Life as a Librarian

The First Day of School

2011-08-22T15:47:00.000-05:00

Ah, the first day has come and gone. It was great to see returning students and a few new ones. In the library, we got started on my goals for the students. We are working on setting goals in reading. I'm sure the students were surprised to hear about this, but a few are really excited. I discussed how I set a goal of 111 books to read in one year. You could hear the shock ripple through the room! Next, I explained that I read easy books and chapter books so my goal has been easy to attain so far.

For the next few weeks the students will put their goal into writing, read from different genres, and work on reaching a goal they have set for themselves. This will be an exciting year for everyone as we strive to become life-long readers at Hodges!

Family Night

2011-04-06T11:23:00.001-05:00

I won a grant for my campus so I will be having a Family Reading Night to work with parents and students. I used the money I was given and purchased many new books. As they've come in I have tried to read them. I am very excited about the new books and I believe the students will love them. One that I really enjoyed was If You're A Monster And You Know It by Rebecca Emberly and Pop!The Invention of Bubble Gum by Meghan McCarthy. I try to read books that involve movement or lots of laughter when I read to Pre-K and this Friday I will read If You're A Monster and You Know It. The students will have so much fun participating by stomping their paws and snapping their claws!

Next week I will be at the Texas Library Association's annual convention. I look forward to hearing about new ideas and techniques that I can bring back to my campus. I will try to blog about each session and provide links.

Reading, Reading, and more Reading

2011-03-11T11:39:00.000-06:00

I am still working on my goal of reading 111 books this year. I am now up to 42. The only reason I have been able to read so many is that I read lots of children's books. I just received new books and have started reading! Spring break is next week and I hope to read a few chapter books such as The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan, Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine, and A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly.

A Look at Our Future?

2011-02-23T10:38:00.002-06:00

I just viewed a youtube video that really impressed me. It is about future technologies that are probably not to far off. It is sponsored by Corning. The video is about 5 minutes long but worth the time. Follow this link to be amazed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38

A Must Read

2011-01-26T10:00:00.001-06:00

I just finished reading Dirty Little Secrets by Omololu. It was a great book and perfect for young adults. It is about a 16 year old girl that doesn't let anyone come over to her house because her mother is a hoarder. One day she discovers her mother is dead after finding her buried under a pile of National Geographic magazines. The ending surprised me a little. If you have time this book is worth reading.

I am also reading Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. It is an easy to read self help book. I am hoping to follow his advice and become debt free to the point that I can purchase everything with cash including future cars!

The Ongoing Challenge

2011-01-20T08:04:00.003-06:00

I am working towards my goal of 111 in 2011. I am currently reading Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. I must say that if Tom were one of my students I would going out of my mind. That boy is so mischievous! I am also reading The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. I must say that I am having trouble staying interested. I started the book in November and have read about half of it. I feel that I must finish because it has received so many great reviews. However, I just can't seem to get interested, but I don't like the idea of abandoning it since is so highly recommended.

I am using Goodreads to track my reading and to follow other readers. I love to find books "to read" later.

I hear so many people say they can't imagine reading anything besides an actual book. I must say I wasn't too interested in reading a book on an ereader or computer but that is changing. I now read books on my iPad frequently and it has actually been an easy adjustment. However, I do still enjoy the feel and smell of a good book.

Time to get back to reading...

Book Challenge 2011

2011-01-04T10:11:00.004-06:00

I am planning to read books that I feel I've missed out on during my public education. I got the idea from Much Madness is Divinest Sense. My goal is to read them all before the end of the year. For now I want to read To Kill A Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, and many others. As I read each book I will blog my response to the book.

Problem Solving

2010-05-16T08:56:00.002-05:00

I recently read a blog by Doug Johnson that I believe is relevant to all students. It is a list of mini activities to teach online research skills. It is applicable to all ages. The activities include checking the forecast and predicting what to wear the next day, locate science articles that relate to the current lesson in class, or read book reviews and make recommendations. What a simple way to teach beginning research skills. As for me, this will become part of my library curriculum.

The Book Whisperer

2010-04-27T21:29:00.002-05:00

I cannot believe how long it has been since I last wrote a post. Hopefully, as the year progresses I will get more done on this site.

