Thing 23 - Summarize my thoughts

1. Some of my favorite discoveries were: Flickr, Bighugelabs.com, Delicious, and Rollyo. I had heard a little bit about most of the 23 things, and told myself that I would take time to look at them. I'm so very glad that I made the decision to do this course this summer. It was well worth it!
2. The program has affected my lifelong learning goals my giving me a stress free, fun and manageable way to look at the great technology tools available to us as educators. As much as I wanted to explore these tools, I was a little apprehensive.
3. The only unexpected outcome for me was that these tools are really fun to use and very user friendly. I expected this to be much more difficult.
4. I can't think of any changes I would make in this course - except for the ones you've already made. I would like to explore more of the 43 things and counting that are available now, and I think that you've already added a part 2 for "graduates" of this course.
5. I would definately participate in another offering like this, and am hoping to be part of setting up this type of course in my own district.
6. This was Amazingly Fun!!

Thing 22 Nings

I like the idea of being able to set up your own social network. The possibilities are indeed seemingly endless. My high school class reunion was organized this summer using Facebook, and it really was an easy way to get a very diverse group of people together for a common purpose, but I'm not really comfortable interacting with students using Facebook.

The ning concept seems that it would be much more workable for professional endeavors. It's much more customizable. Although I intend to spend more time exploring the teacher librarian ning, I think that for the foreseeable future in my library we'll begin with the wiki concept.

Thing 21 Create a Pod cast

My district provided me with Camtasia Studio, so I used that to create my podcast which describes creating a resource list in our library catalog.

Thing 20 - YouTube, Teacher Tube, and Zamzar

This was a lot of fun. I appreciated the helpful tips on embeding video. I really liked using Blinkx, and am hoping that Zamzar will not only be useful for video, but for other file conversions as well. I'm wondering if it might potentially work on seemingly corrupt files, or files that have been saved in a newer software version than the one we have on school computers. I found several history videos that would be helpful in some of our research classes, and I found some movie trailers that we might be able to use to promote our Collaborative Library Dept/ History Dept Movie nights this fall.

This video just made me laugh, and I needed a laugh.

Thing 19 Web 2.0 Awards

I don't think I could just pick one thing from the list! I've learned about so many new tools in this program, and I'm really excited to start using them. So far, I think my favorites are Del.icio.us, and Rollyo. I believe my interest in these stems from my desire to better organize my favorite websites, and to improve the help I give my patrons with research projects.

I'm also excited with what I've learned about wikis, and am interested in working more with my colleagues to improve our workflow as a district team.

Beyond that, I want to utilize Library Thing and Google Docs because I know these are useful tools as well.

Really!!! So many tools - So little time.

Thing 18 - Online Productivity Tools

Open Office would be a Godsend to anyone who couldn't afford to purchase a software suite. It seems to provide all of the tools needed for productivity in the workplace. However, nothing worthwhile is free. There is always a catch. I would be afraid to rely on this "free" tool only to find out at some point that it would no longer be available. However, if a business or a school district couldn't afford to purchase software, this would be a viable option.

Our students often have problems using Microsoft Office at school. They have a newer version of the software at home, and come to class and can't access their work. We tell them to save work in a "lower version",but sometimes they don't, or the file is corrupted or ... I will definitely look at this as an option when students are working on class projects.

I like Google docs, and have used many of the templates for projects I'm working on. However, I worry about security and would not want to store something of a proprietary nature on the Google server.

Thing 17 Rollyo

This will be a great tool for Research and comparison of data. I registered and edited a list of History websites from a Pathfinder.
Here is my Rollyo - History Research: http://rollyo.com/jpenning/history_research/
I plan to update the resource lists on our library page.

I think students would also get more of a sense of ownership if when doing website evaluation they could have input to the list of acceptable resources. It would be a great part of the assignment.