Podcasting and Poetry: A Powerful Combination or Poetry 2.0

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
Rita Dove

Ever since taking Dr. JoBeth Allen’s Poetry course at the University of Georgia in 2003, I have had a passion for reading, sharing, and teaching poetry….no small feat as I hated poetry before taking this life-changing course. 

Inspired by my Podcasting class with Sandi Adams in January of 2008 (one of my Media 21 courses) and the work of Lisa Forrest’s Rooftop Poetry Club at Buffalo State University, I solicited requests for students and teachers to volunteer to read poetry for National Poetry Month @ The Unquiet Library.  Ms. Jane Pickart, teacher for 11th American Literature/Composition Honors, approached me and asked me if I was interested in podcasting a few classes on April 4 as they had been doing some poetry writing.  Of course, I jumped at this wonderful opportunity and offered to podcast every class! 

My original plan was to record each class period’s poetry reading and create a podcast for each class period.  However, I then decided I would experiment with streaming the poetry readings live via UStream TV (many thanks to Twitter friend and fellow librarian Phil Goerner in Colorado for showing me this fantastic tool!).  Excitement about the poetry reading grew this past week as I blogged about our upcoming podcast at http://theunquietlibrary.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/coming-attractions-poetry-reading-with-ms-pickarts-classes-and-the-unquiet-library/, and Ms. Pickart talked up our event with her students.  I also decided I would try to create “vodcasts” as well using one of our new Flip videocameras and upload the videos to TeacherTube!

Today was the big day of our poetry reading podcast!  Ms. Pickart and I began by reviewing the poetry reading protocol for online safety and to create the optimal recording conditions.  Each student had been asked to find a photo of a loved one and to write a paragraph about that person and the photo.  Students then were to create a “found poem” from the lines in the paragraph.  Having written found poems and teaching my students this method of poetry writing in the past, I felt sure we would hear some very special poems.

The students did not disappoint me!  I can honestly say that today was one of the most memorable experiences of my sixteen year career as an educator.  Within a few minutes into our first class period, I felt something special happening as each student came forward to share his/her poem.    Some poems were clever and witty; many were incredibly poignant.  All poems came from the hearts and souls of these eleventh grade students who wrote memorable lines and composed images that I think will stay with many of us beyond our years at CRHS.  Whether writing about a beloved grandparent, a sibling, a parent, aunt, or uncle, these students had something important to say.  I truly felt honored to be able to hear these poems that reflected the cherished memories and experiences with those so important to these students—I felt as though I was able to peek into a glimpse of their souls today.

We enjoyed many wonderful and moving poems today, but the collection of poems from the 5th period class was the one that moved nearly all us to tears.   Perhaps these poems spoke to me because they hit close to my heart—poems about various kinds of loss, of brave souls, of amazing grandparents—it seemed our eyes and souls felt a bit mistier with each reading of a poem.  Perhaps the most moving moment came when a young lady who just lost her mother in the last week bravely came forward to read her poem about her late mother.  How she summoned the strength to read her beautiful poem in front of the class I will never know, but we all admired her courage and grace as well as the gentle dignity of her poem that began with those famous lines from the classic Robert Munsch book, Love You Forever, and ended with her own unique and deeply personal twist on those lines, “I’ll love you forever…”.  Should you choose to listen to these podcasts, particulary the ones from 5th period (and I hope you will…the one I just referenced occurs during the last 3 minutes of the 5th period podcast!), be sure to get your Kleenexes ready!  I was also honored not only to be an observer of this poetry reading, but I was also even asked by the students in 5th period to share a favorite poem of mine, so I read “Orange”, I poem I composed in 2003 about a racist incident that happened to a fellow student and friend at UGA. 

I have only cried in front of a class once in my life—it was at the end of the 2003-2004 year while reading a poem to one of my 9th grade classes as a farewell gift the last week of school.  Today, though, the tears flowed freely and unabashedly as they did at a poetry reading I participated in while taking Dr. Allen’s class.  That same feeling of communion and catharsis I experienced at the Athens coffee house poetry reading washed over me today as I was lucky to enough to hear these poems.  Poems are truly meant to be read aloud and not just read silently—the power of the distilled emotion in poetry never ceases to awe me.

