Music Sites of Interest

A colleague of mine spent the summer revamping his music curriculum to infuse as much technology as possible and found some great sites.

http://www.smartmusic.com/default.aspx: I wish this site was around when I was learning to play. I had to find a tape of my piece and play along with it. This site does that searching for you. It even tells you what you did wrong and it also logs your practicing. There is a subscription fee.

http://www.pandora.com/: This site creates radio stations for you based on your preferences. You can listen to it from your computer or cell phone. The site is free.

Faculty Morale Turn-Around

Throughout last year, the morale among the faculty of my school was extremely low. They all felt like no one listened to anything they requested. Even I felt like I sounded like a broken record. Administration did listen to one request the faculty had been making for years. That request was for more technology training. In my increased job role, I took it upon myself to tell my administration that I would lead technology training for the faculty. I began polling them verbally to figure out what kinds of things they wanted to learn. My math department chair came up with a great idea. She told me I aught to make a list of different technology applications I would be willing to teach so that people would have some idea of what they wanted to learn. I have a lot of respect for her as a teacher so I took her advice and created the handout. The next question was how do I distribute it? Do I put it in the mailboxes? Especially at the beginning of the year, they are getting so many papers. Would mine get lost in the shuffle? I figured I would risk it. I distributed 80 copies but I wasn't optimistic. I figured I would get 4 or 5 back from my good friends on the faculty. I was pleasantly surprised. I received responses from teachers, department chairs, administrators, and staff. People also commented about what a great idea this was! And the hits just keep on coming!!!

The Key to collaboration: Web 2.0

In some of my previous postings I have written about my job and how I have felt ineffective at times. Since the end of last year, my principal has been on a self- improvement kick. I am all for evaluation and self-improvement. How else will you grow as a person and a professional? At the end of last school year when he started with some of this self improvement talk he was basically holding a mirror to my face and I absolutely did not like what I saw. I basically "yes-ed" him with every suggestion he made but I didn't know if I wanted to invest the time and energy to improving and have it fall on deaf ears. I felt like things were different when I met with my administration throughout the end of last school year and this summer. My administration was extremely receptive to my ideas. We were all on the same page. We were all saying the same things. I made the decision that I wanted to change and be better personally and professionally than I have ever been.

I had the opportunity to take 2 graduate classes this summer. One had to do with Web 2.0 while the other was about planning tomorrow's library. One of the Web 2.0 skills I learned was Podcasting. Every year at our opening Faculty meeting we go around and share what we did over the summer. I decided to present mine via podcast. As my turn was approaching, my heart began to pound. I played the podcast and people listened. I was a little unhappy that the background music seemed a little soft. Either my colleagues didn't notice or they were too nice to tell me. They all applauded and some people said it was cute. That wasn't the adjective I was looking for but I took it as a compliment and considered it a success.

Right after the activity, we stopped for a coffee break. Once I went out into the foyer for the coffee break I was positive it was a success. Two different teachers approached me and wanted to know if I trained people to do what I did with the podcast. I told them yes and also told them about some of the other trainings I was planning for the coming school year. They both assured me that they would be interested in attending. What was most exciting was that one of the teachers is new this year and she is part of a department that I have had little collaboration with in my previous 7 years of working at my school. All this headway from one little 5 minute podcast. I was absolutely on cloud 9 for the rest of the day. I can genuinely say that I can't wait to start this school year. Hopefully I won't get burnt out by November as in past years. I think it will be the best year ever.

Unshelved comic strip archive

Unshelved comic strip archive

Has book banning gone too far?

Recipes : Panzanella : Food Network

Recipes : Panzanella : Food Network

This is one of my favorite summer recipes. There are never any leftovers when I make it.

Randy Pausch

You have been hearing this man's name a lot, especially since he succumbed to Pancreatic Cancer last week. There are too many wonderful people being afflicted with this disease. It took Michael Landon, the Academic Dean/Provost of my college, and now Randy Pausch. I feel for his wife and children. I am glad to see that they seem to have a vast support system during this terrible time. Dr. Pausch left quite a legacy with his Last Lecture and his book. He also left another legacy that piqued my interest.

In partnership with some of his other professors at Carnegie Mellon, he created a teaching tool called Alice. It is available as a free download at www.alice.org. It teaches students to create an animation program or a video game using Java or C++. Instead of having to type all the commands, the novice programmer can use drag and drop tiles.

I plan to email the computer teacher and computer graphics teacher about this program and hopefully they will try it. Rest in Peace, Dr. Pausch.

My Final Project Reflection

The day has finally arrived. The final project's due date. When the project was assigned 2 weeks ago, 2 weeks seemed like so much time. These past 2 weeks flew but I know my group and I did a project that we can be proud of. We created a virtual media center for Middle and High School students and focused on book reviews, teacher and student recommendations, and approved reading resources/academic tools. On that page there are links to reference websites for Dictionaries in English and Languages other than English, the Thesaurus, Encyclopedias, and Almanacs. There are also 2 slide shows that give helpful hints for writing and how to avoid plagiarism.

Technology Effectiveness:
The main portion of the project is a wiki. Within that wiki, there is a blog, a You Tube video, 3 slide shows, 3 polls, a voice thread, and a book that was created using Mixbook. A wiki is a useful way to pull together many types of resources and organize them in a logical fashion. Blogs are great communication tools. One of our jobs as librarians is Readers Advisory. By blogging about books that we or our colleagues recommend, we can provide that useful service to our students even when they are not in our libraries. You Tube or Teacher Tube videos, especially the Common Craft "Plain English" videos can sometimes explain concepts clearer than we can. Video can also be a great way to booktalk. Voice threads can provide the same service. Mixbook is a way to show comprehension without the dreaded "reading quiz."

Concepts and Ideas of Library 2.0 and Participitory Library Service:
In class we learned that there has been a shift in how people think about technology and the Library. This is definitely not your mother's school library. When the Internet started to be widely used in the late 90's, people who spent lots of time on the Internet were thought of as "addicts." Websites were created by professionals at that time. Now, almost anyone can create a website at a reasonably low cost. Chatting and social networking was also looked at as scary and pointless. There are now so many ways to keep in touch. I'm sure the founders of the 1990's World Wide Web never imagined sites like Classroom2.0, Twitter, Skype, etc. School Libraries need to be pioneers in the shift and rather than blocking sites like MySpace and Facebook, Librarians need to teach the school community how these sites can be used effectively and correctly.

Technology Issues:
The biggest problem with technology is that it is not 100% reliable. Site managers decide to update servers or do other site maintenance without notice so if a teacher plans to use that site for a lesson and it goes down, the teacher always needs to have a technology free backup. A concern is that if students are not instructed on how to use technology services correctly they can act silly and not take the lesson seriously. Just because you are not turning in a piece of paper, you are still being graded on the assignment, even though it is only found in cyberspace.

Collaboration Issues:
It is so helpful to have technology available when working on a collaborative project. Even email made things so much easier. If one person goes away, they can still be in touch with the rest of the group remotely and do the work they need to do on the project.