Happy New Semester

Wow, January used to be a "mellow month." It's easier to get the classes going in the new semester, as there are fewer new names to learn, but there are other commitments--yearbook deadlines to meet, grant applications to write, and (ahem) this class.

Final thoughts on the class

I'm pleased that we can return because now we get to try things for the next month, then come back with our questions in January.

Next semester, I want to learn how to do slide shows. I want to keep working on navigation which is fundamental but tricky!! I want to wrap my mind around organizing a class of 35 teenagers and making it seem easy--group powerpoints using Google Docs??

I plan to do the yearbook senior survey using a form, and counting the 337 votes on a monster spreadsheet. It has to beat the old method.

Here's a Fun Survey!

Try this one.

spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFhJWFcySGJ1bGkwaFFrdHJhS3U1MEE6MA

Two Types of Wonder Wheels

In our ITEC class last time, I finally saw the Wonder Wheel that everyone said they liked. Before class, I had dutifully looked up Wonder Wheel and found on on Coney Island, pictured on the right. The Wonder Wheel of Google display is also pictured to the right. It can be a useful tool for students researching their persuasive essay topics. The limitation, of course, is it's the visible Google web database which leaves out a lot. After speaking with Dena at Aragon, I asked our new librarian whether we at San Mateo had access to academic data bases as do our Aragon colleagues. She is in the process of locating passwords, so soon, San Mateo HS students will have Wonder Wheel plus the vetted sources.

Maps at the Library of Congress

I enjoyed the interactive map reading exercise that showed a map, more like a detailed drawing, of Washington, D.C. I have pretty good background knowledge about women's fashions and when things were built, so I found it fun to guess when it might have been made. As the ladies did not have bustles, I assumed it was before 1880. If you gave students some fun facts for background info, such as the year the Washington Monument was built, and a fashion profile by decade of the 1880s, they might have more buy-in.

Now, at home, I have a map from 1664, a page from a Dutch atlas by a mapmaker named Hondius. I am going back online to see if I can find more maps by that particular mapmaker.

Update: I did find some maps by Hondius, but most of them were listed but not visible. I tried three times to upload one to this blog, each time getting a corruption message. It uploads in this weird jp2 format that does not work. I finally made a screen shot, a TIFF that I converted to a jpg.

Making Sense of Online Text

I bet I'm not the only one in the class who downloaded and printed this article before reading it. That said, it wasn't designed for internet reading...dense text demands to be scrutinized and highlighted with a yellow marker. Am I a dinosaur for thinking this?

Back to the article. My students would enjoy being fooled by a hoax, and it would make a valuable lesson, though I think the velcro hoax is too simplistic for high school. Figure 2 is fantastic and makes its points more clearly than the Google lessons. I got that one could research the sites from the Google lessons, but this chart shows how. Great. I'm starting a persuasive essay unit next week with a research component, and I plan to make Figure 3 into a word doc that they can use.

Does anyone know if there is an easy, free, way to list links in ALA-approved formats? I heard of a site that had a yearly subscription fee, but that was two librarians ago. Forgot the name of the service. Also, does anyone have experience with the Peninsula Library System portal, the one that links to public library cards?

Callling people from class

Have you seen the "Follow" feature of these blogs? I'm "following" some of you, and that means, when I visit MY blog, a button to connect to your blog appears. It makes it fast to check in on what you are saying. Now, if you would say something, we might get some energy going.