Ms. Pickart share with me privately as well as publicly to her classes that today was one of the most remarkable and memorable experiences of her 30 year career.  While she stated she had done this poetry writing assignment before, she had not scheduled a poetry reading in the format we did today.  I am still so overcome with emotions tonight that I can’t really articulate the “specialness” of what I experienced today, but I am so truly grateful that I did. 

This afternoon, Ms. Pickart and I were discussing the incredible turn of events today.   She commented that my presence as a podcaster and the whole podcasting element may have elevated the students’ performance and encouraged them to write something so deeply personal and meaningful.  Indeed, the students had a larger audience to write for and an authentic purpose for writing. 

Thankfully, I only encountered two technical issues.  First, I discovered my digital video camera would not interface properly with the UStream TV software, so I am hoping to get a webcam that should do the trick.  Secondly, the batteries decided to die twice on the Flip video camera; as a result, I lost the chance to video a few students.   The most challenging part was to remember to do all my technical tasks for recording the podcasts and videos—sometimes it was hard to remember to hit “record” and “pause” because I was so caught up in the moment of the poetry reading!

Where do we go from here?  Well, here are some musings and plans:

• Ms. Pickart and I both agree that poetry readings like these should be a more regular part of high school life!  When I started our poetry club (The Live Poet Society) this year, I had intended to do poetry readings in the library once a month in the spirit of the Rooftop Poetry Club.  I have been trying to get donations of free and short church pews that we could store easily and bring out into the main floor of the library (they had these at the coffeehouse poetry reading in Athens, and they were very cool), so if anyone has ideas of free donations, please contact me—I have been trying to find some via Ebay and craigslist Atlanta, but no luck yet. 
• With student permission, we are going to scan in and digitize the poems students turned into today.  I want to create a gallery/page on our website for each class period.
• We will create a living wall of poetry in the media center with these poems as well as some larger posters of the poems for everyone to enjoy.
• I am going to make “poetry books” for each class (a collection of poems by class period)—we will give a set to go in Ms. Pickart’s room, and we will have a set for students to read in the library.  I will enlist the assistance of master librarian Joy Mabry who directs our district Teacher Center to help me with this endeavor.
• We are encouraging students to share these poems with loved ones—can you think of a better gift?  We are offering our services in the library of free color printing and help with importing a digital copy into Publisher or some similar software to create that special copy for a loved one.
• We have asked students to share these poems with their loved ones on April 17 as part of our celebration of “Poem in Your Pocket Day“! 
• We will be having “pockets” of poems set up our library on April 17, “Poem in Your Pocket Day”, in which students can come choose a poem from a range of themes to take for free and give to someone they love or to a classmate as a random act of kindness.
• I will be working with the video next week during our Spring Break to get our vodcast up and going on Teacher Tube…check back for the update links!
• I would eventually love to have a “channel” on You Tube (or perhaps an educator friendly version of You Tube…something more appealing to kids than Teacher Tube) like the Buffalo State Rooftop Poetry Club You Tube Channel—take a look….how is this for inspiration?
• While I am still waiting for our podcasts to come up on iTunes and Odeo, I managed to get most of the initial mp3 files created today.  Please check back for our updated iTunes link, but for now, check out the audio files:
  >1st period readings
  >3rd and 5th period readings
  >7th period readings

It goes without saying that no standardized test could come close to measuring the talent, creativity, and passion these students demonstrated today through their poetry.  Perhaps “no child would be left behind” if more poetry readings were part of our daily classroom life instead of some ridiculous EOCT question!  I will definitely be creating podcasts of poetry readings with my 10th and 11th grade night school students later this month.   Podcasting poetry readings will now be a regular and new element of my poetry immersion unit I do with 9th and 10th graders (thanks to Dr. Allen….she inspired me to develop this organic unit while I was her student). 

Today truly exceeded my expectations—it was one of those magical experiences with words that I wish everyone could feel at least once in a lifetime.   I feel that being able to capture those readings with podcasting is a way that we can all relive on some level that communion of human experience today and our witnessing of the power of words!

