Thing 23

I am done. If you look at my last post you will see the things I am planning on keeping up with. As I have previously stated the biggest obstacle will be the time to keep up with everlything. I think the concept was fantastic but because there were so many things to get through I thought that I would have enjoyed maybe doing some fewer items and having more time to spend on actually playing around with the things. Almost all of the items required log ins and I don't know about anyone else but I almost need to keep a spreadsheet with all my logins written on it so I don't forget any of them. Not only did I have all the login's from here to remember, but I have about 1/2 dozen different logins for school things to remember as well. One of which requires that I change my password constantly but I can never reuse more than three characters from an older password. I think a lot of this stuff was fun to learn about but now as always I am stuck with information overload. I will have to pick and choose which things to keep up with and as I get more comfortable maybe add a few more things.

Thing 22

Yea, I am almost done. What did I like and what will I keep up with? I may keep up my blog and maybe change to focus to more social networking and teach my friends how to make blogs as well. I may try out some more with wiki's. I also will probably use flickr some more I really liked that one. I also plan to create book lists when I have time I really liked that site. If I only had a phone that I could send the books to my phone so that when I am in a book store I can find the books I am looking for. Web junction I may check out periodically to see if there is anything of interest. I will definately be looking into ELM as we move into my new media space next year and classes may use these sources more now that we have a sign out computer lab available. del.icio.us I will probably keep using to organize my links. I haven't decided yet on my rss reader. The biggest obstacle I have with all this is time. I do feel a lack of connectedness with other media specialists in my area and may use one of these tools to try and see if we can do some connecting in my local area.

gadget link

Find more photos like this on 23 Things on a Stick

Thing 21

Looking at gather I feel that I like that a little better than my space because you have the option of creating tags to help the user find a specific topic. I didn't see this on my space. (Maybe the site I looked at didn't use them?) I thought the information was much more organized and not as haphazard. Web junction I have heard about but haven't checked out before today. This was kind of cool. The organization was good because it was very easy to locate the area of the web junction you wanted to look at. Just for fun I typed in my name in the search box and found my graduate paper listed. I was surprized that it even linked me to amazon to see if I could buy my paper. I would have been even more surprized if I had found that I could buy a copy of my paper, (it said not available.) I think that this may be a site that I will check out more often. I accidently originally set up my first blog under the ning site. Some of you may find it out there but I haven't been maintaining that one since this is the one they wanted me to use for the project instead. I may keep up one of these blogs I am not sure of that yet. I will see what time allows. The My Space article wouldn't open for me so I wasn't able to read it.
I left a message for someone who asked to added to my friends in the ning location. I may keep up with this site after this is over.

Thing 20

I checked out the librar sites on my space. I thought it was interesting that some of the comments were the same for both libraries. I also noticed that both libraries had imbedded the search engines for their library this I noticed is a good use of the space. I like the homework help section that the libraries offered. The idea of connecting with teens is a very good way for libraries to connect with their current and future customers. Kids who use the library system turn into adults who will use the library systems. Just for fun I searched out some of the names of some of my current students and some of my former students. It was interesting to see that some of them blocked their page to their friends and some of them left their pages open so that anyone could look at them. I was surprized to see that they could put down their sexual orientation and their religions. It was also interesting that whenever some of their friends posted a message that their pictures went up next to their messages. I was also surprized that one of the messages even included someone's cell phone number. I also found that one of my students posting lied about their age. I think that this is a great way to social network but I still feel that the amount of personal information about these kids out there can be a potential danger. I was able to find some of these kids just by typing in their names and then narrowing the search to the area my town is in. I like that you can post pictures and have a blog in the same location but I am still not sure that the benefits would outweigh the personal information floating around out there. I also felt that when I looked at the libraries pages there was so much information out there that is was confusing to look at. I know that these kids are used to that but as a newcomer I thought it was very busy. I guess I still like the old fashioned web page format with links to exactly what you are looking for.

Thing 19

I got a quick introduction to g-cast when I took a session with the MN historical society, (they also showed us the toon do as well.) She showed us how she would phone in notes for an assignment for her students using her cell phone and then the students were able to listen to those notes via the pod cast. I liked checking out podcast.com and liked the fact they had a directory on the side that you could subject search if you didn't have topic to search for. Yahoo only gave a search bar.
I really like podcast alley they had a genre selection plus a top ten list for the previous month. I found something related to harry potter and followed the directions to get it to i-tunes but I had to go to the i-tunes help page to get it posted. I also checked out one from mpr that just simply downloaded an old episode to my computer and I played and deleted it when I was done. I also downloaded a podcast using i-tunes and that was very easy to get but there was an error when I tried to listen to it. I am going to leave this harry potter podcast on and try it out for a while. I do like the use that I was shown for using g-cast earlier this year I think that is a very beneficial use of a pod cast.

