Winter 2.0 Fun is launched!

Greetings all!
Winter 2.0 Fun will run from December 1, 2007 - April 1, 2008. This
is a repeat of School Library Learning 2.0 that was offered this summer.
Join your colleagues to learn more about YouTube, podcasts, image
generators, wikis, mashups and other web 2.0 tools.
Now is your chance to learn, at your leisure -- in the comfort of your
own home, all about these exciting new tools. This on-line tutorial
will take you step by step through the use of many of the tools
listed above. There are already many ideas posted on CSLA's
California 2.0 Curriculum Connections wiki on how to develop library
lessons and useful classroom collaborations. Join in this discussion
and add to it, the many ideas you'll be getting as you work through
the 23 Things of this tutorial.
With over 60 CSLA "Summer 2.0 Fun" graduates, you have lots of learning
partners to call on and many of these grads will be your cheering
partners.
CSLA's Ed Tech Committee gives this special feature a new name: "Peer
Cheers."
School Library Learning 2.0 is a free, fun, and fabulous way to learn
together and strengthen our collective educational technology savvy.
For those who want academic credit, there is a
Continuing Education option.
Start today at http://schoollibrarylearning2.blogspot.com/

CSLA Conference is coming soon

I just returned from Reno where AASL held their conference. There were many Web 2.0 sessions, including one by team member Rob Darrow. While there were many fantastic speakers and sessions, I am looking forward to our own CSLA conference which promises to be just as fantastic. If you took part in our summer tutorial, you may want to attend "School Library Learning 2.0: California's Summer Fun" on Saturday at 10:45 AM. There will be prizes for the "graduates" and information about upcoming events. Don't miss it.

An invitation to improve the performance of your education team.
Classroom Learning 2.0
School districts and other educational groups are invited to offer a fun, new online professional development course for classroom teachers, administrators, and other educators. This 9-week course introduces educators to web 2.0 tools and curriculum connections. Classroom Learning 2.0 participants learn about and use social networking tools such as blogs, image generators, avatars, RSS feeds, wikis, nings, and much more. This course and its accompanying Management/Users Guide is brought to you by the California School Library Association 2.0 Team at no charge. It supports a number of legislative programs such as school technology plan requirements for ERate and Module III of AB430 administrator training. Continuing Education credits for the course are also available for a modest fee through Fresno Pacific University.
Designed for classroom teachers, administrators and other educators, this on-line course
introduces participants to the many exciting web 2.0 tools available to us to communicate more effectively and creatively in a wide variety of activities. This tutorial introduces educators to many new opportunities for developing dynamic lessons, and shows how to work with colleagues in the school library to create exciting standards-based lessons that will reach students with the tools that they use daily.
Classroom Learning 2.0 is a unique course in that each participant not only learns about the web 2.0 tools, but actively participates in a collegial conversation using the very applications that they are learning about. Web 2.0 is a phrase that was coined in 2004. It refers to the fact that the Internet is now an interactive medium rather than a ‘place’ to go to get information. Because students are flocking to these Web 2.0 sites, it is important that those of us who work in schools should be up-to-date with the latest trends in educational technology and learn how they can be utilized to support student learning.
The course is designed for a variety of presentation options:

• participants can do it on their own,


• you can lead a site group, a district group, or a group of interested teachers.

Your organization can offer incentives, create collegial work groups, and/or provide on-site workshops to support the course. We have found that forming groups allow for participants to ‘cheer’ one another along, problem solve together, and begin conversations that lead to exciting collaborations.
Your library personnel may already be graduates of our first professional development program, School Library Learning 2.0. If so, you already have a partner who can help you develop a 2.0 Partners group. Both online courses are available for free during the 2007-2008 school year. Our management guide explains how you can make this fun, free, do-it-at-home learning opportunity available to all your classroom teachers and administrators. To learn more about these courses and to get a copy of the Management/User’s Guide, please contact Connie Williams or Jackie Siminitus at CSLA2Team@yahoo.com.

Irma speaks

Gizmoz.com allows you to animate an avatar made from a head shot (I used dear old Irma) and record a message using your own voice or a text-to-voice application.

Express Yourself with Gizmoz Video Clips

iGeneration

The iGeneration that we teach is why we must learn to navigate Web2.0.