My school will be doing a book study this summer and the upper grades will be reading The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. Several teachers, including myself, have already starting reading this book. I love it. She is a huge advocate of free reading and that you can increase a child's test scores without doing worksheets. I am so thrilled that many teachers on my campus will finally realize that true reading is the best way to teach reading. I am currently working with two teachers who will be using this technique next school year. I think exciting things are about to happen at my school and I can't wait to be part of it!!

My Top Ten Children's Books

2009-05-04T10:40:00.004-05:00

1. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems

2. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman

3. Verdi by Janell Cannon

4. Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell

5. Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco

6. Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

7. The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens

8. Oh, the Thinks You Can Think by Dr. Seuss

9. Wilford Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox

10. Anything by Mo Willems

Library Circulation on the Rise

2008-10-22T09:51:00.003-05:00

According to a recent article in the Boston Globe, circulation is on the rise. As our economy spirals downward, more people are returning to libraries in record numbers. Many customers are also gettting movies because they cannot afford to rent them any longer. Some libraries have had as much as a 19% increase in circulation compared to this time last year. Hopefully, this trend will continue and library budgets won't decrease.

wiki's

2008-09-24T15:35:00.003-05:00

I am working on getting my wiki up to date. I have had the account a while but haven't really learned how to use it. It will be a work in progress for now, but I hope to learn quickly how to make it visually appealing.

Reading & Writing

2008-08-04T07:47:00.003-05:00

An article from NCTE was discussing the issue of teens reading books. As a librarian, this is something that always concerns me. These days kids spend so much time in front of the TV or on the net that educators worry they will not be competent readers. Well, I found a web site that may help ease our fears, fanfiction.net. This site allows users to read stories or write their own. It is organized into 8 different genres. Most are short stories. The few that I previewed seem to be well written which sort of surprised me. I guess I am getting used to hearing teens talk in "IM" language!

Things in Review

2008-06-04T13:05:00.002-05:00

Wow, it is hard to believe I haven't posted anything since January. I have my iPod and it looks just like the picture I posted. I have uploaded music and now I am working on learning about the extras it offers.

As I think back on the 23 Things I realize I am already forgetting what I learned. I plan to take time this summer and go back over the "Things" I enjoyed most. My school has a wiki that I may work on also. I created one for the library, but I'm not sure if I will keep it going since we now have one for our campus.

My iPod

2008-01-24T12:30:00.000-06:00

Summary

2008-01-19T20:36:00.000-06:00

I finally made it to the end! What a journey I have been on for a few months. I have enjoyed most of the assignments and feel more aware of the services the Internet has to offer. I feel more confident with my computer skills and expect to be a leader on my campus. I am going to encourage my campus to take this course as well.

I must say Animoto was by far my favorite of all. I kept going back and creating more videos. Now my daughter wants to get started. Several things that will be useful to me and my campus are wiki's, mind maps such as Gliffy, social bookmarking, and online productivity tools. It is going to take time for me to learn these new tools and become comfortable using them. I think the one assignment I had the most issues with was creating a myspace page. I just have such negative feelings about myspace. I'm sure it comes from the negative tones set by the media, so I don't know if I will keep my page.

The "things" weren't difficult and the discovery resources were easy to understand and follow. They made the assignment easier to complete. I do think it would have been helpful to meet, as a group, about halfway through the assignments. I noticed several people had not done many assignments until the holidays and several had questions or needed help. I would love to see a PFK course later that builds upon this one or that is similar. Now that I have completed this course, I will begin sharing it with my campus.

Thing 23

2008-01-18T08:21:00.000-06:00

This "thing" is really causing me to think hard. Copyright isn't something that is always simple to understand, but I do think it is good that Creative Commons has come about. So many people create, share, edit, and remix others peoples ideas all the time. I think CC is going to finally start giving people the credit they deserve. Frequently, we borrow, change, or share others ideas without giving credit. Maybe it is out of fear of violating laws or other reasons. CC allows users to edit content and share as long as they credit the original author. I have been reading Lawrence Lessig's blog and discovered that CC comes with several attributes. I clicked on two different attributes and the page was written in layman's terms. It described what a user was allowed to do with the work and what credit must be given.

I searched for sites with CC license and I found a helpful site. http://search.creativecommons.org/# enabled me to chose from several sites items that had CC licenses. I was even able to select it to show only items that I can modify, adapt, or build upon. I chose flickr and looked for White House photos. This would be a great way for students researching American Landmarks, inventors, inventions, etc. They could import the photos into their work as a final project.

