Montana Summer

My postings will be soon be taking a break as I spend three weeks in Montana, my home state. I thought I would share some of my love of Montana by sharing this blog site with you that features Montana. I also encourage you to visit the Charlie Russell Exhibit that is currently at the MFA Houston. He has documented an important time in Montana's history in his art.


http://blog.bigskycountry.net/

Playground Safety

I found this video about playground safety on TeacherTube. I did it as a separate post so that I can add other videos about playground safety as I find them. Sorry about the ad that comes first.

Playground Safety

Thing 20

This is an interesting video about literacy that I found on YouTube. I think it would be possible to find videos that would be suitable for short trainings and that would be good to help educate parents.

Thing 19

I explored several of the award winners. I spent the most time with the Mango Languages. The Mango Languages site showed which libraries in my area were licensed to use Mango Languages. I went to the HCPL site and searched for Mango Languages. Once I was at the log in area for the Mango Languages I was able to use my Harris County Library card number to log on and select the language I wanted to study in Mango Languages. I really liked the program. I completed the Spanish lesson 1 and plan to return for more lessons. There are so many tools on the web that I felt the award list gave me a place to start.

Thing 18

I explored Open Office on my teacher laptop. I did not realize it was already loaded on our computers. I spent more time exploring the Google Docs. I like that I sign in to my Google account rather than have to download the software. When I visit my parents, my father has different software so I am not always able to work on things I would like to from my flash drive. I imagine similar problems could occur with students and their home computers. Both of theses programs would let them have access to something they could use at home and school.
My home computer does not have Microsoft Publisher so I explored calendars in Google Docs. There were many options available for calendars. Another use that would be helpful for parent communications was being able to translate documents.

Thing 17

I decided to use Rollyo to search early childhood education. There were not many searches but the one that was there had a great deal of good information. I did my own using a few of the sites I like to use. I did not anticipate that everything on the site comes up. I can see that this would help research topics because they are websites I trust. If I want people to find specific web pages and share with others I will need to do it another way.

Thing 16

I found the idea of wikis very interesting. I really thought the video helped explain the organizational benefits. I was able to post in the sbisd sandbox. I decided to start a wiki of my own through wetpaint. I am trying my hand at a wiki for a social group that I am part of. It seems more practical than e-mailing back and forth to organize events. If this works out then I will try it for my school or team.

Thing 15

I found this thing very helpful in my understanding of what we are doing. I have wondered what exactly Library 2.0 meant. I definitely have a strong identification with the Library 1.0 model. To me a library is a building with books and people to help me access what I am looking for. When no computers are available, I still long for an actual card catalog. The article "To a Temporary Place in Time" helped me understand how the role of libraries and librarians is changing. I am beginning to understand what Library 2.0 has to offer. I am also beginning to understand the fluidity of the concept and how our understanding of how to access and share information will be constantly evolving in ways that are hard for me to visual now.

Thing 14

When I tried using the keywords School Library Learning 2.0 in Technorati search in blogs, tags and posts and did not find anything. The popular tags section is under construction for now. I did look at some sites in the top 100 and from the tag list. I think Technorati could help in research. I have been researching information about diabetes and copied some information into a word document I was using to make notes. Later I was able to explore further an area that had been tagged in the sentence I had included in my notes. I clicked on it and was taken to an article that was helpful.
As I am reading articles, I sometimes feel like I should follow all the tags but that gets rather distracting.