Thing #2

I used Wordle in 23 Things. So I tried Wordsift this time. What really impressed me about this tool was the visual thesaurus. I put an article about being a new librarian in the box and the visual thesaurus brought up some amazing connections and extensions on some very important and profound concepts of librarianship. So a student who is looking at speeches for instance, could see some interesting connections and added depth in the implied and unimplied expressions shared. This is an awesome way to get the students to add more depth and complexity into their thinking about a subject.
I love VoiceThread. This has been one of my absolute favorite 2.0 tools. I wanted to use this last year, after discovering it last summer, but was blocked by my district. Students can do some really high level thinking with this site. You displaay a concept, image, or text. Then you allow the participants to chime in with their own thoughts, which is their actual voice. You can see a running conversation on a subject. The students can read others opinions and bounce off of their ideas. I just went to thread on Readicide and the thoughts of educators across American on how schools are killing reading for students in so many ways. The ideas of each person's contribution really made me think about this sad dilemma and what to do about it.
Yeah! I made my first Animoto! It was fun and surprising. I can't believe how easy it was to create such a fun visual experience. It was a bit tricky in having too many pictures, and being cut off at the end. But with practice I feel this is a great tool to use with students. They could use this for Social Studies (primary sources, time travel photos), Science (photos showing scientific concepts), Language Arts (poetry, Book Review) and the list goes on.
Bookr looks like a fun site. The students could use this to create a picture book online, for publishing their writing. This also would be a great alternative to powerpont to showcase their projects.

Thing #11

My experience with The Library Thing:

1. Went to the website (Wow, another gift from Spring Branch library division!)
2. Started an account, added my books (with ease, I might say)
3. Startled, began clicking voraciously to find others reading some of my favorites
4. Found groups- a little confused on some groups that were stagnate, and some very unusual groups, such as Book Moochers
5. Found a group reading where librarians and others discuss Children's Literature ( A Collection Developer's Etouffe) and joined, of course
6. Began looking for a recommended next read
7. Thinking of how I could use this at school, library discussion or group discussion of books, perhaps book club forum
8. Tried to link widget, but became frustrated when it said there were illegal characters in the web address, finally gave up (will try problem solving later)
9. Logged off before midnight, knowing this could be a huge addiction! :)