Thing 22

2008-01-17T11:19:00.001-06:00

Thing 22

2008-01-13T20:54:00.000-06:00

I was so excited to get use this "thing." I uploaded photos that were already on flickr. I wanted to use my own music but I could seem to get the computer to recognize it when I tried to upload it to Animoto. I didn't have any trouble uploading my photos. It was so easy that I can't wait to create more video's. I know my daughter is going to love this as much as I do.

I'm not sure how students in elementary could use it, but I have several ideas for teachers and librarians. School celebrations such as Children's Book Week, book parades, etc you could quickly create a video and upload it to the school website. When I taught 6th grade, I would create a cd for each student with photos taken throughout the year. Then on graduation day I would play the video for the first time. Their parents got to see it with their children. Everyone loved it and to this day I treasure those cd's. I have also had fun creating end of the year slide shows or videos for the faculty. The one I created last year lasted about 20 minutes and the teachers thought it was great. I may check into fees for creating longer video's on Animoto. The first video I created had too many photos and I realized after it was created that the bride and groom were left out of the feed. I did a remix without removing any photos and it still left them out. Well, I plan to go back, create more videos, and figure out how to get my music uploaded. This was one of the more enjoyable "things" on the list of 23 things.

Thing 21

2008-01-12T09:06:00.000-06:00

I didn't realize there were so many podcasts available. I looked at all four directories, but finally chose a podcast from the Educational Podcast Directory. It was broken down by elementary, middle, and high school. That made it much easier to find podcasts suitable for my school. I tried looking at the podcasts related to technology and thought I might have found some good lessons on using mac's. When I tried to open the link, it wouldn't work. That was really disappointing. So, I went to another link called Uncontrolled Vocabulary. It is really very intersting. First, it gives instructions for others to join in. It is held every Wednesday night at 10PM and regular callers are librarians from around the country. It is just an audio podcast, but it felt like I was sitting around the table discussing issues with them.

I looked around podcast.net and was a little disappointed. I didn't find much that would be useful for elementary schools. Plus, on the side bar it said you need to download special software to fully enjoy the podcasts. I decided to move on and look at other podcast directories. I went into podcastalley and looked under the education tab. I chose one about vocabulary. Oh my, was I surprised. The speaker was not dressed appropriately for any educational setting and although she was talking about words, there is no way I could ever show that at school. I finally chose a podcast from Jamestown Elementary School. There were several podcasts that would be useful for my campus. They had math word problems, a trip to Jamestown, letter writing, as so much more.

Thing 20

2008-01-11T12:45:00.000-06:00

I started looking around youtube for something I would like to show in my post. I love Mo Willems' Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus so I started searching. I wasn't sure what I would find, but I did have a few hits. It was mostly parents or schools reading the story. My favorite was a father reading to his two girls. It was great because one girl kept telling the pigeon "no" to everything he asked. I love to see parents reading to the children and getting the kids involved.

Our teacher's use powermediaplus frequently, but it is limited. It would be nice to have video clips of children's books being read for younger children. For high school this might be a great tool for theater classes or, as a project, students could create commercials based on books.
Below is a video about Strega Nona by Tomie Depaola.

Thing 19

2008-01-09T21:45:00.000-06:00

I created an account with mindmeister and looked at other individuals work. I like that it had tags to help narrow my search, but the majority of examples are from another country and written in a foreign language. I do like the idea of using mind maps. My campus is implementing Thinking Maps this year and mind maps are very similar. Mindmeister only allows straight lines and sometimes I prefer to use bubbles or t charts.

Gliffy looks wonderful on the home page, but once I registered I couldn't figure out how to make the samples shown. I went to the home page and watched the demo. When I went in to create a document, I still couldn't find a help button. Flowcharts are similar to the mind maps. Flowcharts allow more freedom with the set up and I like that much better. It is also more attractive which is important when working with students.

Thing 18

2008-01-09T13:08:00.000-06:00

I am loving this "thing" so much that I'm having trouble moving on. I have explored several links on the Web 2.0 Awards list. One site I found to be very interesting was Confabb. You can search, track, discuss, and review any conference, speaker, or session. You can also add a conference to the site for others to view.

