Back to School

Tomorrow I head back to work and will start working on a new blog and wiki that is supported by my school district. Our library blog for our students is up and running AnyKindofBook . We wil use our work in progress library wiki for our staff.

Creating a Book Cover...

The idea of creating your own book cover came from 100ScopeNotes - Check out all the other ones at Create Your Deput YA Novel Gallery .  I tried my hand at it after seeing an example on Oops...Wrong Cookie. I think this would be a great idea for a contest! It was very easy do as I used Picnik to edit the original picture online.

Thing #23

Yea! I am done. It has been a lot of fun and my husband will be glad to get to use the computer again! Well maybe... I have learned so many new things that I want to explore further, and have so many new blogs to follow, he may have to get his own computer.

1. Some of my favorite things that I learned would include, setting up a blog, mash ups and image generators, Google Reader and all the gadgets, making and uploading a photo story to a blog.
2. This has course had made me more aware that I can learn new things and can continue to learn new things throughout my life. Got to keep the mind challenged or it will go stale!
3. One unexpected outcome was that I became more comfortable blogging and commenting on other blogs.
4. This program was great and thank you again for offering it.
5. Yes, I would absolutely do another program like this again. Will you be offering Library2PLay2 11.5 or something like it next summer? I ran out of time to do it this summer!
6. I learned so much and look forward to sharing the knowledge with others.

Thing #22 Ning

Wow, another totally new idea that I had never heard of before. I can see this being a good tool for teachers to use to discuss and collaborate on ideas. The national level ones such as Educator Ning and Teacher Librarian Ning have more information and more people for different feedback. But the local Texas School Library Ning is nice because it is smaller and the issues are more closely related to what I deal with on a day to day basic. Another ning I found that was very interesting isClassroom2.0

Thing #21 Pod Casts and Video Casts

I have been waiting to try this out. This is my first attempt at a book talk using PhotoStory3. Be sure to turn up the volume as the microphone on my home computer doesn't record very loud. I did not include music as I didn't have any that was not copyrighted to use in a project like this. I hope to expand my skills with PhotoStory and Animoto to make more book talks to place on our school blog and to include the in the BookTalk Wiki started by Theresa Stuaffer.

Thing #20 YouTube and Teacher Tube

I searched both YouTube and TeacherTube for the same thing on several topics, including Library, cold war, cheating... My results were quite different. A cold war search on On YouTube resulted in several 1950 propaganda commericals and other historical videos. On TeacherTude the same search presented student made videos on the topic. I must admit the videos on You Tube are much more fun to watch then that ones on TeacherTube.
YouTube Video: Here is one of the Cold War videos I found on You Tube. And now, thanks, to Zamzar, I can take a YouTube video and download or copy it's URL and change it into another usuable format for free.



TeacherTube Video: I saw this video "Before He Cheats - A Teacher's Parody" awhile back on YouTube and tonight I found it again on Teacher Tube. This will be a fun video to share with my staff. Side note: Have you every done a search on YouTube for "cheating"? You would be amazed at how many "how to" videos are out there!

Thing #19 WEb 2.0 Awards

I looked through quite of few of these sites. I didn't really see much that I would use in the library but I did find a few to share with my staff. I will use the Web 2.o Awards site to find a fun link or two to send out in our Library newsletter throughout the school year.


1. LuLu Book Publishing, make your own photo album, calendar, cookbooks.


2. Oddle Sorta like a Craiglist


3. UrbanSpoon Find a good restaurant and make a review.


4. Twitter - Had to look into this one as it has been in the news this summer. I signed up for it but not quite sure how it all works.I don't think teens are using it as much as they have Facebook.


5. Pandora Internet Music - awesome make your own radio station!



6. Netvibes or Pageflakes like iGoogle. Great idea to put everything in one place. Especially for those who have a lot of different accounts, etc.