Feedback

I think this was a great course. I took one similar to this a few months ago but I really like how this was laid out. There were tons of hands on activites to do and I learned so much. I would definitely recommend it. The only problem I had was trying to get around the filters that blocked out some of the content. But that was a problem at my end and not yours. My favorite part was playing with the mashups.



I would like to thank you for letting me participate. It was very nice of you. I truly feel that this is the best web 2.0 course I have taken. You did an excellent job of putting it all together.

Week 9, #23 Copyright

I just managed to get to a computer that would let me play a u tube video and watched the Fair(y) use tale clip. I can only imagine the amount of work that went into making a video from clips of Disney films. It was a cute piece and really explained the basic premise of copyright and fair use. I would have liked to see more detail about exactly how fair use is applied but I can see that it would have taken forever with the format that they used. Copyright and fair use is definitely something that librarians, teachers, and students need to be well versed in.

Week 9, #22 ebooks/Audio ebooks

I checked out the World Ebook Fair site at www.worldbookfair.com. It lists in one place several different providers of ebooks over the Internet, the first being the Gutenberg Project, which provides free ebooks, unlike the other providers who charge a membership fee. The Gutenberg Project is a great asset. Two years ago I was working at updating resources for the media center of a very small private school and included the Gutenberg Project in my recommendation list. It is a great way to expand a school library.

I also checked out Librivox at http://librivox.org which includes free audio ebooks from the Gutenberg Project. Lots of people love to listen to audio books while commuting. My mother always has an audiobook in her car CD player. This is something she would be interested in because it isn't always easy to find a good audiobook at the public library.

Best Places to Get Free Books is a site found at http://www.friedbeef.com/best-places-to-get-free-books-the-ultimate-guide/ This is a great site providing links to free ebooks, trading real books, etc. Someone obviously put in a lot of time and effort on this. I could easily spend hours on this site.

Week 9, #21 Podcasting

When I first heard of podcasting, I assumed this had to be utilized with an Ipod, which I do not have. I am not a big music listener and will probably never own one. Obviously I was wrong about the whole Ipod thing. I couldn't seem to get any of the given sites to work correctly but I did search out other sites on the web that offered podcasts and listened to a few. This is an excellent tool to use in the classroom. Students love technology and videos. Offering a podcasting choice while giving out project options would surely be a big hit.

Week 9, #20 TeacherTube

I had no idea this site existed. I know a lot of people watch UTube but since I have excessive filtering on my computer, I myself have never actually seen any of them. But I do know that schools block this access as well. So it seems to me that TeacherTube is an excellent way around this block. The videos seem to be relevant and although the are not all educational, they are at least non objectionable. TeacherTube is an good way to let the students work in a medium they enjoy while maintaining the control necessary in an educational setting.

Week 8, Thing 19.1 Florida Electronic Library

Because I do not live in Alaska, I could not access the Digital Pipeline resources and chose to look at my state libary website, the Florida Electronic Library, found at http://www.flelibrary.org/ I have used this site several times in the last few years, but are finding now that there have been some changes, both good and bad. There is a new section with digitalized historical photos and documents, which is nice. However, instead of searching each database individually, there is now a PowerSearch button. Granted, it is a pain to search each one, but the PowerSearch button didn't seem to work no matter what I did. In addition, there are sections for Florida Memory Project, AskALibrarian, WorldCat, Kids Stuff, and Teacher Resources.

Florida is really pushing their electronic databases to K-12 public schools which is nice because middle school and high schoolers don't really understand exactly what scholarly research consists of. When they move on to the community colleges and universites, they are woefully confused.

Spring Break

Completely irrelevant- here are photos of my spring break. Since we live near the beach, we drove the 10 miles and stayed at a hotel on the water. We had a nice time and enjoyed the weather. The day after we checked out, it turned cool , but it was hot while we were there.