Mid Summer Update

Members of the CSLA 2.0 Team met f2f for the first time since putting this program together. Here are some of our team members gathered in the AT&T Executive Briefing Center in San Francisco (Front: Connie Williams, CSLA VP of Communications; Jackie Siminutus, Library Advocate from AT&T. Back: Jamie Boston, LMT from Davis Joint Union School District, Rob Darrow, Coordinator of Libraries, Clovis Unified School District.)
Our group learned that at this point in the summer, there are 125 participants in California and another 65 people from outside of California participating. Over the next months, the members of the CSLA 2.0 Team will be presenting the SLL2.0 concept at a variety of workshops. We will have a special awards ceremony at the CSLA conference in November.
There is still time for you to join!

June is here!

• School Library Learning 2.0 runs from June 1-September 1, 2007. The URL is http://schoollibrarylearning2.blogspot.com/
• I have been through the course as a "test driver" and it is the best "road trip" I have ever taken.
• California School Library Association (CSLA) members who have been through the course will "cheer on" participants that take the course over the summer. It is the cheering and encouraging one another along the way is a key part of the "summer 2.0 fun" experience.
• School Library Learning 2.0 is the first and only learning 2.0 program designed especially for K12 and California Curriculum Connections.
• School Library Learning 2.0 is the first and only learning 2.0 program that includes librarian AVATARS. Why? Because in addition to it being FUN, school teacher-librarians and their colleagues need to model safe Internet behavior to students -- student photos and glamour shots don't belong on blogs for the whole wide world to see!
• School Library Learning 2.0 participants can also get academic credit (2 units) -- a nice incentive for teacher-librarians and other teachers. The link to Fresno Pacific University's Continuing Education registration site is now "live." See http://schoollibrarylearning2.blogspot.com and go to the "ABOUT" section for details.
• I have already used so many tools that I discovered on this journey. Put on your traveling duds and jump onboard!

CSLA and School Library 23 Things

A team of technophiles from the California School Library Association have spent the past four months refining the 23 Things activities originated by Helene Blowers of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg in North Carolina, for school librarians. Thanks to Jackie Siminitus and lead by Connie Williams, our new CSLA president-elect, we are going live! We are excited to roll this out primarily for California school library personnel. However, we are welcoming friends and lurkers from anywhere in the world!

Join us for School Library Learning 2.0 - it will be a summer to remember!

You are welcome to participate in many ways:

Join us and learn with us! We “officially” begin on June 1.
Look at what we’ve done and re-do it to make it your own for your school library group or organization. Add to our “curriculum connection” ideas on our wiki
What we’ve learned from others…and are implementing with this management iteration:

We have a set of “virtual cheerleaders” (2.0 leaders) who will each have a group of about 30 participants to follow, post on their blogs, email and cheer on to encourage them to complete all 23 Things.
We have used our CSLA online registration system to have people register so we have a list of names and email addresses.
We are using bloglines to keep track of our groups and will divide the group up according to our main 2.0 blog leader.
For the things we thought were important but didn’t exactly fit with the 23 Things experience, we created the curriculum connections wiki.
We will be using Moodle a bit for participants who are purchasing continuing education credit.
We are offering up to 2 units of continuing education credit for participants through Fresno Pacific University.

For us in California, it will be a summer to remember! We hope you’ll join us, too!!

#23 Summary

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
My favorite was LibriVox. It will be such a useful source of material for my students.
How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
It confirmed my fears that I can't possibly retire or I will never be able to keep up with what is going on. These advances are way too much fun to just let the
young people play with them.
What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?
It will be interesting to see how we can keep track of what is going on with those who are taking it for credit - or will that be the university's problem. If folks jump around like I did, it makes it harder to track. It was much easier to do then the classes I have taken and taught through PBS TeacherLine as you really can do it at your own time, pace and sequence.
How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote CSLA learning activities?
Mind Expanding!

Week 6 #15

I was particularly struck by John Reimer's article, To better bibliographic services. His main thesis is that libraries should get much greater mileage out of the metadata they create. If libraries can begin to move away from proprietary software and begin using 2.0 tools to provide access to their holdings, then tagging can greatly increase the functionality of our data.

#14 Week 6 Technorati

I did explore this and practiced putting tags on some of my postings. I then went back and took them out. I tend to be a private person - note that I didn't even want to creat an avatar that would in any personify me. I realize that much of what I have out on the web is searchable and viewable. I also realize that the current generation is all about sharing and going public. That is fine and dandy for them, and having explored all these tools, I can help them with what they want to do and perhaps guide them to do it in a responsible manner. I just don't want to be out there with them.