Article Reflection: “The ABCs of Website Evaluation”, March 25, 2008

In Day 4 of Information Literacy, we were asked to read “Teaching Media Literacy in the Age of the Internet:  The ABCs of Website Evaluation”, an article from 2002 by noted educator Kathy Shrock.  In this article, Shrock points out that a media specialist is not ever-present on the web to help users determine the quality of a particular website.   She identifies 26 criteria to help teachers and students evaluate the credibility and authority of a website. 

What struck me most about this article is how similar these criteria are to those we use to assess print materials, yet how many people think about this as they surf the web?  It is amazing how many people assume that if it is on the web, then the information must be true and correct.  I wonder why this assumption comes to easily to so many people?

Criteria identified included:  authority, bias, citations, dates, efficiency, fallacy, graphics, handicapped access, information availability, Jerry-Built (meaning “built poorly of cheap materials”), knowledge, links, misinformation, navigability, online research models, pertinence, quantity of information, requirements, scholastic reviews, theorists, uniqueness, verifiable, the five Ws,  and “xtra information.”

I wonder what criteria would she add or take away to this list now in 2008?  She also cites Paul Gilster’s definition of digital literacy:  “the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers.”  I somehow doubt she would cite this definition now, but I am wondering how she would define digital literacy.  Elease Franchini found this updated version at http://kathyschrock.net/abceval/ (last updated January 2007), but it did not seem to address the last part of the written article.

How far have we come in teaching our patrons how to evaluate website information?  It seems that students (and some teachers) are still sorely lacking in this area.  It is amazing how many teenagers still assume that everything on the web is true and never bother to question the credentials of a particular website or its author(s).   How do we tackle this information literacy challenge in a more effective manner?

It’s “Tweet”!: Twitter, A Seriously Fun Social Networking Tool

Last summer, I registered for a Twitter account, but drifted away it from it quickly as I thought it was more of a “fun” social networking tool that did not have any real meaningful application.

Was I WRONG!

I reconnected with Twitter last week thanks to my friend Stephen Rahn at the Kennesaw State Ed Tech Center.  In the last week, here is what I have found and/or accomplished thanks to my connections on Twitter:

• I discovered an amazing library blog, http://libpower.blogspot.com/, and connected with a new colleague, Phil Goerner!  Through Phil, I now have great ideas for a “Grab-n-Go” event for our faculty!  Thank you, Phil!
• I am following the Tweets of great leaders in my field like Doug Johnson, Joyce Valenza, “Cool Cat” teacher Vicki Davis, and Will Richardson!  Doug Johnson is now one of my “followers”!  It is something akin to rubbing elbows with Hollywood stars at an Oscar party! 
• Discovered and have been listening to some amazing educational podcasts at http://edtechtalk.com/live, an amazing resource!  I haven’t had a chance yet to listen to a live broadcast although I hope to catch one today at 10:00 A.M.
• Discovered the YALSA Blog (which is TERRIFIC!) through a Tweet from YALSA on Twitter!
• Found and installed Twhirl, a Twitter client.
• Found ChitChatEd through Vicki Davis, “Cool Cat Teacher.”
• Found an excellent blog of an Instructional Technology Specialist, http://kenrodoff.blogspot.com/; Ken Rodoff is the ITS at Joyce Valenza’s school.
• Discovered Ted Talks through a link to a post from Will Richardson on Twitter.  Find out more about TedTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/pages/view/id/5 ; this is a COOL resource!  Here is the RSS feed for TedTalks:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/tedtalks_video.
• Found this blog, http://plethoratech.blogspot.com/,  through a Tweet from becksintex.
• Found this interesting article from a Tweet from becksintex, http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/03/is_web_20_an_en.html.

As you can see, Twitter can be a great resource for networking with other people and sharing resources in real time.   You can Twitter me at http://twitter.com/buffyjhamilton!  Come join in this fun way of learning and networking with others!

In addition, here are some ideas for using Twitter in your library:  http://del.icio.us/theunquietlibrary/twitterlibraryapplications

Journalism 2.0

Yesterday I did a lesson on RSS feeds and Google Reader with Mr. Tamanini’s 2nd period Journalism class; here is our pathfinder at http://webtech.cherokee.k12.ga.us/creekview-hs/MediaCenter/journalism2.0.htm .

