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This newsletter is for participants in 23 Things On a Stick. It offers hints and tips, as well as news to encourage participants as they continue to learn.
Share any hints you have by sending them our way at minn23@gmail.com.
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Hints & Tips
Here are instructions for putting a picture on a trading card:
- Go to Big Huge Labs.
- Select the trading card option.
- With Upload as your option click the browse button to find a picture on your computer that you want to use.
- Click on the image you want to use and then click Open when it asks what you want to do with the file. The path to the file will fill in the box following "choose a file to upload".
- Then click the other options that follow, card color, which part of picture to keep, and add your title, subtitle, description and any icons you want.
 When done, click create and voila! your trading card.
Note that if you use a photo from somewhere else on the web you will have to put the URL or path to the photo in the box so it can be found to be used.
Thanks to Linda at NCLC for these instructions.
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Thing 9. Online Collaboration Tools
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 What begins as "group work" as students evolves
into "collaboration" in the world of work. Work or school teams need to
tools that make it easy to collaborate either face-to-face or, in the
busy world of families, friends, and career, from remote locations.
This Thing introduces two online tools that let you
collaborate with colleagues and others to create documents,
spreadsheets, slide
presentations and more without the need for access to the same software
or
emailing attachments. Multiple people can access the document, edits
are
tracked, and you can easily revert to previous editions. We hope you
have enjoyed editing The Declaration of Independence. What would Thomas
Jefferson think? Given his love of invention and innovation, chances
are he would have loved these collaboration tools!
Whether you prefer
GoogleDocs or Zoho, consider using these tools whenever you need to
work on a document from many locations or with others.
Take a look at some of these resources for online collaboration:
This is a list of more than 60 other tools for online collaboration.
Some are aimed at story creation or music, some
for families to organize and communicate, or mindmapping.
fairpan of Sticky Blogger 2310 pointed out this article about the pros and cons of online applications. The readers'
comments about the article are interesting, too.
To edit the Declaration of Independence in either GoogleDocs or Zoho, you need an invitation. Send an email to minn23@gmail.com and we will respond with the invitation within the day.
Posted by Ann WS
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Thing 10. Wikis
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 Another collaborative tool is a wiki. The term wiki comes from the Hawaiian word wiki wiki,
meaning quick or fast.
A wiki is a searchable website that allows users to easily add,
remove and edit the text and images of articles. It is the
product of collaborative writing by authors who can add new articles or
improve and update existing articles. The whole history of additions
and improvements can be traced, no information gets definitively lost.
The end result is a simple Web page that users can edit or enhance. If
a wiki is ever used inappropriately or
vandalized, you can revert back to an earlier version of
the page.
There are many uses for wikis in libraries and media centers. Students
can use wikis for collaborative note taking, for learning journals or
research notebooks, for collaborating with students in other
countries, or creative writing and for
collaborative student projects in any subject. School departments can
consolidate curriculum, reading lists, schedules, and more. Libraries
are using them for policy development, handbooks, bookclubs, and other
programming.
The 23 Things On a Stick wiki uses the
free PBWiki site. PBWiki claims it is as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich to create new pages, edit current
pages, add pictures and links, and more.
There is a suite of word
processing tools and by selecting Insert Plugin from the toolbar, you
can add features like Chat and video. One feature that is missing is
spell check. PBWiki editors make suggestions for free spell checkers.
One important editing point, especially if you use it with a group or
class: only one person at a time can edit a page on PBWiki.
Many people have edited the 23 Things On a Stick wiki--adding lists of
books and movies, noting their arrival on the page, and other simple
edits. Take a look and take a turn editing the wiki.
Wikis are among the most
popular tools for groups working together online. Mashables has rounded
up 30 of the best sites and resources (with more added by commenters). Most
are them free or low priced. The list includes hosted wikis, like
PBWiki, and those are open source and downloadable, including
MediaWiki, developed for Wikipedia.Posted by Ann WS
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Reminders!
- Read and comment on others' blogs when you have time. Everyone likes feedback!
- Label each post about a completed Thing with the number and title.
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About a dozen people have finished all 23 things! Congratulations!
Sincerely,
The 23 Things On a Stick Team
Patricia (CMLE), Ann WS (Metronet), Linda (NCLC), Ruth (NLLN), Robin (SAMMIE), Ann H (SELS), & Nancy (SMILE)
The Minnesota Multicounty Multitype Library Systems
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