Web 2.0 Playground

Don't Panic! It is still Duck Tuesday, but with a twist. Today I'm featuring:



Today's post comes from wet, humid, dreary Houston. BUT - here in the basement of the Houston Public Library, its all fun and games - education style! We're learning all about the cool Web 2.0 technologies available to the public for FREE and how to use them in an educational setting. So far, we've discussed wikis and blogs, and there are endless other cool tools. Here are a few of my favorites:

• imagechef.com - this image creator is copyright friendly and absolutely amazing! Upload your own photos, or use stock symbols and change colors, insert your own text, and generally manipulate to create the perfect image. For icons to banners (both displayed above), imagechef.com is your one-stop shop.
• wordle.net - I could play with this site for hours. Copy and paste chunks of text into the text box, and wordle will create a tag cloud for you based on frequency of word usage. Great tool for showing students how much they use the word "I" or passive "was" in a composition. Also great for analyzing speeches (presidential or otherwise). ALSO great for just playing around - you can manipulate wordle to create a customized tag cloud (see wordle advanced!)
• commoncraft.com - "In Plain English" explanations of various Web 2.0 technologies. Might be a good tool to explain things like "blogs" and "wikis" to skeptical administrators or teachers. Very amusing.
• ransomizer - Another visual toy that I am addicted to. Might not really have any practical use, but its SO much fun.
  
  According to the guy who created it, "Ransomizr grabs the last bunch of single-letter images from the One Letter Pool on Flickr, arranges them into an array, and waits for you to type something in the entry blank. The result looks just like an old-school ransom note, and may be copied and pasted from here into the page of your choice."
  
  As you can see, fun times in Houston despite the traffic and rain and general homesickness. More later!
  

Duck?

Yesterday, I spent blissful afternoon with an open purchase order at Barnes and Noble. At the ESC, we're hosting a session entitled "Great Literature Picks for All Ages" in which we, the education specialists, will a Cliff's Notes version of recent literature and make recommendations for how to use the books in schools. Though I am not a "specialist," the invitation to participate was extended to me due to my library connections. And I just couldn't resist the allure of an open purchase order to Barnes and Noble! I was able to get a few of the books that I've read recently and really enjoyed, a few that I've been wanting to read but just haven't been able to yet, and some completely new serendipitous finds that I'm super excited about! I couldn't help but think, this is exactly what we did in Library School...book talks! I'm so thrilled at this opportunity to do what I love most, talk about books :-)

Today's book was one of the serendipitous finds. It's called Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, author of Little Pea, Little Oink, and several other popular children's books. This book tackles optical illusions in a really fun, real-life, kind of way. It's a conversation between two people who disagree on the animal depicted in the picture. The picture is the same on every page, while the scenery around it changes while the two parties try to convince each other to see things their way. Not quite a profound work of literature, this is definitely a fun read that will teach kids to really think about what they see, and exercises their creative vision.

Sample pages:

The Duck of the Irish

In honor of the day devoted to green, leprechauns, shamrocks, and all things Irish, I decided it would be really fun if there was an Irish duck book. But I looked and looked, and could find NOTHING! If I were a children's book author, I definitely would have capitalized on this holiday a long time ago, because I just love green, and because there could be great potential for a duck/leprechaun friendship to steal the hearts of children everywhere!

But instead, I did find this:
And so, today is a tribute to one of my most favorite professors of children's literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS), Elizabeth Bush. She kicks every class off with a Duck Question. This question usually has something to do with the subject of that day's class (non-fiction, award-winners, graphic novels, etc) and the answer to the question will help us be smart at librarian cocktail parties, she says. If you're late, you do not get to try and answer the Duck Question. You always want to be on time. Everyone writes their answer on a piece of paper and drops it into Betty's Christmas gift bag, and she draws until she gets a right answer. The owner of that right answer receives a duck! I am the proud owner of four ducks, three of which I earned for answering questions correctly, one of which sports a nifty cap and gown, and holds a diploma and was given to me upon my graduation from library school.
Betty is a phenomenal school librarian, an enthusiastic and energetic library school professor, and in her spare time, she writes for the Bulletin for the Center for Children's Books, which is housed in the basement of GSLIS. The Bulletin only reviews recommended works, so they are a great resource! She is a quirky, witty writer, and I always love the books she reviews.

So, here is today's Duck Tuesday book, reviewed by Betty for the Bulletin:


Whatever you do, don't you DARE tickle me here! and of course, tickling is the first thing on the reader's mind. With a patch of fur for a belly, how could they resist! Betty describes the book as "the tactile pleasures of Pat the Bunny meet the comedic style of Mo Willems' Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus." This snarky duck is hilarious! His protests against the tickling mirror that of many kiddos...they say "No!" and they squirm, but in the end, they might reconsider. The book itself is visually very appealing - "yellow floor and a steely blue background against which his milky white body, expressive yellow eyes, and bright orange bill and feet writhe in fits of contagious laughter (EB)" I remember this book being one of our regulars in the circulation flow at Urbana Free Library, and I'd stop to read it every time!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Duck! (seriously, look out!)