Thing 18

I liked checking out the videos but I wouldn't be able to use this at school because it is blocked. I checked out the suggested videos and that got me thinking about my favorite commercial from the past and I found a version of it out there. Did you know Barry Manilow wrote the band aid song? I also wanted to check out a music video just for the heck of it and found one of my favorite songs on video and decided to post that as well. I hope to go to school tomorrow and see if I can open the embedded link or if I will be blocked. I will be interested to find out if you remove the video from You Tube if a blocker will catch it. When I searched under band aid I got the old band aid christmas video for world aid from the 80's. I found I had to search using band aid commercials. I also got a list of home made commercials that people made for fun or for school projects. I have some questions about this service though. I notice and know from friends postings that anyone can post anything at this site. What are the copyright liabilities of posting something on the site. For example that library video that used "Final Countdown" as background music. I was always under the understanding that if you are making a video that you can't use popular copyright music without permission and I didn't see any permission or credits listed on that page. I know that generally if you are doing a video for personal reasons that you are typically not going to have any problems because you are typically just sharing the video with family and friends and there really is no public performance yet I would still be concerned about copytright, (I am talking about a graduation or a anniversary type video that people frequently make to remember a special occasion), but once you post the video out there on you tube is that a violation of copyright if you took a song from a cd or your i-tunes library? Also, when I looked at the music videos and tried to trace the person who posted it I got someones personal page not a public location. Where did they get the video and did they have permission to pubically post it? These are some questions that I have because I would be very hesitant to publish anything that had pieces borrowed from other locations. I also thought it would be fun to post my own video that I took last week but I kept trying and got error messages so I may try another time.

Thing 17

I checked out the Gale site and this is a great site for students and teachers who need information on current topics. I did the search suggested and followed the directions to try and get it to my google reader and I got error messages. I tried to put it in at a later date and the link to copy the information to the reader didn't even work the second time I tried. I would use this in the classroom with my 6th graders when they are doing research that they need a lot of current topic information. Currently our school doesn't have computer time for these searches so this is not a tool that I teach the students about. With my new media center we may have more computer time for research for students so that this would be a tool that I would teach teachers how to use with their students. I went right to it and I don't know if that is because the software remembered my computer from watching the webinar earlier but I would definately want to pursue how to log in at school without having to have the students have their library cards with them. I also like how when you access the article you can e-mail it, download it, and change the language it is in. I didn't like that you can't back out of gale to get back to minitex's page. I found out my problem with getting info to my reader was that I had pop ups blocked because I wasn't able to look at my ebsco web page without the pop ups enabled. I don't like that idea. I created a quick web page and saved it to my desktop. Proquest made it very easy to do a search of recent articles and send them to someone. Again I had to disable my pop up blocker which makes it more difficult to use. Again I would use the proquest with my students to help then get current infomation. I also checked out e-library and this was a great site with an easy way to search content that is relevant to your search and by typing in terms you can get right to the information that you want. I would use this with students to help them find a specific piece of information in a larger context. I didn't log in to add notes because I am getting tired of having new logins everywhere. If this is something I will use later I will get a login at that time. I did like the fact that you can add notes for the article so that you can come back to it later and see your notes. Great for research. There are a lot of good things to use at the elm site but my students haven't had the opportunity to use computers for their research very often so we have not used these resources in the past and I hope to start using them more in the future.

More pictures

Here's another picture I took this weekend. This is actually the first time I have been in Duluth in the evening to take a picture of the bridge lit up.

Thing 16

I plugged in the date for when this program is due just to check it out and see what there is to offer for this. The U of Mn one was very simple to use and gave good suggestions for older students to keep on track for when a research project is due. I liked the fact that you could change you subject area on both sites. The second example was a lot more detailed and you could even get e-mail reminders. I can see if the deadline is a long way away how an e-mail reminder might be helpful for someone who leaves projects to the last minute. It would be nice is one of these would be a little more custom made so that if a teacher has different due dates for different parts of the project instead of just general guidelines. I liked the suggestions for teachers so that they can help their students focus on getting their question going but not all assignments are about finding a question and researching and that would be a nice feature to be able to tailor the schedule to the assignment given.

