Sliding into Home--Thing 23!

Whew! I made it to Thing 23...just at the deadline, as usual. :) I really enjoyed most of the exercises that we completed during this journey, but I guess my favorite would have to be the mashups. I've seen lots of other people use these in presentations, etc., but I hadn't had any experience creating them. A close second would definitely be creating the podcast. I definitely want to work on completing more of these to post on my library wiki.

One of my lifelong learning goals is to stay current with technology so the 23 Things was a perfect fit for me. I completed my master's degree through UNT's online program and I found that I really enjoyed the experience because it allowed me to work on my schedule at my convenience. I honestly don't know why anyone would want to sit in a traditional classroom when the option to learn online is available! I'm excited to know that I now have a more complete understanding of the applications that we explored this summer. I would definitely be interested in participating in another experience of this type! Please spread the word if you should decide to do a 23 Things, part II.

I think the thing that surprised me most was how motivated I was by receiving comments from others on my blog...I really appreciated the feedback from my classmates. Prior to this experience I just didn't get the whole blog phenomena. Now I understand!

One idea that I had for improving the program would be to offer one or two optional chats during the course of the experience so that participants could be given the opportunity to ask questions of the captains and get an immediate response. That was very helpful to me during several of my classes at UNT.

In one sentence:
The 23 Things experience gave me the opportunity to deepen my understanding of web 2.0 applications and explore possible uses for these tools to enhance student learning in the library.

Thing 6

WOW! Big Huge Labs is just that....so many interesting things that can be done with this site. I made a trading card of my almost-four year old to give out to her friends at her birthday party in a few weeks. I'm sure it will be a hit, at least with Nana and Grammy. :) I also made this jigsaw puzzle of an unhappy tourist on our trip to Alaska last summer. I could spend the rest of the summer playing on this site. I can imagine lots of uses for these applications, from mapping the location of famous landmarks in social studies to creating propaganda posters for language arts to making trading cards of famous people for Black History month, etc. What a great tool! I'm afraid that it will be blocked, though, like so many of the sites to which our district restricts access. I believe it was Alan November who said during his session at TLA this year something along the lines that we should also take away pencils and paper from the students because some of them might write inappropriate notes if we allow them to have those tools. Excellent point, in my opinion!