I presented using CoolIris and then uploaded to Slideshare.  No audio this time.  My colleague, Amanda Davis, led the Widgets presentation – I will post the link below as well.  Look for “how-to’s” with widgets from Amanda soon!



Widgets http://prezi.com/ctt8owlrfx_f/

Links:

Library 2.0 Session

Widgets Session

What I am looking for…

*Available at home and school

*Online – not  paper and pencil type thing

*Works with databases and free web

*Easy to use

*Easy to download (if you have to download) and use with a variety of browsers

From Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day, I found iCyte.  I am going to try it with students and see how it goes.  If you do the same, let me know or if you have a different/better site, please send that my way too.

iCyte Overview from stephen foley on Vimeo.

Others to add:  Animoto, Toondoo, Wordle, iMovie, Voki, Ning

Click here for the real Top 10 List of Learning Professionals.

1.  Post usage statistics in a way to get students to use the site (see current post) and to make others aware of the sources used most often.

2.  Instead of shouting out, “this is the best source” or reminding students of a specific link – post it on the Twitter which then shows on the front web page.

3.  When students set up an iGoogle account, have a twitter badge ready for them to post on their page – you can provide updates, new books, instructional information, etc. This one seems pretty easy to set up and if you have younger ages, you could provide a fun picture too.

I posted the code on our library web page, so students would easily see it.  Hopefully, we will receive some feedback from students and evaluate the usefulness of this tool.

Now I need to ask myself if the site is too busy for the 21st century learner – or do they appreciate polls, librarything, wikis, gadgets, widgets, and other links…

1.  Can be accessed from any computer with Internet access.

2.  Although it won’t take video, it creatively displays photos, so you don’t even notice.

3.  Only allows small amount of text per slide. (Typically, students like to create glorified Powerpoint slides – so this keeps them from loading a slide with a ton of text.)

4.  Provides music – and actually pretty good music.  According to our students, the selection is much better than what we have found from other royalty free sites – less synthesizers for sure.

5.  Transition provided.

6.  Easy to finalize and share. 

7.  Seamless way to set up an educational account and get students on the site with all-access.  See education information before creating a log on. 

For Africa Studies project, classes used Animoto for the first time.  First, students located information about serious issues affecting the countries of Africa.  Then, students searched for organizations that attempt to impact those issues positively.  Students reviewed their notes and determined how to communicate those ideas in Animoto. 

To find images, students could access unitedstreaming.com or the provided public domain images links.  Many students also emailed the organizations and asked for permission to use their images.  (That was probably the most eye-opening moment for many -  an organization could refuse to give permission.  Thankfully, many organizations did respond positively.  One organization was so impressed by the final product that they asked to post the video on their website.)

Handout for Animoto

Example Animoto (For complete class list of examples, go to the following wiki.)

With new 2.0 tools, there are new ways to visualize text that can possibly enhance understanding and engage students.

Tagcrowd and Wordle provide visual representations of words. 

How can it be used?  Go to SIRS Researcher, Election 2008, and copy-paste the text of the two candidates.  Wordle or Tagcrowd will provide visual representations of the topics or keywords the candidates emphasized.  Want to see the bias of an author?  Copy-paste the text from a journal article into Tagcrowd and again, you can visualize the important concepts stressed by the author. 

Tagcrowd and Wordle can work with any text document accessible through you computer including Word, Powerpoint, and Internet Explorer. 

How-To Video 

Download Video: Posted by zztoppers05 at TeacherTube.com.

Another way to push information to students – I am hoping databases will eventually catch up with this trend.

http://www.bv229.k12.ks.us/bvw_lmc/widgets.htm

We can continue to debate the Wikipedia issue or try new ways to involve students in discovering new ways to learn – web 2.0 features. I have been exploring iGoogle and Pageflakes & I want the best resources to be a part of those features – our online databases. How does this happen? How do we direct them to the best?

1. Create a google gadget. I am currently trying to get one that would send information to students pages that subscribe to a google gadget. Anyone can create their own gadget & then invite people to use it through email. (it is in the very beginning stages – if I create a better one, I will post).

2. Widgets – you can create a widget that can be posted on websites, rss readers, facebook, etc.   I am using widgetbox to create widgets that students can grab a hold of through the sites they already use.  I post one to our website – inspired by Twitterlit (which is the neatest thing!) – we created our own first lines (we call them pick-up lines) of books in our library with a link to the online catalog.  Go to our Find a Book page & see the widget on the left hand side.  Click get widget to grab the widget to add to a blog, pageflake, igoogle, etc. 
http://www.bv229.k12.ks.us/bvw_lmc/findabook1.htm 

I hope to create some that are research-minded soon – so students can access from facebook or another source that they use.

3.  Poll Daddy - What are some ways to create an interactive library site?  Poll Daddy is a free site that allows users to create polls and post to their website, blog, etc.  Our first question – Would you use the library web page if it were on facebook?  Click here to see the results.  This week’s question – “Is the library out-of-touch by discouraging Wikipedia?”.  Click on view results to see the answers so far.  Each week we will try to ask engaging questions (not just library related).