Thing 15

I tried the Pirate games. I was able to easily download the program but had trouble starting because I was sent back to the website and had trouble figuring out how to start. The games I was familiar with and when I went to join in a parlor game I didn't have enough money to join yet. I thought that there was so much going on I got confused. I didn't realize after playing the game for a while they wanted me to leave and then after playing a game they wanted me to leave the ship. I guess I prefer the stand alone games that you don't necessarily need to follow conversations along with your game. I looked at the other site briefly and it looks like it would be a fun interactive virtual thing but I guess I prefer live interaction unless I need to do it for a class.

thing 14

It's a darn good thing no one told me about this web site before I had to do the other stuff or I would have gotten left behind creating a library of my thousands of books at home and not taken the time to move on to another thing. I am also working on this at a hotel in duluth right now so I don't have access to my full library so I just added a few titles to check it out. This is awesome. I am definately going to spend some time adding my current books and any new books that I get so that I can have a list when I go to buy some new books. (It's too bad I can't do this to my school library but it would take way to long.) I did figure out how to send titles to my blog and a link into my blog so that I can connect quickly. I also tagged it for del.icio.us and made a link this is how much I want to use this in the future. I also plan on trying to connect to amazon since I do a lot of shopping that way as well. It's too bad it doesn't work for dvd's and video's also. Like I said before I just used a few titles that I knew I had at home to test this out. I didn't see where the ratings were for these books though. Do you have to share your information before you get the ratings for these? I would like to access this via my cell phone which I see you can do so if I am at a used bookstore and want to know if I have a book or not I can check it out. However, my phone doesn't have internet capability. I think it is time to upgrade that as well but I haven't used up my
renewal time yet since I upgraded my last phone.

library thing connect

library thing

Thing 13

I tried to put the countdown widget on my page I got the info but it is not counting down. I tried it a couple times. I set two appointments on a calendar in yahoo calendars since I already have accounts set up with them. One appointment I set for a time I knew that I would be using the computer, another date I set in the future so that I can see how both of the reminders work while I am using this service and maybe not using the service. Zamzar looks promising for some of the instances where I have had some non-jpg pictures that need to be transferred into jpg. Also since we have macs and school and I need to have some things converted into microsoft that don't always transfer very easily. I didn't try any of the list sites because they wanted more logins to try them out I will keep them in mind for a situation that I may want to use them for. I could see teaching kids to use the calendar and the lists to keep track of assignments and when they are due.

Thing 12

I didn't like the fact the digg didn't let you back out of their site when I went to check it out. I like that in some of the sites in reddit you can change the font size. I also found the searching easy and I see that people can add comments to add to the articles. I thought that newsvine was pretty easy to navigate as well. I checked out Mixx as well and found a funny video about a dog who had figured out how to reload a ball throwing machine to play ball with himself. I have seen and tried the share button to send cute things to other people. What I have a problem with at these sites are because the don't have editors it will be harder to teach student to be discrimate users and how to what information to trust. I also noticed that some posters of information don't always use what I would consider appropriate commentary for my students to be reading. As far as how I would use these in the classroom, I haven't checked yet to see if any of these sites would be blocked at school and I likely wouldn't use them in a classroom situation because I would prefer to find sources that I know are reliable and direct the students towards these. I also noted that if you wanted to vote you had to create yet another login and password. I am also not a news junkie so I would probably not use this site myself.

Thing 11

This thing had us using del.icio.us to try and manage web sites. I can see a lot of potential for this so that you would be able to access your bookmarks from a remote location like a public library. I like the way that you can connect to other links so that you can see that they connect to yours and you can even add them to your site as you locate them. I could see this being used to connect students to research items when they are doing a project but it would need to be created so that students would have access to a common site. I would like to explore using it to manage the web sites that I have my students use so that I wouldn't necessarily have them all sitting on my web pages because the tags would almost make it easier to use than trying to set up an organization on the web pages. I am going to add a note to myself to see if I can try and use this in my classroom for this purpose. One question I have is does this service monitor dead links and remove them or will you encounter them and need to remove them yourself?

Thing 10

I actually was introduced to wiki's during a conference in St. Cloud sponsored by the MN History center. I thought the wiki was easier to edit and add things to than using google docs. This is another source that I would like to pursue a little more. I know that some people have used them to communicate with their students and let them add information to a topic as well. I have let students use wikipedia at times to gather information but I do warm them that some of the information posted there may not necessarily be the most accurate because anyone can post to them. How can we tell when using a wiki if the authors are experts in their field? Through the MN History project I did try starting something on wiki spaces but have yet to get back to it to give it more of a try. I was going to see if a group of friends could use it to get information faster than using our e-mail. I added a comment and a picture to the mn 23 wiki page. I signed it as jlundholm.

