Common Craft

In my last post I linked to a video by Common Craft. If you have never perused the Common Craft site before I highly recommend it. The creative team and brains behind Common Craft are Sachi and Lee LeFever, a husband/wife team from Seattle, Washington who take complex ideas, then make videos to easily understand them. They have created a series of videos explaining technology applications in simplified terms, as they say in Plain English. They are great - short, concise, informative, and entertaining! There are a few you might want to check out in their Social Media section on Blogs, Podcasting, RRS, Twitter, and Wikis in Plain English.

Why is Delicious so good? Take a bite!

Have you ever lost all your bookmarks/favorites in some weird network breakdown/reconfiguration? Have you ever been some where away from the computer you primarily use and could not remember a web address?

Delicious Social Bookmarking can help you out.

Delicious is an online system that allows you to store, organize, search, and manage your bookmarks. It's accessible anytime/anywhere. You create your own subject headings, known as Tags, to help categorize your websites. You create folders, known as Bundles, of your categorized websites.

And... here's the social part... two heads are often better than one. Imagine having many heads searching for the same topic as you, then sharing the website online. You can automatically share a website you find with a fellow Delicious account user. You can link to someone else's Delicious account. My account is linked with other teacher librarians. I have also linked to other educational professionals and every so often I go and check in to see what websites they have saved.

Take a look at my account if you like delicious.com/sabrecybrarian.
North Vancouver Social Studies teachers are linking up through Delicious to share websites at delicious.com/NVSDsocialstudies

Here's a short video clip from Common Craft that explains Social Bookmarking in Plain English.



Once you get started saving your bookmarks this way, you'll be hooked.
Happy to help you get started!

Video clip from Commom Craft http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english
Photo used under Creative Commons license by eco2oh
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eco2oh/3062380890/

Glogster - Creating Electronic Posters

The minute I saw Lesley's Glog, I knew I had to try creating one. Students will love this electronic alternative to the traditional poster project.

Glogster is a free, online application that facilitates the mixing of graphics, photos, videos, music and text into an electronic poster format. There is a Glogster version for education .

Students could create a glog as an alternative to a book report, or to represent an historical event or time period, or to explain concepts in math and science - there are endless possibilities - if you come up with a cool idea, pass it along!

Scroll over the glog I've created about some of my Literature favorites. When the red circle appears, this indicates a web link. The YouTube video about songs inspired by literature is also viewable. I don't think it's too bad for a first attempt - I did learn a few things along the way that I am happy to share if you would like to create one of your own.



Click on Literature Links to view the glog larger.

Finding the Good Stuff in the Invisible Web

Let's teach our students where to find the good stuff. There is an immense amount of information hidden away in the Invisible Web. The Invisible Web is the term used to describe all the information available on the Internet that is not found by using general-purpose search engines, such as Google. In addition to teaching the secrets of good search strategies, we need to introduce our students to searching the invisible web through web directories such as InfoMine or The Librarian's Internet Index.

And... sometimes you get what you pay for... in terms of information. Many excellent research information databases are only available by subscription. In our province ERAC, the Educational Resource Acquisition Consortium, has arranged for district pricing for access to some great research reference resources such as World Book Online, Gale Electronic Database, and Ebsco. Gale Electronic Database includes a Biography Resource Centre database, as well as a Virtual Reference Library, a Student Resource Centre, and CPI.Q., the electronic version of the Canadian Periodic Index. Ebsco is an awesome resource for accessing magazines and journals, current and up-to-date.

It is these kinds of databases our students will face at the public library or in post secondary education - let's show them where to find the good stuff now!

The Odyssey of Internet Searching

Searching for information on the Internet can sometimes turn into a never ending journey - especially for our students. The "Google Generation" needs to learn how to search the internet effectively.

In Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future , a virtual longitudinal study carried out last year by the CIBER research team at University College London claimed that, although young people demonstrated an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they relied heavily on search engines, viewed rather than read, and did not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they found on the web. Too true if have you ever studied the Middle Ages and Renaissance and had students using research information from a seemingly credible site, but upon closer analysis is a travel agent selling vacations in a castle - one of many examples.

