Flickr

Low Tide 18 June 2008, a photo by jane calthorpe on Flickr.
Sorry I am so late with this post on Flickr - I didn't find this very easy - apart from the fact it took me ages to choose a photo I found it difficult to work out the steps - I have uploaded some of my own photos on Flickr but couldn't work out how to send them to my blog - so what step was I missing?

#17 or #18? Delicious

This blog should have been done on the weekend - one of my senior moments when I thought I had published! But as to Delicious - interesting site - when I mentioned it to a few people they had never heard of it either, so a few of us have learned something new. I see the sense in it - I had never really thought about it - at the moment I can't see myself using it really, but my daughters who are at Uni thought it was something they could use - I use a computer at school and have my Favourites there - what I do at school is not the same as at home so I have different Favourites on this laptop. If I was in the classroom it would be extremely useful, tagging those sites with your own terms - as a librarian I find some of the 'traditional' subject headings tedious and not quite right , so tagging would be great.

#22 and #23 - Audiobooks and downloadable media

How sad it was when we heard Borders and A & R were closing! I love browsing through bookshops. I was chatting to the girl in the ABC shop and she said if it wasn't for their selection of DVDs the shop wouldn't survive. I love audiobooks and Ebooks but.......I couldn't survive my 3 hours of daily driving if it wasn't for podcasts and audiobooks. I've never purchased any audiobooks as the local public library has an amazing collection. We purchased a Kindle for our school library and have downloaded free books from Project Gutenberg onto it. I personally don't enjoy reading from the Kindle - I would much prefer a book - but a teacher who travelled OS purchased one and loved it. Being an avid reader this was an easier and cheaper option for her. Maybe when I travel the concept will blossom. One of our junior campuses purchased MP3s for the downloading of audiobooks for the Lifeskills students - as the senior campus we haven't as yet done this - the English teacher would prefer to hold off - her decision. Unfortunately our numbers are too large for us to contemplate anything in this line for English Studies. Being a senior school we are HSC driven with very little time for experimentation or playing. Now let's see - I've had a little whinge and now I feel better!

#21 U Tube / Teacher Tube

What a wonderful tool - how often are clips from these sites used in classes! It's no longer just a tool for the clever teacher either as so many kids use them in their presentations as well. We have U tube blocked at school for the kids but teachers love having teacher tube there where so much of the searching has been done for them! Hang on, isn't this how Justin Bieber was discovered? Oh, so there is a downside!

#20 Podcasts

This one was easy - I find podcasts wonderful - apart from audiobooks this is how I handle my commute to work so easily - I subscribe to a couple of podcasts - until they left daily radio Hamish and Andy were my favourites - the best thing about the podcast is that the adds are cut out!  So you only listen to the good stuff! As to educational worth - we often download podcasts for the English audio assessment. We also used some other podcasts on the Year 12 retreat - seemed to work.

#19 Rollyo

Pretty impressed with this site/tool - have set up a searchroll for my av purchases - an extremely basic one but one I will add to when I'm at school and have a few moments to check out the sites I normally go to - a neat package. I can see this being useful for any class assignments, esp. the Year 11 History research projects which are currently being undertaken - would have been ideal to present a searchroll to the kids to kick off the reasearch. So many applications, I think.

#18 Wikis

A very opportune moment at school when I was asked to help 2 English teachers with setting up their wikis on their current novel. Crash course has begun. Being a senior school library I don't personally see Wikis being useful for me in my environment but having  knowledge and the how-to has certainly allowed me to help my peers. And the web.2 page posted on Amalie's blog was absolutely amazing!