The section about fun stuff was really fun. I checked out One Sentence and it is for users to post one true sentence. I read several posts and some would be inappropriate for a school setting. I can see this being very useful in the classroom, but it might be better to use a wiki for this so that posts can be controlled. The teacher could create a page and students could go in and work on writing one sentence. This would be a great way to practice summarization skills. Another fun site was fuzzmail. Anyone can type a message and send it to their friends. Their friends can watch exactly how it was typed. For example, if you are typing and then you have to use the back space key, they will see all of this on the screen. If you go back to add a word or change the spelling, they will see this as well. I can't really see and educational use at this time because it moves so quickly, but it could possibly be modified for writing skills. The students could watch to see how the teacher would modify their writing project.

Thing 17

2008-01-08T15:31:00.000-06:00

I love the idea of being able to work offline and it automatically makes my edits when I log onto the net. Sometimes I cannot access the Internet and it is frustrating not to be able to view necessary documents. With Zoho, I can make changes on my most recent projects even when I am not connected to the Internet!

I created my account with Zoho and started work on my first project. It was very easy to create a spreadsheet and I used Mockingbird books for my first test document. I am still working on how to post a link to my blog. I felt like I was working with my regular Microsoft Office applications. The toolbar was familiar and I had no difficulty in using the application. Now I am off to explore Google Docs.

Thing 16

2008-01-03T20:35:00.001-06:00

After viewing the discovery resources, I see that it is very easy to use, edit, and create pages using wiki's. Wiki's allow users to do almost anything on a page. This would be an excellent way for my campus to post our school faculty calendar. Each month our secretary prints a calendar for each teacher with events for the month that affect staff members. It would be great if it were online where staff members could add to it as necessary. Teachers already deal with so much paperwork, so putting it online would be a great way to always have the calendar nearby.

I just discovered another wonderful wiki site, Curriki. It offers a place online where educators from anywhere in the world can post curricula and lesson plans for review and use by fellow classroom teachers. It is very user friendly and has lessons categorized to make searching easier.

My campus has clubs that meet after school every other Monday. The Writing Club could really use a wiki to help produce the school newspaper. They could type their articles between meetings and the teacher(s) could go online and edit or make suggestions for changes. This would cut down on the length of time between printings.

Thing 15

2008-01-03T13:49:00.000-06:00

I was unsure just exactly what a wiki was until this assignment. I know I've seen them in the past and I've certainly seen Wikipedia, but I never really understood until looking over the discovery resources. There have been many times I could have used a wiki to coordinate plans instead of using email. I can see the benefits of using a wiki for small groups such as the Mesquite Librarians, but allowing the general public access to some wiki's would cause me to question the validity of the information.

My campus has a grade level meeting every Monday with the principal. A member from each grade must attend and take notes. I think it would be useful to have a wiki detailing some of the items we will be discussing so we can start before the meeting. So much time is spent after school trying to work out the details of some new situation or program and I believe it could be easier on everyone to have more time to think and plan if we knew in advance what needed to be worked out. Another use for wiki's on the elementary level would be in ESL classes. ESL students do a lot of writing and I think it would be much easier to have it on a wiki where the students and teacher can access it anytime and make changes. Students can track their progress by looking back at the history of the paper and seeing the changes that have been made.

Looking at some of the discovery exercises, I really liked the idea of teachers using them for students to interact. I didn't realize wiki's could be set to allow only certain users to make changes. This would be an excellent way for educators to reach their students during the summer. I know several advanced classes that require summer assignments. What a great way to get feedback before the school year begins.

Thing 14

2007-12-28T20:21:00.001-06:00

I find it very interesting that library 2.0 is intended to include library users as well as the web site creator to provide information and feedback. This would be an excellent way to make certain the library is meeting the needs of the community. The Librarians 2.0 Manifesto was relevant to me and I could relate to many of the ideas. It listed some items that affect me personally and I have areas I need to work on such as proposing new services even though some of my colleagues may be resistant. Web 2.0 is new to me, but it has been around for a while now. I do believe it is going to change the way we use the Internet. Many people use the Internet to connect with others and Web 2.0 is the way to go.

Library 2.0 means I need to be up to date with up to date with technology in order to serve my patrons. It will help me reach more individuals and improve my program by listening to their feedback. I think Library 2.0 has many possibilities for the future of libraries. To start, it will allow users to interact with librarians without having to be face-to-face. I would love to see authors using it to interact with the public especially if it were a public school library participating in literature circles.