Thing 9

Ok, now I tried zoho writer and Google docs. I was able to make comments on google docs but I was not able to actually make changes in the document. Some time when I have a little more time than I do right now I would like to create my own document and have a co-worker make changes just to see how it would work. I was not able to make changes on the zoho writer document at all, I didn't even see any tools like I did in google. I can see how this would be very useful if someone is doing collaboration with another person in another part of the country or the world.

Thing 8 continued

The link lazybase was not working when I tried it on Mar. 16th so I was not able to check that site out. I did look a little at the e folio. Sometime when I have some time I think I would like to look at that more to look into creating a place there to showcase what I have been doing so that if I ever need to change jobs or want to create a supplement to show my co-horts what I have been working on that would be location to put something together. I would use the slide show posts in my class as a means for students who don't have power point at home for a way to post and look at the work they have done in class. I do send their slide shows home via e-mail but not all students can view them because they don't have power point at home.

Thing 8

I used slide share to upload a power point slide show. The nice thing is that they have guest accounts so you don't have to login. This presentation is a show that we use with our 1st grade program to illustrate the locations that students talk about during the program. The pictures are a combination of pictures submitted by families and pictures from the web. During a conference I attended we were told that we can put the picture credit in the notes section of power point and I don't know if that will show through. At this site to publish a slide show I do notice that keynote presentations have to changed into pdf format first. This is good to know because our district wants to switch to using keynote over power point. This was pretty easy to link to the blog because there was a link to blogger. If I had an mp3 file saved I could've added audio to my slide show but I didn't have any mp3 files saved on my computer at this time.

Thing 7 continued

I watched a previously taped broadcast on using a google customized search engine. I wasn't able to watch a live one at this time because of my schedule so I watched this one to see how it worked. I liked the idea of the using the customized search engine because it seems like a good way to manage bookmarks to only search within favorite web sites. This would work well if you have a number of sites you check frequently. As far as watching a video conference I like that you can see what the person is doing on your computer so that you can see exactly where they are going. Presumably if this demonstration was live the instructor would likely give the learners time to try or set up some of the things they are teaching at the same time. I was asked to take a couple of these earlier this year for a survey and a design tool however the times did not fit in with my schedule and I thought that the set up was a little too difficult for my area. The one that had a phone connection I believe would have been a long distance call which I did not think the school would appreciate paying for an hour long long distance call to watch one of these. The other problem with some of these is that you may have to download some software and not all schools have easy access to or want you to download software that is not used normally in your teaching day. One thing I thought would be nice is that set up of the one that I watched I didn't have to download anything but as I watched I could see exactly where the person was telling you to click and something like that as a tutorial for students on searching the internet or using word/power point if they missed the assignment. The only thing I wished it would have had was a pause button so I could pause the presentation and try out what was being taught.

Thing 7

I have been using e-mail since I started grad school in the media program. I started that program back in 1992 and I used a computer for all my school work and a little bit for looking up information in a library but I did not know much about the internet or e-mail and especially the use that was set up for home. Since then I don't know how I would do without either one. We use the internet all the time at home and school to look up information, communicate, shop, and play games. Over the years the use of these tools have gotten easier and more user friendly. I am the yearbook coordinator at our school and the first two years I did the yearbook it was all cut and paste. The past two years the entire yearbook is done online. Yahoo got to be my favorite browser so I set up my e-mail and everything through that early on. I now use google a lot more but appreciate the connectivity google and yahoo share with each other. I have gotten to the point at work that I prefer to be contacted by e-mail versus the telephone. I frequently get solicitation calls while in the middle of class so I often won't answer my phone when I am teaching because it takes away from my lessons and I don't always remember to respond to my phone messages as quickly as I should. When using e-mail I can often switch from my circulation screen while I am waiting for the next patron and quickly read and respond to an e-mail. (It is also easier not to be as wordy with an e-mail as when you talk.) I also like the idea with e-mail that I can group my co-workers into groups so that only one grade level would get a message that I sent.
IM My opinions on IM is that it is a great tool to talk like two people would talk face to face. I have done some IM with the people who are connected via yahoo messenger and plan to set up something with the chinese teacher who stayed with me last fall. I like the fact that I can log into my e-mail with yahoo and that if I have someone else in my mailbox that is also using yahoo for their mail that I get notified when they are logged in so that I can sent them a message and we can chat. I have a wii which supposedly is able to go online and contact another person however I can't seem to get it to go out into cyberspace. One thing that happens when I IM is that I spell out everything because I don't have a dictionary for all the abbrviations and by the time I would look them up the other person would get tired of waiting for me to figure out what they are saying. IM is a whole new language. Our school does not allow for IM so I see a need to know what it is and the basics of using it, because my patrons know about it, however I don't think I will be using it with my patrons.
One of my former students who is a daughter of one of my co-workers finally taught me how to send a message last summer. I have owned a cell phone for 9 years and never learned how to send a message. I am very slow but I can do it, where as I know many of my students can send a long message in less time than a teacher can even notice they have their phone in their hand. I have used text message at times to reach my brother because he can't take calls while he is working. We try to encourage our students to leave their cell phone at home, (I am in a k-6 building and we feel there is no reason for them to have their phones in school more from a loosing them stand point and we offer a free phone for students to use in the main lobby,) so I frequently don't bring my phone to school either. I can see that the short messaging would work for a librarian to let a patron know their materials are in or to send an answer to a research question. I know that there are services/software that will allow for sending these short messages so that they can be sent and received without a cell phone as well. I will continue this thing post later.