Week 8 - #19 Library Thing

I am addicted to mysteries written by female authors. I share books with several friends and we are always losing track of what we have read and what we haven't. We have been using Library Thing since last year to help us keep track. We have yet to do a complete retrospective listing however.

#22 Week9

LibriVox - oh my. There are books for my 9th graders! I could download some of the novels like Pride and Prejudice for my EL and RSP students. We have one CD of most novels, but that means that students have to share. I could download these free ones and put them on inexpensive SanDisk players and have enough for everyone who needs it.

And then - you can volunteer to read. What a lovely way to spend my retirement. Now if only I could retire...

#21 Week 9

I subscribed to Hennepin County Library - TeenLinks Podcasts. I found their podcasts interesting as they reviewed not only books, but movies as well. One of my schools has a Radio Club that puts on radio dramas. I have tried to get them to do a podcast, however, they rarely follow copytight guidelines so I am cautious about posting anything that has questionable permissions.

In UTube I found some videos called BookWink that are book reviews of children's literature. One of the sessions I watched was called Sharks and deals with both fiction and nonfiction books about sharks. It would be a great activity to be able to do with students. They list related books on their website BookWink.com. All the videos are available on the web site - perhaps I'll put a link to the site on my school web pages.

There is also a funny one called Librarians.

Week 8 - #18 Zoho

I created these questions for discussion of the book Tangerine using Zoho and then sent them to Blogger. If this works at my school it will be a life-saver for students. It is very difficult for them to transport work to and from school as they are not allowed to use email, our computers do not have floppy drives, and flash drives are frowned upon. I can't wait to give it a whirl. I have used Google docs to collaborate with staff to create district reports, but it is blocked on the student network. I'm hoping the filter has yet to "notice" Zoho.

Discussion questions for Tangerine by Bloor.

Paul is legally blind. There is physical vision and emotional vision. What did Paul see that the rest of his family could not?

Paul's home is built on termite infested land next to muck fires that burn continuously and attends a school that falls into a sink hole. How does this setting reflect the emotional foundations of Paul's life.

Week 7 #17

One idea for wiki use is for students to create a kidipedia (their own version of wikipedia) on a given topic/subject either as a short term project (ie weather) or a semester or year-long project (ie U. S. history).
Another idea is to use a wiki for Battle of the Books where students create a list of questions/answers for each book to help each other study.

Week 5 #12 Rollyo

This could be handy to focus student research. I am anxious to try it at school tomorrow to see if can be accessed there. I made a search tool for project-based learning which is a topic I do many presentations on for CTAP. It would be useful for participants to have all the resources in one search tool when trying to build their own projects.
I added a Rollyo search box on one of my school web pages (http://www.djusd.k12.ca.us/harper/library/index.html) with searches for current events, reference, american history and mythology as a "test drive". I am talking with the Rollyo team about how to remove the general web search feature which is imbedded in the script that they provide. Even after taking it out of the html script it stills goes out to the general web. It would be most helpful to me if it would lock the students into the sites that I have provided for them.

pbWIKI video

Testing to see if I can embed another type of video file.

Check out my Slide Show!

#11 Week 5

One of the fun sites to explore is Library Thing http://www.librarything.com/ with which I am sure you are all familiar. Library Thing has inspired me to redo the pathfinders on my school web page. Over the summer I intend to redo them so that instead of having them just appear in alphabetical order (or so near and dear to my heart) I will tag them so that they can be searched in multiple ways.
I have been using Writely at school to collaborate on our update for the district Technology Plan. Much better than having to sit through meetings.
I added a brief slide show of Panama - I'm still on Panama time and having a difficult time getting back to work. Sigh.

#8 Week 4

I have been using RSS feed readers for a couple of years now to collect items of interest to me and also to collect information for various school projects/staff members/administrators. It saves time to have them delivered to my doorstep rather than having to go out and find them. It also impresses the socks off some of my colleagues who can't figure out how I always have what they need before they even ask for it. I try to share the secret, but they prefer that I retain the title of Information Goddess. So be it.
My public blogroll for this exercise is http://www.bloglines.com/public/irmapince

Week 3 - #5

I hope it isn't driving anyone nuts but me, that I jump around. I try to assess how much time an item is going to take and match that with the time available. The aim of this task was to post a picture directly through Blogger. VERY easy.