 Many of the kids seemed really impressed with the concept of RSS—most had never heard of it!  They also seemed excited about the uses for Google Reader, too.  We looked at RSS feeds for major news outlets and talked about how to capture those feeds into their Google Reader account.  It was interesting to see how some did not care at all, but how many took to the concepts like a duck to water! 

The students have had an assignment in which they have been building a page in FrontPage—the Creekview Claw is currently hosted under Mr. Tamanini’s web directory.  One of the students, Falyn, was frustrated by FrontPage and asked me for some help today during her lunch period.  We talked about some options for FrontPage, but then I asked her if she was interested in setting up her own “journalist” blog.  She immediately said yes, and 30 minutes later, here is what she and I had built together:

http://falynblog.wordpress.com/

This may not look like much at this point, but I cannot tell you how excited and proud she was of what she accomplished today.  Mr. Tamanini and I have discussed the option for next year of him creating a master blog that will be the “host” of the online edition of the newspaper.  I am going to show him how to add users so students can add content to the blog, but he will have final moderation approval.  I think it would be cool for each student journalist to have his/her own blog, too—those could be linked in under the blogroll.

Falyn’s eagerness to jump in and try the blogging was energizing and refreshing.  She is going to come in for help over the next few days during lunch, and I am going to teach her some basic concepts of blogging.  I was sure to also review online safety procedures as well, and she was very receptive to that discussion. 

Journalism 2.0@ The Creekview High School Media Center, March 2008 via kwout

Lead, Follow, or Get Out of The Way: Library 2.0, The Concept of Authority, and Social Scholarship

There is an old cliche that says, “Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.”

Over the last year, I have been focused on trees.  Those trees have consisted of web 2.0 tools and how to incorporate those web 2.0 tools into my library program and information literacy instruction.  Those trees have included things like social bookmarking (del.icio.us), RSS, wikis, Google Scholar, Google Books, Pageflakes, podcasts, vodcasts, and blogging (of course!) to name just a few.  The buzzword “Library 2.0″ seems to be on the radar of many school library media specialists these days thanks to pioneers like Joyce Valenza.  As Joyce pointed out in her September 27 blog post, “Shift [has] happened.  Our response is not optional.“   She points out the urgency of librarians recognizing the shifting landscape of our profession,  observing:

I am seeing a huge librarian divide between the 2.0-type library folks and those who are barely 1.0.  I am worried.I am worried about many of the librarians across the state, and in programs like ours in other states.  What happens when the tech coach comes in new to the school?  What happens when the librarian finds him/herself far less trained for integration than the newly trained, newly empowered tech coach?  What happens when a librarian and a library program cannot even demonstrate awareness of the shifts in the information landscape? 

Joyce also included comments from participants in the Classrooms for the Future “Boot Camp”:

My librarian doesn’t get it.  She is only interested in quiet and books.  She doesn’t let the kids work together. She could never create an online pathfinder.  She never told me about Creative Commons or open source. Does she even know about that stuff? My librarian won’t event let the kids use Wikipedia.  Help teachers with 2.0 applications? Are you kidding?  My librarian is afraid of blogs and podcasts and wikis. 

As many of you know, Joyce’s concept of “Web 2.0 Meets Information Fluency” is truly visionary—if you haven’t read it, put this article on your “must read” list right NOW.

In two weeks, I am teaching a class about valid or authoritative resources (which is slated to look at traditional sources, web 2.0 tools, and of course, Wikipedia).  We all know that we want our students and patrons to use authoritative sources.  Heavens knows that I have done my share of hand wringing and worrying (quietly and vocally!) as we have tried to convince our students there is another world of information outside the Googlesphere.   Many of us have expressed concern about students perceiving Wikipedia as an authoritative source and their underdeveloped website evaluation skills.

Lately, though, I have been thinking long and hard about what exactly constitutes an authoritative source in our web 2.0 world.  We all know from experience as researchers and school library students about traditional and long revered authoritative sources:  reference books, scholarly journals, research databases.  We know the power of those resources from firsthand experience. Yet I also know from personal experience in the last year that I have found incredible sources of information and a wealth of knowledge through web 2.0 tools like blogs and del.icio.us. 

