Week #9 Thing #20 August 4, 2009

I love YouTube! It’s funny, though, that I often forget about it as a source of information and for entertainment.

I wanted to check out Conan the Librarian because the name intrigued me but it has been removed from YouTube due to “terms of use violoation”. Bummer. It sounded funny. March of the Librarians was a cute clip made to resemble a documentary. Complete with the somewhat monotone voice, the clip showcases the ALA convention in Seattle last year. Introducing the  Book was hilarious!! I was cracking up! I can’t wait to share this one on my Facebook page.

I started exploring on my own and specifically wanted to find tutorials for teachers about doing different features on Google. I wanted to find videos that regular teachers have created so that I could see a first hand account of how some of Google’s amazing features are directly used in the classroom. I found this one (click here) about Google Docs for the classroom teacher. Pretty cool!

Then I wanted to look at some videos about teaching information literary specifically for evaluating websites. Most of what I found were merely voice overs on a powerpoint like this one here. But I still found them interesting because of the method of delivering the information– via YouTube, which all teachers and students are familiar with.

Here’s a cool Google Tips and Tricks video that students could use:

Week #4 Thing #8 July 5, 2009

This is definitely something I’ve been looking forward to learning more about. The links provided by the school library learning blogspot were excellent in providing the definitions of feeds, newreaders, aggregators, etc. Find the most helpful link here. Now I understand that rss feeds allow updated information from my favorite websites come to me instead of me going to them.

I decided to use Google Reader since I already have an account with Google and I also really like their format for their other services. So I logged on and visited their Google Reader page. They have an excellent 1:30 minute tutorial on Google Reader that explains everything very succinctly.

To view my public page on Google Reader to see all of my current feeds click here.

RSS feeds have amazing curricular potential. I’m immediately thinking about the Government classes and their current events projects they need to work on over a nine week period. It would be wonderful to have all their updated sources on one page. I’m also thinking about our AP English 11 class where the teacher requires her students to communicate with each other through Google Groups and other various blogs.

However, the down side to this, is that all students would have to have access to functioning technology and the capability of remembering usernames and passwords. This is doable, but I’d be curious to see how other librarians are handling these logistics.

I decided to also give Bloglines a try. Click here to view my subscriptions with Bloglines. After playing around with Bloglines after I set up Google Reader, I think I might like Bloglines better! I’m not quite done learning it so stay tuned!