Thing #6 - Teaching with Mashups

Wow! I could play in the Big Huge Lab for days! As a scrapbook queen, I could go to town on some of these projects. Now, as a librarian for four-year-olds, there are a number of toys we could play with during the school year. I know my students would get a kick out of taking a picture and then creating a jigsaw puzzle out of it. And how cool would it be for the kids to take pictures of each other and then create their very own pocket photo album or calendar. This would even be great to use for a Christmas or Mother's Day gift (sorry Dad's don't you know you have to have your special day during the school year in order to get a gift!).

I'm also intrigued by the badge maker. Our students are required to wear an I.D. badge everyday (at the beginning of the year this can be the only way to know a child's name...they don't always know it, or remember it), however, it would be really cool for them to create their own Press Pass. As they walk through the halls interviewing the workers at the school, they would look so official!

My head is going to explode with all of the cool ideas I have for next year...teacher's TechFusion, here we come!

Thing #5 - Flickr

I have been using Flickr for some time now to share photos. The best parts are the tagging and sharing features. I love the fact that I can enter keywords and locate pictures so quickly and easily. My TALL Texans class of 2006 posted pictures to Flickr so we could share, not only our experience, but the pictures we had such a great time taking of each other. There is no way I could have taken all of the pictures I wanted to take, but my friends shared their photos, giving me more photos than I could put into two scrapbooks!

The tagging feature makes it so easy to locate just the right pictures, and sometimes, just the wrong ones too. The groups allow members to share photos among themselves while keeping other's eyes from viewing the photos. It is a sharing community in which all members can view the picture .

I was not familiar with the Creative Commons Site, but quickly discovered there were quite a few kanagroo pictures to choose from for this post. I collect kangaroos, because my school's mascot is the kangaroo. My students love to see kangaroos and I have them all over my library. I thought this was a unique picture. I love the reflection. Not only would this be a great photo to use with the children at the beginning of the year when talking about our mascot, but also a great way to demonstate mirror image.

I know Flickr will be a site I use, not only to share my family photos but also to search for photos for instructional purposes.