As I was rereading Joyce’s article on “Web 2.0 Meets Information Fluency” last week in preparation for the course I’m teaching, I could not help but start thinking again about how web 2.0 intersects with authoritative sources of information and how they are shaping that concept of “authority.” Other events that have prompted me to revisit my concept of what falls under the umbrella of authoritative sources include: 

• Various blog entries I have read by other librarians and scholars
• E-conversations with colleagues
• Podcasts and vodcasts by other librarians and information literacy gurus
• My own experiences in designing pathfinders for research with our students ( as well as pathfinders I’ve designed for my 11th grades students I teach at our district evening school).

While doing some research on library 2.0 this weekend, I happened upon a blog by newly retired academic librarian Laura Cohen and her entries about social scholarship. What started as a research effort about library 2.0 and additional resources I could share in my class turned into a whole new research endeavor about social scholarship, digital scholarship, and the concept of Authority 3.0. 

In the first blog post I read by Ms. Cohen, this quote from Leigh Dodds, Chief Technology Officer of the scholarly publisher Ingenta, jumped off the screen: 

Web 2.0 makes it easier for anyone to publish information online, and search engines make content more easily findable. But how do users know what information is authoritative? Do they even understand what “authoritative” means? And who defines that something is “authoritative” in the first place?

In scholarly publishing, the peer review process is an indicator of quality. But as content is increasingly mashed-up, syndicated and blogged in many different locations, how do users differentiate between peer reviewed content, and “user generated content”? And is there a natural progression from the creative chaos of Wikipedia, through the “gentle expert oversight” of Citizendium to, ultimately, the closed rigorous approach of double-blind peer review?

You can see Ms. Cohen’s excellent presentation here at Slideshare.

So what does social scholarship have to do with “Library 2.0″? 

In a word, everything.

Scholar Michael Jensen outlines what he sees as Authority 3.0 that he feels will come to pass in 10-15 years:  a whole new matrix or set of matrices that will influence scholarly authority.  You can read his June 2007 full article here at The Chronicle  of Higher Education, but in short, he feels resources like blogs, wikis, and other web 2.0 tools will change the landscape of authoritative sources.  

Why should we care about these concepts?  What do they have to do with us as school librarians?

First, we have to be able to see this “forest”.  I have been focused on the web 2.0 trees, but it is just in the last few months that I’ve started to see the “forest”—the implications of how these web 2.0 tools ARE shaping the information world and what counts as an authoritative source.  I haven’t even jumped into GALILEO yet to research these ideas, and look at how much knowledge I have already gleaned from blogs of respected scholars and librarians!  Can we not assume the same will be, if not already to some extent, true for our students? 

As Laura Cohen observes in her blog post, “Information Literacy in the Age of Social Scholarship”,

Blogs are also used to discuss matters that never make it into the journal or monographic literature, or even into magazine columns - and therefore their great value. In any case, you’re among the critical mass of individuals who read blogs as an important part of your professional engagement.

What do these web 2.0 tools really mean for our students?  My primary focus has been using these tools to help facilitate information to our students, but now I see my focus must shift to thinking about how these tools will be actual information sources for my students and teaching them how to evaluate them.  Does this mean I abandon my beloved databases and other reliable sources of information, such as books?  No, but I would be putting my head in the sand to ignore the fact that web 2.0 is changing the landscape of scholarship even as I write this blog post. 

In her blog post, “Resistance is Futile“, Laura Cohen discusses an article from Information Week that goes to the very heart of why being Librarian 2.0 is a necessity, not an option:

The article in question is titled “Resistance is Futile Fatal.” Yes, you read that right, strikeout and all. You can read it online. The article states, plainly enough, that “Today’s social networking and digital content sites are shaping IT users’ expectations and experiences for years to come….Businesses must take a longer-term view of these emerging applications and recognize that they’re being driven by forces that are more likely to gain momentum than die out. Rather than fight the inevitable, business technology managers must start exploring ways to leverage the new digital content ecosystem to meet their companies’ objectives.“

Substitute “libraries” for “businesses” and this statement sounds familiar to those of us advocating for changes in the information culture of libraries. And did I see the word “must”? Dare to suggest in the library world that these changes are imperative and you need to duck for cover.

