Table 3 - August 20 - Photostory

I worked on a Photostory, but cannot post it because it has family photos and they do not want their photographs to be posted on a blog. I did a Photostory for the 23 things class earlier in the summer. I learned to add a PowerPoint slide with words today. When it was talked about last week, I didn't understand why we had to create a PP slide. Today, when I wanted to add a Title Page slide, I finally understood how it was done. I tried to add narration, but I could not get that to work. I did add and create music. I pieced music together to make the Story longer than 1 1/2 minutes, but I could not get that to work. I would like to learn that skill.

Table 4 - Video August 20

We worked as a group on this one and did not have much success. We could not download any videos to MovieMaker. We imported music, and made the title and credits, but we were not able to put it all together.

Table 2 - Audio Manipulation

I was able to turn on the laptop microphone and record and control the sound. Then I recorded on Audacity and downloaded "Fenster's Eplanation" music file. I tried to upload it to Sandbox Wiki, but after 15 minutes, it would not upload. Therefore, I was unable to link that to this blog.

August 20 Table 1 Post

I saved a photo on Discovery Education and Flickr Creative Commons, edited the size in PP and IrfanView, made a Trading Card out of it, added words to PP and am now posting to my blog.

The first time I tried to upload it, I got a message that there was an error in the photo upload. I will try it again.

It worked this time!

Thing #23 Summary

I did it! Overall, this was an enjoyable experience, but I am just as overjoyed that I am finished. I set a goal to finish before the end of June, so that I would have a break in July to do all of the other things I want to do this summer, and I did it.

My favorite discoveries were Flickr, all of the Big Huge Lab projects, and Library Thing. These will enable me to introduce many new, yet reasonable and fun, projects to the students and teachers at my school.

The most unexpected outcome for me was that I was able to do it in my time frame (although I worked many hours a day). I was very nervous at the beginning of this program because there were so many things listed that I had never heard of, much less knew anything about. I was afraid that I might not be able to complete it, so imagine how proud I am at this moment!

My suggestion to improve the program is to break it into a shorter "discovery" program. I think 15 things would be a good start and might alleviate the frustration that I read about in some of the blogs. It might also give everyone a chance to explore more of the things that they are planning to use and come up with more ideas of how to put them into place. I enjoyed the first half more than the 2nd half and found it more beneficial for school use.

I also found that in some of the "things" there were steps left out. I wrote about this in some of my blog entries. I don't know if this was on purpose, so that we would figure it out on our own, or if it is a little glitch in the system. I noticed that a few people had trouble uploading Photostory into Thing 21. I found the directions when I went to Help on Blogger and typed in "how to put a video in a blog". In our directions, it said that it could be uploaded, but didn't say how and I noticed that the other people that are already finished with this program were not able to upload their Photostory into their blog.

I would participate in another program, but I would prefer that it be a little less intense. There were many hours (60+) put into this 18 hour staff development. I do like the option of doing the work on our own time, but I am used to taking online courses. I feel so much more knowledgeable and excited about some of the new things that I learned. Thanks for all of your hard work creating the program.

Thing #22 Nings

I enjoyed reading the information about Nings. I feel like I am learning a new language. I went to the Teacher Librarian Ning and clicked on Elementary School Librarians. There was a discussion on Flexible Scheduling in libraries, and since this is something that we are struggling with, I enjoyed reading those questions and comments. Many seem to be trying to do what we are doing--a mixture of fixed and flexible. Our teachers really fight the flexible scheduling and we have not had a lot of success with it.

There were a few librarians that gave some helpful hints about how it was working for them, but they also had an assistant and a computer teacher to collaborate and teach along with them, and they had the support of the administration. As a matter of fact, I was surprised at the number of librarians that still had aides and assistants. I wasn't surprised at the comments that many people think that if the librarian isn't directly teaching a class at the moment, that she/he must not be doing anything else. I guess it is like most jobs, you really have no idea how many things are involved until you actually start the work.

This Ning is probably a good way to share ideas and comments. I enjoy doing that in person more than on a social network or a blog. That is why I am not ready to join these "social networks" for the time being. I see the benefit to sharing the knowledge and ideas over the computer, but I also see it as much more isolating and very time consuming to read all of this on a computer instead of having a conversation or a meeting of librarians.

Thing # 21 Podcasts, Photostory

I have wanted to learn to do Photostory for quite a while. I still need to practice with it, but it was fun and fairly simple. The hard part of this assignment for me was all of the downloading, upgrading, uploading, etc. and hoping that it was all going to work in the end. My poor computer is starting to struggle. Enjoy the brief tour of Paris!