Thing 20 or YouTube, TeacherTube, We all Tube Together!

When I searched using the term 'library' I found this cute Sesame Street skit with Cookie Monster, who happens to be my favorite SS character. I plan to use it to kick off my kindergarten classes this year!

No Cookies in the Library




I also saw this video on The Faculty Room Blog, which I subscribed to on my Google Reader, and since it is so apropos to our course, I'm adding it here.

Learning to Change--Changing to Learn



Life Cycles is a major topic in science for kindergarten as well as 2nd grade so I searched for videos on that subject. I found this video about the life cycle of a butterfly, which would be a great introduction for kindergartners.

Life Cycle of a Butterfly



I'm very glad to find out about Zamzar because YouTube is blocked in my district so it will be nice to have a way around that barrier. Our district subscribes to United Streaming so we do have access to many great educational videos through that resource. It is great to have access to so many videos online (and brief ones, at that!) because you can often show the students something that will get the point across much quicker than many words might do. Hmmmm....makes me think that I probably shouldn't spend any $$$ on new DVDs to add to the video collection!

Thing 19--Backpack

In looking through the web 2.0 awards, I came across an organizational site known as Backpack. While it is a 'paid' site, it offers some really neat, user-friendly tools for a small group Intranet site. It includes a shared calendar, easy-to-make pages, to-do lists, a newsroom for group communication, reminders, a journal, and many other useful features. The pricing is fairly reasonable--$99/month for up to 40 users, $49/month for up to 15 users, $24/month for up to 6 users--but with so many other tools available that can accomlish the same tasks, I doubt many school districts would choose to spend their limited budgets on a subscription. We did have an Intranet when I first started working in FWISD and it was a great way to keep our library department connected. We have since transitioned to using Outlook and while it is not as user friendly as our previous application (and nowhere near as sexy as Backpack!) it does get the job done. I could see Backpack being very useful in a situation where there was a small group working together remotely. It is a very nice, well-planned site that offers an easy-to-create and use Intranet for small groups. I would much prefer to use a site like this, with its colorful, clean layout, but alas, unlimited budgets are still a far-off dream, at least in my district!

Thing 18

I started to download Open Office, but when the progress box showed that the download was going to take over an hour and I was down to only 11 minutes of battery left, I abandoned that idea. That's one major disadvantage...although I noticed that one could request a cd for installation. I'm making an assumption here, but I'm going to guess that although the product is free, that part of the 'price' would include more requests for donations to support the work. I don't have a problem with paying for a product that I'm going to use...I'd rather just pay the $$$ than be repeatedly hit up for donations for something that is advertised as free. I experimented with Google Docs and I can see lots of potential for its use in my situation. It would be great to share items that have been created by other librarians in my district so that we are not each individually reinventing the wheel each time we need a spreadsheet, parent letter, schedule, etc. There has been some discussion, as well, about using Google Docs to rewrite our policy and procedure manual. I think that would be a great way to work on such a monumental task...many hands make the work light, wisdom of the masses and all that. I doubt that I'll be uploading everything from my files, but it's nice to know that I can do that as needed in order to share with colleagues, etc. I noticed on the items that I did upload that there doesn't seem to be the capability to include clip art and/or pictures, so there would need to be some additional tweaking done after the collaborative work was complete. All in all, I have to say that this is another great tool that I look forward to using and sharing with my colleagues when school resumes next month!