thing #20

YouTube is fun, and the choices are endless. I watched at least 30 different videos about librarians, some funny, some not so funny, some that were inappropriate, some that were boring, and some that were actually okay for a school assignment. The one I chose shows a young librarian defending the Dewey decimal system.




On Teacher Tube I found a video on Metaphors: Star Wars Metaphors. I am teaching metaphors to my ESL students right now, so I will use the video myself.


There is just about anything a teacher or librarian could possibly be looking for. To make it even more perfect, links to worksheets, lesson plans, assessments, and more are provided at the upper edge of the video.

thing #19

I fell in love with Lulu, a self-publishing tool. For $0.02 per page, one can publish a paperback book. There is also the option of selling the book online. Other options are hardcover books, and ebooks, although I forgot to check what the cost is for those formats. Students and teachers could publish their own writings at very little cost. I know of a student who enjoys writing and illustrating children's stories. What a perfect tool for her!
How I needed Lulu back when I wrote my master thesis --- around the time when the dinosaurs went extinct, before computers and Internet. I still have a bound copy of it, but it was expensive and complicated to get it done. I am totally giddy about this discovery!

thing # 18

At the recommendation of my sons, I downloaded Open Office a while back on my home computer. I have never used it, because I had already purchased Microsoft Office. Taking another look at it, I must say that, all in all, I see only advantages to Open Office. First of all, there is no purchase cost --- a huge advantage in my opinion. Secondly, updates are available without additional cost, and there is not much that can go wrong with Open Office. I noticed that the district has Open Office on our school computers, but we also have Microsoft Office installed. Why do we have both? I must admit, that I have been using Microsoft Office consistently for all my word documents, Power Points, etc., probably out of habit. Rumor has it, that SBISD is going to discontinue the use of Microsoft Office, so I guess we need to get used to the --- good --- idea of Open Office.

thing # 17

I created a search engine for Young Adult Literature, and in the process I found out that my friend and class mate Lili Suchoff had created one with the same title. However, she has completely different web sites in her search engine.
While Rollyo is obviously useful for any number of applications, it will be particularly helpful to students. A specially created search engine can be used for research projects, so that students may go straight to the sites that the teacher/librarian has selected and approved.