Sunday, July 22, 2007

Sorry Harry, You've Been Upstaged

I've spent these past few days immersed in a fabulous book. What could be keeping me up leafing through the pages, filling my brain with a smorgasbord of ideas? In one of her postings on TeacherlibrarianNing Jeri Hurd recommended Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson. This book is more than living up to her endorsement and my copy is bristling with stickies and notes as I plan for September. My wish list includes starting some wiki pathfinders with staff and colleagues in other schools. (Thanks for this idea, Joyce!) Showing staff and students how to use social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and furl. Finding more ways to incorporate flickr creative commons images into assignments.
For example:
*What would any given character's flickr album look like? Would their collection of images look different at the beginning of the story and at the end?
*If you wanted to send a powerful message to the world on a specific topic what images would you use? Compile those images in a flickr badge. Can others discern what your message is from viewing your badge?
*select an image representative of a theme. Then select areas of that image to annotate with your own commentary or questions.

3 comments:

Robin Ellis said...

Joyce I attended your session at NECC and I would love to be able to initiate some wikipaths in my district with teachers. If I could talk with you about this further and learn how from you a best practice in bringing others along I would appreciate any help you are willing to give! Will's book is wonderful with so many ideas to try to implement, I have read it this summer as well and my mind is spinning with what I would like to implement this coming school year.

Anonymous said...

Joyce I attended your session at NECC and I would love to be able to initiate some wikipaths in my district with teachers. If I could talk with you about this further and learn how from you a best practice in bringing others along I would appreciate any help you are willing to give! Will's book is wonderful with so many ideas to try to implement, I have read it this summer as well and my mind is spinning with what I would like to implement this coming school year.

Lesley Edwards said...

Thanks for leaving a comment! I'm not actually Joyce, although she is one of my heroes. If you are a member of the TeacherLibrarian ning (join if you're not!) you might post a comment/request for help there as Joyce moderates this group. Or post a comment on her blog, The Neverending Search-http://joycevalenza.edublogs.org/. Personally I have found the best way to engage staff in new practices is to start with the keeners, make it very simple for them to participate and then share, share, share. I present new projects at staff meetings, in staff email and on a one-to-one basis. Teacher librarians can be your best allies (shameless self plug!) As I develop some wikipaths in the new school year I will post my results here so stay tuned. BTW, I wish I had been able to attend NECC this year but I have been listening to some of the podcasts (including Joyce's) and am full-to-the-brim with ideas waiting to be developed.