Thing 10 - Future trends

I don't have to look into a crystal ball to see much of what is talked about in these articles. Elementary students already love hybrid books. The students read part of a traditional book then go online to retrieve a clue or see a short view. We also use online book trailers to promote books as well as Shelfari and other online tools.

Joyce Velenzia is my hero (and she scares me, with all she does). Certainly our libraries need to be centers of production. As an elementary school librarian I see my role as the "real world connector." In the library we use the skills learned in the classroom to create/produce/ connect and really use our learning.   Our projects are tailored to the learner, by the learner.

In the short term future I see educators letting go of the rules ( you must have 2 sources from an encyclopedia/ book etc) Instead we educators will allow our students more flexibility to work on a real world question, using real world tools, to create something with is used by others in the real world.  We are already doing this, we just need to do it more.

As I shape my own personal learning environment, I know that a library will always be a part of it.

I know that my students are getting off to a good start making their own personal learning environments. Will libraries be a part of it? Only if the library and librarian stays relevant.

Thanks for a great class. I learned a lot and will continue to learn from the many sources Polly gave us.

Thing 9 - readers

I never used a ebook on a portable device before this. What I learned--my ipod is too small to be a reader! I was able to try an ipad, and size matters. While playing around with the Schenectady County Public Library's net library I realized there are many good, free audiobooks in downloadable format. I enjoy audio books since I can read a story while doing something else.  

Thing 8 -video

see my library orientation movie on youtube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7fwJHC2X0o

Thing 7

This was my favorite week. Polly, Thank you for a wonderful list! I successfully used Doodle to plan a small party. I will use this site often for scheduling. It is a real time saver.
 I played around with join.me, I have not needed it yet but will make use of it in the future. I never knew such a thing existed. It is a little big brotherish even though I realize that you have to give permission for someone to remotely control your computer.

I will try remember the milk since it has an app for the ipod. I already use delicious, but I certainly did not know so many other worksaving tools were out there. I share this list and will continue to come back to it.

Thing 6

I have been a part of webinars before. I watch scholastic virual field trips with my students, these are really just webinars. I also particpated in a parent webinar about my son's trip abroad this summer. Both of these experiences were positive and very similar. So I was surprised to find that School library journal's archived webinar was a different experience. The webinar I watched was 21st Century Digital Knowledge Management: The changing role of the media specialist with classroom technology . It was originally broadcast on May 13, 2010.

Unlike the other webinars I participated in, this webinar did not  have any live video of the presenters. Instead it showed a powerpoint with audio from the speakers. There was a question area but all questions were answered at the end, there were no other interactive features. I found it hard to stay on task but that might be because of the quality of the workshop more than the presentation format.

Webinars are a powerful way to learn without a huge time or dollar committment. I don't see them replacing a conference. The energy and networking of a conference just can't be beat. I certainly see webinars augmenting knowledge. Watching a pre-recording seminar is much more flexible than keeping an appointment, but you do lose the ability to interact. The scholastic webinars allow the students to vote which would seem silly if we were not watching live.

The technology of a webinar is so simple. just click and view, and learn!

Thing 5

Thanks Polly for the week to reflect. I hope you are feeling better. Shingles is a nasty illness. I had it a few years ago and will never forget the pain.

I am also taking a class on Windows Movie Maker. It is an online class through models schools. That class is a lot more time consuming then I realized. Thanks for the time to catch up in both.

Thing 4

I am going to play around with twitter. Ideally I'd like to use twitter for work and facebook for personal. I did not know about hashtags. I'll give that a try as well.