That's right! "Duck" and cover because this week's edition of Duck Tuesday features flying ducks! I stumbled across this delightful little guy on Amazon.com this week:
He flies AND quacks! What better way to illustrate a duck book than with visual aids and sound effects! And here's the perfect book to accompany such a fun toy:

Super Duck by Jez Alborough

Part of the Jez Alborough Duck series, this book features Goat, Sheep, and Frog (Duck's friends) and their quest to launch Goat's kite into the air. Duck shows up at the last minute, and of course, when Duck is around, things always go comically wrong! Can Super Duck save the day and his friend Frog??? Bright, colorful, action-packed illustrations command, making this story great for reading aloud, and the rhyming couplets are reminiscent of Dr. Seuss (and you know how I enjoy Dr. Seuss!). Such a fun book!

In other news, I get to help with Weather With Rusty today and tomorrow! Spring Break is somewhat of a slower week around the service center since at least half of our schools are off, and its much easier to get discouraged when there aren't people to help and conference rooms to support. Roxanne once passed on a piece of advice that really rings true at the moment: if I get discouraged in my day-to-day routine at work, just do a videoconference, watch some kiddos learn with realizing that's what they're doing, and it'll remind me of the larger purpose behind what I do. It's definitely time to see kids again!

Not one of them is like another

Day Two of Seuss-A-Palooza!

I'm completely hooked! I LOVE playing with kids. I love that, even though we start with the same content slides of pictures from the book, every single session is different. I love knowing that the kids are having as much fun as I am, and seeing the smiles on their faces in response to something I've taught them or read to them. Okay, enough of being sentimental...

Today we did five sessions, back to back to back, from 8:30 to 11 for the kindergartners at Bethune Elementary in Temple. Roxanne did the first two sessions and we executed a seamless transition to me for the last three. I got to watch Roxanne in action for bit before it was time for me to take over, and I must admit, I'm a little jealous. I have a LONG way to go before I'm as good with those kids as she is, but I'm learning. It was so fun to watch her playing with those kids. And of course, I stole some of the things she had added to her session to put in mine!

Several of the classes today had made their own Dr. Seuss hats. It was exciting to see a sea of red and white stripes on the screen...I just couldn't help but smile!

Things I learned from today:

• Ask more questions. More interaction is better and the more questions you ask, the more you have to work with. AND its more fun when the kids are involved. Its hard to sit still for long periods of time (ex. anything more than 3 minutes) when you are 4 or 5 years old, and the least I can do is get them engaged so it doesn't seem like such a long 25 minutes.
• Be prepared for anything. Some groups of kids were really rowdy, and some were really quiet. Learning how to adapt to the nature of each group will be a valuable skill.
• We need more sessions to pick from! The last group of kids I had was an ESL class. They were GREAT with counting and numbers, but they were having trouble with the rhymes and with some of my interactive things, because of the language. Thankfully, the teachers in the room were great with translating, but it's time to brainstorm and come up with things we can do to cater to the Spanish-speaking population.

Now that the two-day kick-off is over, Seuss-A-Palooza! will become a regularly-scheduled program at Region 12! We'll be offering half-hour sessions beginning at 9:30 and running until 11:30. We're in the process of developing more sessions with different Seuss books. If you've got a great idea or suggestion, we'd love to hear it!

Oh, and you can follow Dr. Seuss on Twitter. How cool is that?!

So much to celebrate!

Today is the birthday of the one, the only...Dr. Theodor Seuss Geisel. To properly celebrate this auspicious occasions, I enlisted the help of three groups of kiddos (K-1st from both Penelope ISD and Rice ISD) for Seuss-A-Palooza!
Seuss-A-Palooza was my first video-conference. I've been working with the fine folks back in the VC area for about a month and a half now. I've learned to operate the machinery - how to switch back and forth between a powerpoint and myself, and how to set presets. I was coached in developing content - how to create engaging slides and put the pictures on the screen so the kids can see them, and how to get the kids involved. And today, it all came together. With three back-t0-back sessions to operate on my own, was incredibly nervous, but then I remembered: I'm just reading to kids. The librarian in me took over at that point, and I donned my Seuss hat and gloves and sat down in the hot-seat to await my first group of kiddos.

The first session went fine, but for some reason my slides with the pictures didn't show up on the endpoint unit. So, while I thought they were seeing pictures and I was free to read, they were actually seeing me. I didn't find this out until the end where I had some activity slides and I was asking them if they could read the words on the screen for me. Turns out there were no words on their screen, and hadn't been for the whole 20 minutes beforehand. That's embarrassing...

We got the bugs worked out though, and I got ready for the second session. When they dialed in and came up on the screen, I was not prepared for what I saw...

There had been about 15, maybe 20 kids in the first session. I was shocked.

I regained my composure, however, and it was great! We had a blast, and with the help of the fantastic librarian/VC coordinator at Rice (Kristi Brawly), it went very smoothly. I was able to correct a few things from the first session that I didn't do so well, and I made sure to check that they could see my slides before I started. It was so much fun and I'm so addicted now!

Seuss-A-Palooza! will now happen weekly. Since this was my first video-conference, we only scheduled two sessions. About 50 people tried to register for those two sessions! I was overwhelmed by the response! But now, I can't wait to work on developing some different sessions (the "I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!" version is coming soon!), and honing my skills as a video-conference presenter. It makes my heart glad to see kids having fun with reading, and I'm so glad I can use my love of books and library science background to produce something so unique.

Today is also:
Texas Independence Day
Bon Jovi's birthday
my fiance's birthday

So much to celebrate!