Teresa

=Teresa's Page=

=Developing Your Personal Learning Network= I attended this Sunday workshop presented by Lucy Gray, a technology leader at the University of Chicago. She recommends a variety of online tools to keep professionals current on educational technology. [|Ning] (currently blocked by NJSD) offers users the chance to create a social network around specific interests, such as Educational Technology. Or you can join an already established Ning, such as [|Classroom 2.0]. If you are already on information overload, you will especially appreciate her suggestions for organizing it all. If you set your homepage to Google Reader, you can check RSS feeds every time you connect to the internet. Download her presentation notes here to learn about other tools and suggestions.

=Cell Phones in the Classroom= This was a fascinating session presented by Louis Loeffler of Cardinal Stritch University. I never knew how many Web 2.0 applications work with an average cell phone, which is inexpensive mobile technology that is already in the possession of most secondary students! Because they are currently banned in most schools, their potential is neither understood nor realized. Here are just a few of the educational tools that work with cell phones: If you text a search query to "Google" (or 466453), you will receive a text response with the answer. I tried it, and it works! For more information, go to [|Google SMS]. You can also add free Google applications to your mobile device (even if it isn't an i-phone) if you register on Google Mobile. I didn't try that because I don't want to pay the fees associated with mobile web access. If you're interested in this, you can find out more at [|Google Mobile]. This service will allow you or your students to send personal reminders to an email account from a cell. Users can also set up contact lists and send text messages to one or multiple contacts from a phone call. I was just at the cell phone store the other day, and my provider was offering this voice-to-text for a monthly fee. [|Dial 2Do] is free, and all you need to do is register.
 * Google Support Mobile Services**
 * Dial 2Do**

Using Second Life as a Learning Environment
I have to be honest: I haven't been to Second Life since my avatar, Chardonnay, became stuck walking into a fountain. I was excited to go to this session to see if I could pick up some basic moving skills to rescue Chardonnay and my ego. I was glad to learn that there were other librarians with avatars stuck in unfortunate situations all throughout the virtual world. Not only did I pick up some suggestions for learning to move through Second Life, but I also discovered that it can be put to some amazing educational uses. Our friend Tammy Stephens demonstrated how Second Life is being used by educators in her Ph.D. program and in classrooms throughout the world. Watch this YouTube video to [|explore the possibilities].

Tammy's avatar joined up with the avatar of one of her colleagues who was actually in New Jersey. The two of them guided us on a walking and flying tour of two learning spaces (or islands): Information Island, which is the American Library Association space, and Pepperdine University's Malibu Island, where Tammy and her fellow Ph.D. candidates meet for class.

Tammy also showed us how some high school students from Kyoto, Japan have used Teen Second Life to begin a cultural exchange with students from Modesto, CA through the [|Pacific Rim Project]. I was curious to see if there were similar projects with middle school, and learned that one of the oldest projects on the teen grid is a cross-disciplinary project called [|Ramapo Islands], the virtual property of the students of Suffern Middle School in Suffern, NY.