Method 6 You Tube

As with most school districts, You Tube is blocked by the filter. Teacher tube; however, is available for the teachers and durning a Electronic Resource training that I gave, I directed our teachers to Teacher Tube. I have an account but I haven't added any videos to Teacher Tube. My intentions were to add some book trailers of this year's Lone Stars, but like most "good intentions" it has yet to happen.

I found You tube to be fun. Yet as I was searching and watching some of the videos, I came away with the impression that people were very "proud" of the self-made videos. I shook my head in wondernment as to why anyone would think others would want to watch them, but we do.

One video on teacher tube gave me a chuckle. It was based on the "Top ten list" and it was entitled the "Top ten things they don't teach you in college" about teaching.

But I really enjoyed Mr. Bean in the library and I have added the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyDY0hiMZy8

Library of Ephesus-Method 5

greece beginnings 032
Originally uploaded by aegrobe1

I chose this picture because this was the 4th largest library in the ancient world. The library was located Ephesus. Interesting story behind this library. Located in the library was a tunnel that went to the Temple of Diana. The gentlemen of the time period would tell their wife that they were going to the "library" and then go through the tunnel to the Temple. It gave new meaning to the pharse " I am going to the library."

The ITS and myself are working with the 7th grade ELA students with movie maker. Since Google images is blocked at our school, we direct the students to Flickr, and (Yes we have them cite the source) but are we violating copyright? I agree with the blog article in respect that perhaps it is time to revisit the copyright laws in order to incorporate the new technology.

I have posted my personal photos on Flickr and also Shutterfly. I am so glad that I did. If I hadn't when my hard drived crashed I would have lost all the photos from my Greece trip this summer, including the one that I posted

My son's faternity did a cross country bike ride this summer, and daily their pictures were posted to flickr. It was really wonderful to be able to go through the posting and see the daily activites.

With advent of photosharing, blogging, and google docs our world has truly become "a small, small world."

Method 4 RSS feeds

What fun it was to search for different sites. I have to admit that I had way too much fun with this method. I truly believe it is important to laugh and to laugh loudly, so on that end I subscribed to Unshelved. Librarians really have a "wicked" sense of humor.

I have to admit that I am a huge Twilight fan. So of course I had to subscribe to a Twilight site.

But eventually the educator came out, I subscribed to the Life Science feed. This will be beneficial to the Science teachers at my school.

It would be really awesome if the teachers would be able to add RSS feeds to the district webpage, but I don't think this will happen anytime soon

Method 3 The Cloud

I have been without a computer for over a month, hard drive crashed. As I was waiting for the timely return, thinking how nice it would have been if I knew about the "cloud" before the hard drive failure. I could have used the presentation tool in Zoho to complete the PowerPoint of my son's cross country bike ride this summer and I would still have it available; to edit, to share and just look back on. But alas, it is no more. My computer returned, but without a C drive to download Microsoft Office, so Google Docs here I come.

It would be beneficial to our students and to our teachers if Goggle docs was allowed to be used in the district. Students would be able to create a document, calendar or presentation that would be easily accessible to their teachers.

After reading the comments about security issues, I was speaking to my ITS and she had the same concerns. What happens when the "cloud" breaks open and sensitive information is "raining" down in "cyper space" for anyone to gather up? But with technology advancing faster than we can keep up, perhaps using the "cloud" for personal information is not feasible at this time.