She concludes with this observation:

Our profession, as a whole, still hasn’t taken much of this seriously. How routinely do we use social networking to practice our profession? …I’m bringing all this up to make a point: as the information culture changes around us, the pressures for us to make wise use of this culture in our own practice will grow. Is resistance futile, or truly fatal? You tell me.

I have always felt “Library 2.0″ and “Librarian 2.0″ are not passing fads, but instead, concepts that describe how our profession should be and is changing to reflect the world around us and the needs of our users.  While we may struggle with the challenge of keeping up with these dizzying changes, we have to make the effort to do so. 

My research this weekend has truly been a revelation.  While I have heard and read all kinds of articles about web 2.0 and “Library 2.0″, this is the first I’ve really heard of “social scholarship”, “digital scholarship”, and “Authority 3.0″.  Yes, I have been blogging, and yes, I have been using del.icio.us with our students as a pathfinder tool.  Yes, I have experimented with wikis with our students.  I truly thought I was on my way to being a “Librarian 2.0″!

However,  I see now that what I have been doing is not enough.  I share my findings with you to help us all rethink and reenvision the concepts of “authority” and “authoritative research.”  Is it messy?  Yes.  Does the shifting landscape of web 2.0 require us to be open to redefining what we always held to be true?  Yes. 

If you think that perhaps the concept of social scholarship is mere rhetoric, I challenge you to “Google” terms like social scholarship or Authority 3.0.  Once I started digging this weekend, I was astonished at what I found.  As I mentioned earlier, I haven’t even yet had the chance to research these concepts through GALILEO, but stay tuned…I will bookmark anything I find there to http://del.icio.us/theunquietlibrary/social.scholarship.  My  mind is still reeling even as I write this post, and I know I have barely scratched the surface.   Take a look at this person’s “Dissertation 2.0″—a Pageflakes mashup of digital scholarship! Be sure to visit the actual link as my “Kwuot” capture didn’t quite get the “live” version of the screencast).

Pageflakes - Lisa Spiro’s Digital Humanities Research Portal via kwout

Laura Cohen goes on to warn us that, “Authoritative bias is messy. It’s not as clear-cut as peer review vs. popular publishing. Its metrics have yet to be figured out. But the neat little world of beware-of-bias is fast disappearing. Information literacy needs to acknowledge this, and train students to watch for the train coming around the bend.”

Cohen also warns us that we must be open to change and to rethink how we define authority:

Library 2.0: An Academic’s Perspective: Information Literacy in the Age of Social Scholarship via kwout

How do we do this?  Cohen cites these strategies and action steps:

• Make students aware of the emergence of social scholarship.
• Teach students about Authority 3.0 - or whatever you want to call it. Alert them to the expanding world of scholarly communication.
• In conjunction with this, abandon of the notion that there is a clear distinction between traditional peer-reviewed authority and authority derived from social scholarship. To put this another way, introduce the notion that there are emerging metrics of authority that can be derived from social scholarship.
• Use social tools (blogs, wikis, forums, social bookmarking, etc.) as part of the research process in their courses.
• Assign readings from authoritative blogs in the research areas students are asked to explore.
• Practice social scholarship, and show these activities as examples of what’s on the horizon.
• Incorporate this new material in tutorials on their library’s Web site.

I am not advocating we abandon our traditional sources and ideas about authority and authoritative resources.  Instead, I am asking us all to think about if we as individuals and as  a group are being responsive to the needs of our patrons, needs that are rooted in the world around all of us.  We are already fighting to show our legislators that we make a difference;  in some communities, the challenge to show the validity and importance of today’s librarian spills even into the classrooms as we try to bring our teachers, students, and administrators into the world of Learning 2.0 and Library 2.0.   Here is a golden opportunity to seize the moment to lead and become an even more integral part of learning in our schools.

We cannot wait for change to envelop us.  Now is the time for us to be more proactive than ever and to be part of the change, not a mere spectator.

Buffy Hamilton, Ed.S.
Media Specialist, Creekview High School
http://theunquietlibrary.wordpress.com
http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com  

Reflecting on My First Experience Teaching a Teach 21 Course!