23 thing card 1

23 thing card 1
Originally uploaded by Jeanne's practice pictures

Here is my other card for my non-fiction section.

Everybody section media center

Everybody section media center
Originally uploaded by Jeanne's practice pictures

Here is the card I made for the Everybody section of my media center. I took this picture to try and learn how to upload to flickr.

Thing 6 part 1

Gooseberry Falls in winter
Originally uploaded by Jeanne's practice pictures

Here is my attempt at a trading card. I can see a lot of uses for this one great idea would be for creating your own flash cards but to have enough it would cost a lot to print out enough for everyone to have their own. It would be nice however to find a way to make your own flashcards and save them on the computer where someone would not have to pay to use that service. I used Gooseberry Falls because we are currently working on Minnesota History with my group and thought it would be a great way to try this to use with a class. I like adding the little icons.

Thing 5 part 4

This could be used easily in a school library by taking pictures of book covers and having kids add information to the cover that they might be interested in sharing for a picture book talk or report. I think sharing photos is fun but I would be careful not to publically publish anything with a person's picture on it without their permission or their parent's permission as well. I would also be careful about teaching students to give credit to the photos if they were to do a project where they got the photo from someone else. As far as adding the stuff I did to my blog I didn't even have to make sure that I copied any code, as long as I was signed in to flickr and my blog under a different window all I had to do was click on the blog this spot from flickr and my stuff was sent directly to my blog. I also now have figured out how to get my rss working and the new stuff getting added to my blog is also going over to that as well.

thing 5 part 3

split rock calendar
Originally uploaded by Jeanne's practice pictures

Ok, one more things for this part I am finding this stuff with flickr is a lot of fun.

Thing 5 part 2

mar. calendar
Originally uploaded by Jeanne's practice pictures

Okay, this time I tried a calendar and I was amazed to find that I could also add my own personal touch to the calendar and add things that are going on for me on the calendar.

Thing 5

duluth puzzle
Originally uploaded by Jeanne's practice pictures

Well, here is my puzzle using a picture from flickr. It wasn't very hard to do and I thought it was pretty cool. I think I might try a couple more of these toys.

Thing 4 part 2

library64
Originally uploaded by Jeanne's practice pictures

Hey, I finally figured out how to send a picture to my blog. This is the non-fiction section of our library which will be moving at the end of next year.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Thing 4 part 1

Ok, I have figured out how to get pictures from my computer up, and I have set up my flicker account and uploaded the pictures to flicker. I went through the directions to hook up my blog to flicker, but still haven't quite figured out how to get the flicker pictures onto the site, I will continue to work on this issue. In the mean time a few weeks ago I went up to Split Rock and Gooseberry state parks and these three pictures are my favorites. I like the idea of uploading your pictures to the web. I am currently in the process of taking my old pictures and scanning them and putting them on dvd so this idea would fit right up my alley. However it looks like unless you want to get a pay service for storing pictures there isn't a lot of room for posting things so you do have to limit your space to the free space allowed.

Thing 3

Ok, today I tried setting up an rss feed and I was able to hook up to my blog but so far I have failed to link anywhere else. I did try to post to another member blog today and it was interesting to try to post a comment to someone else's site. I did set it up using Yahoo since that is where my e-mail account is with and thus I didn't have to set up a yet another log in. That is one thing that I have found that is getting to be difficult in our world is all the different log ins and passwords and other pin type numbers we need to remember between work and home. It also doesn't help that as we are setting up all of these things there are even yet more places to log in to and create passwords to. Occasionally you can reuse what you have already but at other times you have to start all over again.