I don't know who to thank for the 10 hit Google rule I've been teaching students for years - read it in a journal years ago and have been preaching it ever since. If students are looking for information in hits beyond the first 10 hits, they are not going to find their information in the next 999,999 pages - refine/change/rework the search request - teach Boolean search terms and how to keyword search, show and tell specialty search engines.

To sharpen internet searching skills, check out the Google Game, a lesson developed by two educators, with the goal of making students’ Internet searches more efficient so that they end up with as few hits as possible.

Three crucial search tips are taught: use quotation marks to look for words in the exact order that you enter them (for example, “French Revolution” “human rights”); use a minus sign to exclude a word from your search (for example, bears -Chicago); and to limit a search to web sites created by certain groups, such as colleges and universities or organizations, use the site operator, an indication of the domain (for example, site:edu or site:org). There are some example questions at the end of the article. If you or your students come up a Google Game example, pass it along.

Photo used under Creative Commons by hidden side
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hidden_vice/209382586/sizes/s/

Wordle Words

Wordle is a web based application for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. Great for creating a visual! A "Wordle" enables you to see how frequently words appear in a given text, or see the relationship between a column of words and a column of numbers. Wordle draws each word at a size proportional to its frequency. Common words, such as "the", are filtered out. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like.

Here are a couple of examples I created - this is really easy to do - it took seconds!
You can click on the image to make it larger.

I found the tag cloud of my Delicious account interesting.



It really illustrates my focus professionally.

I also created an example using the Canadian National Anthem.



There is a list of 20 Uses for Wordle from a teacher's blog, Rodd Lucier, The Clever Sheep... Leading in New Directions.

Here are a few of my favourite Wordle ideas from Rodd's blog:

Convert a sonnet or Shakespearean play; or children's book (Dr. Seuss anyone?);
Turn an essay into a poster;
Show "Today in History" stories in a new way;
Enter keywords from weekly weather reports to obtain a seasonal picture.

If you come up with some other ideas, send them along!

Images created by Wordle.
Wordle images are Creative Commons Licensed

LAN Parties at Sutherland

The advantage to being in a brand spanking new school (and library:) is that you get to host really cool events. This week a second LAN - Learning at Night - Party was held. This was the brain child of Lesley Edwards and Bryan Hughes who picked up on the idea from Kim Cofino and Jeff Utecht. 50 to 70 teachers from around the school district, both elementary and secondary, have been attending. There has been mind-bending, inspiring, and energizing conversations about new teaching and learning practices based on presentations from the K-12 Online Conference. Once the presentations were viewed, we Skyped in the presenters from around the world, Bangkok, Sydney Australia, Kansas, California, Pennsylvania, and Saskatchewan, for a question/answer period. Very cool!!! We are hosting this unique professional development opportunity once a month. Check into what's happening at Innovative Learning - Learning at Night.

New Year... New Beginnings...

Well, it was about time I started a blog, definitely on the heels of my TL colleagues in my own district, Lesley Edwards, Bookminder of Webfooted Booklady, and Jenn Tieche of Love the Library. After getting hung up on the logistics for far too long, it was just time to jump in with a name I've used for years. Library Links has been the name of my library newsletter and collaboration request document for 20 years. Livin' the Dream has been the nick name for a group of secondary librarians with whom I share information professionally and personally, and have been my lifeline for many years. The name came out of a very famous superbowl commercial called Cat Herders. We envision our jobs as teacher librarians to be akin to the message in the commercial.

My intention is for this blog to be a place for me to compile professional resources and ideas, with a bit of fun thrown in along way.... because I truly am Livin' the Dream.

I have worked in libraries for over 30 years, since I was 12 years old. I love the organization of information and the disorganization of learning - learning is messy - so you might as well dive right in - be with books or bytes. I believe in melding technology with tradition. I love the opportunities for learning technology provides as much as curling up with a good book. Sooooo, here's to Library Links... Livin' the Dream.

Oh, and why books, bytes and butterflies? Books and Bytes, obvious.... and butterflies, for many years I have also loved and appreciated the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly in terms of the transformation, that we as people and learners can emulate.

Photo used under Creative Commons by Mundoo
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mundoo/77952698/
Blue butterfly montage
Created using Grant Robinson's Montage-a-google
grant.robinson.name/projects/montage-a-google