library photo.

OK, OK, so it is not really a library. But when I think of my ideal library, this is what I most often see in my mind, and this is what appeals to me the most, even in a school library. I LOVE the fact that all the books are facing forward! Yes, I know it is totally unrealistic, but it appeals to our visual natures! 99% of the time I pick up a book because of the cover. I only borrow the book if the story sounds apealing, but I always pick it up based on the cover. And the comfy chair... talk about Library Love!!

On a totally unrelated side note, I did this mash-up of my son before I realized that my picture had to be about a library... and since I am the Library Mama, I'm gonna include it anyway! :)