Technology Wows and Woes

Technology has revolutionized today's world for both the good and the bad. In the media center, it has opened the avenues to a wealth of information and has provided many organizational tools to assist in managing this information. It makes selecting, locating, and checkout/return as simple as a few keystrokes. However, the availability of information has also become information overload. Attempting to weed through and assess all of this information can actually lead to an increase in research time. The physical limits of information are non-existent. On the plus side, it has also allowed individuals to see beyond the four walls of the school. It has opened the eyes, hearts and minds to multiple viewpoints, etc. We are forever changed.

In addition, some of the applications have taken away the critical thinking aspects of tasks. For instance, where once we used to review and edit our own writing, now we rely on the review skills of our computer software and wait for suggestions on how to make corrections. I often see students write without capitalization waiting for the software to automatically insert the uppercase letter at the beginning of a sentence or where needed. Is this making our students less writing literate?

Plagarism is a click away...but it is also nearly just as easy to locate with today's searches!

For every plus there is a con, and vice versa.

Nancy

Computer Chaos

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone has heard of a virus and/or worm that gets in and destroys the document that you are currently working in from both the hard drive and the flash drive...rescued files come up coded and/or in notebook format on the hard drive...there is no evidence that the filename(s) even existed on the hard drive or the flash drive. This happened to two documents of mine this past weekend and destroyed hours of my work on the Curriculum Unit. The only proof that the files existed are the shortcuts that can be found through a search of the hard drive...the flash drive has no evidence of the files at all. I had three computer tech. people working on this and no answers! I wondered if it was something with my Word software itself or someone infiltrating my computer.

Nancy

Newsletter Notes

Hi,

My newsletter is going to include articles about the Maud Hart Competition in our Middle School Media Center, a feature article on one of the Maud Hart books that I read, an artcile on Maud Hart Lovelace and the award itself, staff interviews, and more.

Nancy

Brochure Buzz

Hi all,

I've decided that at this point being that I am not actually working in a media center, that the most useful and practical brochure would be an informational type. I am thinking that if I create one on the research process for students that I might be able to use it with my own science students when they complete their own research project. However, I also thought that it would be more fun to work with a more dynamic topic. I could develop a promotional brochure on the Maud Hart Lovelace activity that goes on each year in our own media center at the Middle School where I teach. Students just received the nominees for the 2008/2009 school year and are off and reading. I may just have to flip a coin!

Till next time.

Nancy

P.S. One more fun idea would be to do an informational brochure for teachers on all of the great Web 2.0 sites I have been introduced to this semester. See my widget for LibraryThing that I created at right... Marie introduced us to this latest one. I could also share the Del.icio.us, Wordle, Blogspot, and Kompozer sites along with some of the others that I have found on my own and that would be useful to the classroom teacher.

Poster Plan

I have a couple of ideas in mind for the poster assignment and will probably develop both. Being that my husband started his own business three years ago, I will develop a poster for his booth at the tech conference we attend each spring. He does low voltage wiring...communications, etc. My second idea is to create a poster for the students and my recycling program at the school where I teach. My students developed a slogan last year, "Go Green to Get Green", being that the program receives monies for some of the recycled items (popcans, cell phones and ink/laser cartridges). We also collect the Land O' Lakes milk caps which earn 5 cents a piece. The students use the funds to finance science related activities and field trips.

Nancy

PowerPoint Topic

I decided to go with a topic that I am familiar with and that is the SMARTBoard software known as Notebook. In the past two weeks, five of my colleagues on the 8th grade team have gotten SMARTBoards and it seems that I am the resource person for the team having had one for a year now. The focus of my presentation will be to show these teachers how to set up a basic interactive lesson that uses the essential tools of the Notebook software.

Nancy

Great Free Public Domain Clipart Site

Hi again,

Thought I'd point out a link that I placed at the right called WP Clipart. It has wonderful clipart that comes up free and in the public domain. There's an icon called "small icons" that brings you to many smaller images that can be used as buttons on your webpages if you use them.

I know that many of the sites that I searched and even some linked in the learning modules do not actually have free clipart and some that have very limited clipart...like black and white images only. For science, I searched and found many picture images available by federal and state organizations...NASA for instance...that are in the public domain. I found my tiger image for my website at one of these sites. Hope this helps.

N