This past Saturday I had the honor of teaching my first Teach 21 course.  Although I did this kind of training a few years when I worked in Technology Services and was very fortunate that fellow Media 21 colleague Kristine Woods shared her course template with me, I was still very nervous.  I know from experience that teenagers are more forgiving than adults!  :-)  No matter how long I teach, I still get nervous on the first day with a new group!  I was also nervous about disarming the school alarm system by myself for the first time….thankfully, the police did not show up, so I guess I did it correctly! 

For a couple of weeks, I have worked on taking Kristine’s material and adding additional goodies to it to meet the needs of my “students” in the Blogging with WordPress class.  Even at 8:30 on Saturday morning, I decided to incorporate two activities that turned out to be great:

1.  Working at the tables out in my reference area with the big presentation screen so everyone could see easily and sit together in groups, we brainstormed a list of “what we already know” about blogs; I used Inspiration to collect these ideas, and I will be posting it to our blog, www.bloggingfun.wordpress.com , as well as our Day 1 course page. 

2.  I then asked them to brainstorm a list of questions they had about blogging on a sheet of paper I cranked up prior to class.  During our lunch break, I typed up these questions in a table, saved the file as a PDF, and posted it on our blog.   Take a look at these questions…I was truly IMPRESSED by the depth and originality of the questions they asked!  I thought it would be helpful to use these to guide our conversation through the remainder of our Day 1 agenda and to be sure I addressed any questions we didn’t get to this weekend on Day 2, March 22. 

These two activities created some insightful and thought provoking dialogue.  These two activities wound up being a great segue to another activity I incoporated (thanks to Debbie Childress and Esther Brenneman who inspired me in our Day 1 Information Literacy class with this activity!):  earlier in the week, I found numerous articles about edublogging.  After our “what we know” and “what we want to know” activities/discussion, each person was given an article to read.  I tried to give each person an article that somehow tied into questions or ideas they had verbally raised during the previous discussion (questions came up during the “what we know” process, which was fine with me!). 

Each person read his/her article and could highlight or make notes in the margin if she chose to (no guys in this class, so I will use female gender pronouns for the rest of this post).  Then we did a “pair-share” activity in which classmates discussed “what stood out” to her with the other people at her table.  (By the way, I am now really glad that the class is taking place in my library…the participants liked that we could do some activities out on the main floor and the “hands-on” things in my computer lab).   Finally, each person then shared these thoughts with the whole class.  Everyone seemed to enjoy this, and several commented later in the day that the articles answered some of their previous questions and/or gave them a more concrete idea of how blogs can be used in the classroom.

After our lunch break, we moved into the media center lab and spent a good bit of time as individuals looking at blogs.   Many thanks to Kristine for her “Tour of the Blogs” activity!   While this activity took up more time than I anticipated, I think it was a great investment of time as many people made positive comments before the end of the day about this activity.  Several teachers loved seeing “real” blogs and getting ideas and inspiration.

Because it had come up, we also talked briefly about RSS and del.icio.us since I’m using those tools as part of our course blog.

While we did not quite get everything done I had hoped we would do (I was about 10 minutes off my anticipated pacing), I think it actually worked out for the better for us because we ended at a good stopping point with the building of individual blogs.  Our next session will focus on adding blog “bling” and answering remaining questions on our “list.”  If time permits, I want to create a space on our web page or use del.icious to tag our resources that can direct the students to resources related to a particular question.  I prefer to do it through del.icio.us—I just hope I have enough time to undertake this project! 

Overall, I think everyone left feeling excited about blogs!  I know some were slightly overwhelmed by all they saw, but I feel that way even now when I discover great new articles about blogging or new blogging tools.  You can never know it all, and you have to be OK with that—sometimes that is hard for us as teachers.  :-)  Right now, my mind is swirling with ideas for Day 2 that I can add to the already great activities that Kristine designed last year. 

I really enjoyed the day and felt good that I was helping other teachers discover the joys of blogging!  I am now looking forward to building our Day 2 page and tweaking it to meet our needs while still being faithful to the original course design. 

One other positive—the lunch break and the “tour of the blogs” activity gave me an opportunity to tweak the Day 1 page as we went along to accurately reflect all we did and to better chunk the resources.   I did notice some typos last night, and I will need to be sure to correct those on Monday.

