Online Image Generators: Thing #6

I used Big Huge Labs to create a goofy "trading card" that isn't nearly as cool as the ones that Carleton College has on their website. I can see where this might be a useful item to design for advisees and other individuals whom one wants to have contact information in a handy format that's more interesting than a business card. For example, I have a group of students in a group called "Royal Links" whom I meet with every Monday throughout their entire high school career for various activities, including advice about course registration and help navigating through the college-application process.

I found a couple of fun things that I can create in ImageChef that I think could be useful. Here is a nicely designed reminder note that would be fun to include in e-mail notices about overdue materials (a chronic problem with staff who borrow equipment!):


Here's another one I liked that would be fun to add to a blog or webpage related to the Media Center:

More Flickr Fun: Thing #5

OK, so there apparently is an endless variety of clever ways to search for and gather pictures in Flickr. For example, here is what my district name looks like in Spell with Flickr:


I think the Colr Pickr mashup application is another one that's not only fun, but also brings back surprising and dazzling results. This could be especially useful in webpage design and other activities where maintaining a particular color palette is important. Being able to easily contact the photographer for permission to use the photos is a plus!

Fun with Flickr: Thing #4

For this "thing" I created an account in Flick'r and uploaded a set of photos I recently took of the media centers around my school district so I could share them with my fellow Media Specialists. I've been wanting a way to do this, and Flick'r gave me the tool I needed.

In my school district (Hopkins) our Q-Comp model includes "Master Teachers" who observe each licensed staff member twice a year and then write up reports based on the criteria for best instructional practices designed by Charlotte Danielson. This year we Media Specialists have our own "Master Teacher" (me) who spends time with each Media Specialist and writes observation reports based on the Minnesota Standards for Effective School Media Centers developed a few years ago my MEMO, which is a process much more pertinent to the breadth of the work we do than the lesson-observation model the regular teachers use.

One of our newer media specialists recently rearranged significant portions of her collection and was looking for ideas for how to label the different areas to help students navigate the Media Center. She asked me if I would mind taking a few photos of signage when I visit the other Media Specialists so she could see how they are handling this task. Good idea! I took a digital camera along and snapped a few photos in each school, which I put into an album in iPhoto, and yesterday I uploaded them to a "set" on Flickr. Today I will e-mail my colleagues and give them a link to the photos so they can look at them as they wish.

About Flickr: I think overall the program worked fairly well, bu it took a long time to upload each photo and then to find the directions within Flick'r for how to generate the link information needed to share them with others. After I had finally finished this task, my guru colleague Terri mentioned that another photo-sharing site, Picasa, has an easier interface directly with iPhoto, which allows instant uploading of iPhoto "albums." Picasa also easily generates URL links and HTML codes that can be inserted into e-mails and blogs. In other words, I think Picasa would have been easier in the exact areas I found cumbersome in Flickr. I plan to try Picasa as well, with the same task, just to find out for myself what the differences are and determine which one I should continue using as standard practice.

This morning we together discovered that there is actually a small add-on program that now improves the interface between Flickr and iPhoto, making that upload operation more similar to Picasa, so perhaps the differences are being worked out. At any rate, this was a good opportunity to try a photo-sharing site!

RSS: Thing #3

OK, so now I have finally had a nudge to set up some subscriptions to my favorite blogs. I actually used a little program called Vienna, which is a favorite among many of my teacher colleagues, since it can be used to track your subscriptions without actually having to launch a browser beforehand. It has a very clean, uncluttered interface and excellent searching capabilities. This is all according to my personal tech guru, Terri Osland, whose blog is listed in the "My Favorite Blogs" section of my blog.

I'm sure that having RSS feeds of the blogs I read regularly will save me the hassle of needing to maintain a large bookmarks bar of blog links and having to remember to check each of them occasionally. Particularly with technology tips, I want to get the information in a timely way. A favorite blog related to my personal life is my niece Sarah's blog of her experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia. She doesn't post on any regular basis, so I tend to forget to check it and have missed some important updates that other family members have known about instantly, thanks to their having set up an RSS feed.

My colleague John U-F, who teaches AP U.S. Government & Politics and is an expert on all current political topics and a master of technology integration as well, uses RSS feeds to make sure that he is instantly alerted to any announcements of new poll results, primary election results, etc., and he then can incorporate that news immediately into his lesson plans for the day. That's another great example of how RSS can be used in education!

Library 2.0: Thing #2

I found the video and articles very interesting, with some excellent ideas for how the elements of Web 2.0 can be integrated into a new way to look at library operations and services. There is no question that the students who are currently in my high school bring with them considerable experience using the interactive capabilities of the Web, and finding ways to use similar approaches in how they can access information and resources will enhance their impressions of what we offer.

A recent survey conducted by the Pew Charitable Trust found that, interestingly enough, library usage is increasing among people in the mid-20s to mid-40s population--to the point where their usage now surpasses that of older adults--which tells me that libraries must be doing something right in how they are adapting their services to the needs of patrons. The Hennepin County Library system provides a good model for how a variety of patron-participatory elements can be included in their website.

Two recent staff development days at my school included sessions on Web 2.0 taught by my Media Specialist partner Terri Osland, and all of the sessions filled up immediately. Teachers jumped at the chance to find out more about blogs and wikis, and also ways to create learning tools using GoogleMaps (plotted into GoogleEarth), Jing, Ning, VoiceThread, and GoogleDocs. Seeing how, within days, many teachers are already incorporating the use of these tools into class presentations and student projects is inspiring, and the fact that students love using those tools as well is an indication of how important it is for all of us in education to make sure we are taking advantage of these new tools for engaging students in learning.

My New Blog: Thing #1

I am creating this blog in conjunction with the "23 Things On a Stick: A Library Learning 2.0 Program" tutorial about Web 2.0 applications, but I may include a few other topics as well. We'll see!

Many of the teachers in my school are already using blogs to provide forums for student discussion, and I did create another blog a few weeks ago to share information with classmates about our upcoming high school reunion that I"m helping plan, but I'm glad to have this opportunity to think more systematically about how blogs fit into other instructional strategies and the whole world of Web 2.0 applications. Thank goodness for services like Blogspot that make the process pretty simple!

I chose this particular template because the background graphic reminded me of an old-fashioned school bell tower. I realize that the name of the template indicates the graphic is actually a lighthouse, but that's an inspiring image as well!