This is my attempt to make you all jealous. This is Playa Blanca in Panama. I was there in 2005 and am headed back there in 8 days. My father worked on the canal when I was a young child and he enjoys going back - mainly for the tarpon fishing. I oblige by helping him with the travel arrangements and then sitting in the shade with a good book while he catches dinner.

Week 5 - Online image generators

I tried playing with the Cartoon Generator. While it looks like it could be fun, the download time was excessive even with a dedicated DSL line. Does anyone know what the copyright ramifications are? There were Disney cartoons that you could modify. Did Disney give the rights for that? I find it hard to imagine since they tightly control their products.
All of the image generators that I experimented with could have very creative uses in the classroom. But, and I hate to keep saying this - really I do, they would never fly in my district. There are far too many questionable links and advertisements on the sites. Before filters were mandated, I was at the elementary level and managed to control the links that students went to through fear and intimidation ;-) Now that I have been at the junior high level for the last six years, I can see how necessary (even tho' it frustrates me no end) those filters are. This age group has very little impulse control and fear and intimidation when they are mostly bigger than I am doesn't work.
Image Chef was fun, but would easily be abused at the jhs level.

Week 4 - RSS feeds

Sorry to have been away so long. Somehow, despite routine use of antibacterial hand cream, I managed to get the flu - guess viruses just don't recognize that brand of voodoo that says anything with "anti-" as a prefix should apply to them as well.
I did manage to get on Bloglines and set up feeds for 11 of my favorite librarian blogs. I can see how this will save me time instead of calling up each one. I knew full well that it would, and I should, but like cleaning out the kitchen catch-all drawer, it is just something I never got around to. Thanks for the nudge.
In browsing through some of my favorites, I did find a good idea posted by Doug Johnson (who is always full of good ideas) for Flickr. He says:
"Last year I wrote about Fastr, a game that uses Flickr images. "It loads ten images that all share a common tag, one by one, and you guess what the tag is. When you guess right, the tag will turn blue, and you'll get points. The faster you guess, the more points you get." I haven't looked at it for awhile, but Joyce's post alerted me to some updates. Now you can play Fastr in German, Spanish, or French! What a great way to build vocabulary...IF you are good at getting inside people's heads to guess how they'll tag."

I liked the advanced search in Topix.net. I felt like I could refine the search best in this product. I tried searches for topics that classes are now doing and liked the results best with this service.

School Library and Classroom Ideas:
I can see how setting up a news RSS feed would allow you to customize content for student projects. I will need to try it to see if any of services can get by our overly zealous filter. Right now I could set one up for students who are researching Darfur and another for a sustainable agriculture project.

Week 3 - Flickr Font

FlickrFont (http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/flickrfont/) is a mashup that allows you to create word art using images from Flickr to replace dull text elements in a web page. It can either be static or dynamic. I have copied the code and am going to try to paste it into my school website to see what happens. So much of the image world is not available to us at school, that it will be interesting to see if this works. I love adding graphical elements to projects and I am sure students would really like using this for their own work.
I also played around with Magazine Cover in FD's Flickr Toys. That could make an interesting school project. Not only could it be printed out and used for an actual magazine that students create, but the cover itself could be a project, much like a trading card, ie. what would a magazine cover look like for the literary character Thidwick the Moose, Hermoine Granger, Babar, Paddinton Bear, etc?

Week 2 - Adding the avatar

Yahoo's avatar maker was having tecnical difficulties, so I went to http://www.tektek.org/dream/ instead. Like any tech "toy" you could get lost for hours playing around. I still don't understand the lure of having an avatar and and after creating and posting it, I took it off theblog. Perhaps it is my aversion to having my picture taken that extends to even having any image that represents me. Found a nice picture of Irma Pince. That will do for the time being...

Managing student security in 2.0

I am currently running an online bookclub using blogging software and hoping that it stays "under the radar" of my district. There are inherent dangers for both the district and the students in using 2.0 applications and teachers are liable for the results. The district is concerned about student privacy, appropriate content, and student safety vis a vis predators and bullies. I have so many safeguards on my blog that it barely functions as such. The students have to have signed parental permission. The blog can only be accessed by registered users. The postings are made under fictional pseudonyms and the postings are moderated and do not appear until I have approved them. Sure takes most of the fun out of it.

Week 1-Library 2.0 test drive

I have been very impressed with the CSLA version of Library 2.0 so far. My main concern is that it will not be able to be used on the job by many of us. Most 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis are blocked in my district. I wonder how true that is across the state. Are there any reports on that?