I plan to send an email and blog post to follow up with my Teach 21 “pumpkins” on Monday to check in.  I think I might also try to find at least article or podcast for everyone to look at (if they have time) and to blog about it….I don’t want to put too much on them as they already have a tiny assignment to do by the 22nd. 

I can only hope that the “students” had as much fun as I did as the teacher!

Buffy

Cool Tool: “Kwout”!

We all know how cumbersome it is sometimes to work with screenshots when we are creating screencasts or handouts as part of a tutorial or “help” resource.  You have to use the “alt” and “print screen” keys to capture the image; then, you have to use some kind of photo editing application to edit and clean up your screenshot.

Labor no more!  Kwout is a free and cool new tool that debuted in December 2007 that allows users to capture screenshots with ease; furthermore, you can embed that screenshot into your webpage or blog.   You can even embed the image into Flickr!

The first thing you have to do is visit http://kwout.com/.  At the bottom of the screen are two options for grabbing the “bookmarklet.”  As an Internet Explorer user, I simply right clicked on the first option and saved it to my “links” folder under “Favorites.”  This puts it into your “Links” toolbar at the top of the browser. 

Once you have taken these steps, you then browse to the web page that has information you want to grab.  Simply click on the “kwout” button that is automatically installed when you follow the directions in the previous paragraph, and depending on which option you chose (open in a new window or open in the same window) earlier, the webpage will load along with the “Kwout” tools.  You just click and drag the area you want to capture; then click on the “cut” button.  Your embeddable HTML code will appear in a few moments so that you can then copy and paste that code into your blog or webpage, impressing your patrons and fellow colleagues!  

Meda Montana Hallyburton Brendall: Veterans History Project (Library of Congress via kwout

There is also now a “My Kwout” feature.  What does this do?  In the words of the “about” page, “My Kwout”:

“my kwout” is a collection of the sources that you quoted via kwout. With “my kwout”, you can share with your friends what you are/were interested in. You can also use it as like your online bookmarks.

Please note that “my kwout” doesn’t show a source until you post the quotation to your website/blog except Flickr, SNS (such as MySpace and Facebook) and other private sites.

The latest quotations may not be shown for a while. We update “my kwout” pages periodically, once a day or more often.

Give Kwout a try!

Headscratcher???

Today we started a research project with our 11th Honors American Literature/Composition.   To help facilitate the research, we set up our pathfinder to point them toward literary criticism articles on The Great Gatsby or Catcher in the Rye.

Students could go to either http://del.icio.us/creekview_hs_library/Gatsby_criticism or http://del.icio.us/creekview_hs_library/Catcher_in_the_Rye from the  main pathfinder page.  All links work, and students have the passwords if prompted to enter them.  In addition to these resources, we have pulled nonfiction and reference books with literary criticism, too.  We also reminded students that literary criticism is generally not available for free on the world wide web; nearly all of it is accessible through print materials or research databases.  We also reminded them that Sparknotes and other similar products are not literary criticism.

I thought we had made this as easy as possible.

Yet, we still had students SEARCHING GOOGLE for literary criticism!!!

What do you do with this?  How do you overcome this mentality? 

I freely admit I am totally and completely baffled!

Ideas?  Suggestions?

My Latest Library 2.0 Moment: Video Tutorials Made with Camtasia

We are proud to announce the debut of our Video Tutorial page @ The Unquiet Library! http://webtech.cherokee.k12.ga.us/creekview-hs/MediaCenter/video_tutorials.htm These tutorials are viewable in Windows Media Player, but we will also be converting them to an iTunes friendly format so students and faculty can download them into their iPod players as well.   Our first set of tutorials will focus on how to cite particular information sources in NoodleTools.   If you have not been able to attend training or have not used this resource yet (or have, but are still learning), these tutorials will be extremely helpful for you and your students! Stay tuned and check this page often!  We will be updating as often as we can. Don’t forget out new podcast page, too! 

http://webtech.cherokee.k12.ga.us/creekview-hs/MediaCenter/Podcasts/podcasts.htm

Time Management Envy

Seriously….when does she have time to do all this?!?!?  Even with all the extra hours I put in, I still can’t fathom how she does all she does!

http://springfieldvideo.edublogs.org/