Reflections on PSD 23 Things

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

The puzzle maker from a picture was one of my favorite discoveries. Exploring online applications that I had never heard of and trying to see how they might be used in an educational setting.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

I was aware that there were podcasts available but I had not really explored this area and I think that I will continue to explore it for lifelong learning as it is another tool for my toolbox.


Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I think I may work on blogging more since I created the one I did for this class.


If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?

Yes I’m always interested in what is new and may be useful to my endeavors.

Audiobooks

I discovered NetLibrary at the FCPL web site last spring. I was hoping that I would find some picture audio books that my students would be able to listen to as they looked at the book. Even though much of the story is available in the pictures some of our students need someone to read to them and I thought that we could download them to the in class computers and let them listen as they looked at the pictures. . I guess the concept hasn’t occurred to NetLibrary, since there are very few books that would fall into that category available.
I downloaded one of the Jungle Book stories by Kipling and discovered that if I didn’t have time to listen to the whole thing at my computer I would have to start all over from the beginning to listen to it. I couldn’t figure out a way to stop it and restart it at the place I left off. I decided I needed a portable solution and I went to the page that told what players worked best with NetLibrary. As a result I purchased a “Creative Zen” mp3 player and have downloaded books from the Audible.com site that advertised one free book. Now I am hooked I guess.

Podcasting

I went to both Podcast Alley and Odeo. The different language podcasts were alluring, but I didn't decide to go that way for my educational podcast. I tried to get the Hubblecast vodcast to show a couple of times, but was too impatient to wait until it completed the loading process as it seemed to be stuck very close to the end and not progressing any further. I also tried Ed Tech, but decided their openings were far too long, if I was impatient with it wouldn't others be? I finally settled on Our Ocean World that is just a podcast and got down to brass tacks almost immediately. The one I have linked to is about a sea squirt, but they also have podcasts on Seals, whales and other ocean stories.

You Tube

I've watched several YouTube videos in the past year, but I like this one I found tonight and decided to add it to my post.

PlayingForChange
October 31, 2008


The power of music to bring hope and inspiration is more than evident in this clip (cover of Tracy Chapman's song, "Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution") from the township outside of Cape Town where we just...
The power of music to bring hope and inspiration is more than evident in this clip (cover of Tracy Chapman's song, "Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution") from the township outside of Cape Town where we just built our first connected music school. Join the Movement to help build and connect more schools and students...www.playingforchange.com

VuFind from Villanova University

Web 2.0 Awards 3rd place winner VuFind is an open source program that works with the Online Catalog for libraries. It is designed to be user friendly and customizable for each library. This allows the individual library to add widgets and create new ways for patrons to access and chose resources. It won the 3rd place category for Books the winner was a self publishing site. I like the concept. It allows users to tag the item they want to keep like bookmarking and gives them the option of finding out more information about the author by clicking on the author's name. It also accesses reviews from Amazon.com. I actually didn't see anything I didn't like in this site.

Blog Update

I almost feel like I'm cheating on this one.  I've been using Zoho to collaborate with students in my Master's degree classes since June this year.  I've used Zoho Writer, Zoho Show and Zoho Notebook and Zoho Chat. My first attempt at the Notebook application wasn't pretty, but I sort of got the hang of it.  My first use was for a Pathfinder project that I had to do for a group project.    

PB Wiki

I signed up on PB wiki and tried looking several different ways for the Helen Blowers pbwiki but only found it after reading Connie’s Capers and her reference to plcmclearning. I added a favorite book and favorite leisure time activity. That’s how I discovered the rockymountain23things as well. I tried to request an invitation to the Rocky Mountain 23 Things but the web site was taking too long to respond.

Wikis

I like the idea of using wiki’s to review books and have various opinions on books which could extend to any form of media. I also can see the down side of allowing everyone to write and rewrite an area that people may have (probably will) strong feelings about. I can also see it as a way to provide information about navigating the library, media center. I could see using a wiki as a tutorial for example: searching a database. Opening it to others will allow input from different perspectives, as we all seem to have different ways of going about doing things. Having multiple ways available may confuse the tutorial, but may be just what one person needs.