Thing 13

2007-12-28T19:54:00.000-06:00

I think I am really going to enjoy using del.icio.us. Many times I have wanted to share websites with faculty members, but had to go back to my workstation to find the url and then post it to an email. This is going to be a great way to share helpful websites with my faculty. Once I create my account, I will send the link to everyone so they can explore del.icio.us and my bookmarks. Personally, I have needed something like this in the past. When I am having to use a computer other than my personal one, it is sometimes difficult to remember url's or find the page I am looking for. I see this web tool as being very useful for educators everywhere. TLA is coming up soon and I hope many of the presenters are aware of social bookmarking. Many times we get a handout with several links and it would be much easier to give one link to find the rest of the websites.

Thing 12

2007-12-11T13:31:00.000-06:00

I have joined Ning and myspace.com. Ning is similar to myspace, but I feel more comfortable using myspace. When I joined myspace I had my own personal tutor, my daughter. She is a pro at myspace (I don't necessarily like that) and helped me create my page layout, music, and inviting friends. It went smoothly and we had a good time working together. I do like that myspace allows users to chose their privacy level. I believe it is important for educators to be familiar with networking sites that are popular among their students. We need to be able to speak their techno language. It is much easier to teach and communicate with students when we are familiar with their interests. Some educators are creating myspace pages for their students. This can be used to post lessons, create discussion logs, and keep in touch. I can see some benefits from a library having their own page. Book discussions can be viewed by the public, list of books can be posted, popular links can be added, and author's that have sites can also be found much easier. The uses are endless and I believe Ning, myspace, and facebook will reach more people than library websites. Click here to see my page. Check it out!

Thing 11

2007-12-03T22:05:00.000-06:00

I love Library Thing. I cannot wait to go back and continue adding books to my list and seeing other people's libraries that are similar to mine. Check out my book list! I can see so many educational uses for Library Thing. This would be a great site to use for GT classes. Many teachers have summer reading lists for future students. They could post the books on their Library Thing page and students would be able to see the exact book needed and read the reviews before reading the book. Another use would be for a teacher to create a list of books the students will read throughout the year. The teacher could plan with the librarian to create a list of books that are available in the school library. The teacher could then require the students to read the books during the school year as they are available.

Thing 10

2007-11-28T22:42:00.001-06:00

I have been looking through the many image generators and I cannot believe how many are out there. It would be fun to print them out and hang around the school. I'm not sure how the post it image works yet, but I think it would be a great tool for teachers to use when evaluating students English papers. Students could post their papers for review by the teacher and the teacher could make comments without actually writing on the paper. I think image generators have a multitude of uses. This is new to me so it will take some time to become more familar with using them.

Public Page & RSS thoughts

2007-11-18T20:53:00.000-06:00

I was reviewing Thing 8 and decided to try and create a public page. I don't know why I was worried about it being difficult. It was super easy. Here is the link to my public page.

I have been telling my husband about RSS feeds and what they do. He is now interested and will be learning this week how to create his own feeds. I love checking one page for all my news. I am looking around for new feeds to add to my reader, but I need to be careful. I find that it is easy to put too many items into my reader and then not have time to read it all. I have used Bloggers site to search for new feeds and it brought up thousands of sites to choose from. I need to narrow my search area.

Thing 9

2007-11-04T15:41:00.000-06:00

I used the discovery tools and looked through all the sites provided to see how they might help me locate RSS feeds that would be of interest to me. I did locate one using Bloglines search tool. It is a children's book review site. Most of my feeds came from sites I visit frequently so I didn't really need to search for them. Another search tool I liked was Syndic8.com. I tried Feedster a few times and each time the site was down. I liked how the page looks set up and will try again later. It looks more user friendly than the other sites I reviewed.

Thing 8

2007-11-01T13:36:00.000-06:00

For a while now I have wondered about the RSS button. I finally know what it is and I am using it. It was very easy to set it up and add url's to my page. I have always enjoyed reading the news and now it is even better. I am able to link to what I want to read without getting a lot of information that I don't want. RSS usually allows the user to be very specific in what information it delivers. Plus, I can delete it whenever I choose to.

As a teacher, it would be especially helpful in social studies. Many countries are frequently changing names or leaders and RSS feeds can keep students and teachers posted about countries they are researching without a lot of other news. Personally, I am using it to stay on top of new cars (I'm shopping around), new technologies, and news events. As a librarian, I want to be able to see when new books are released. I have a feed for Book Sense and now I am trying to add an RSS feed from the NYTimes bestseller list. I am having a little trouble finding the url for this particular site.

Here is a link to my Bloglines account.
I can't remember when I created this account, but I need to work on it soon. This is the link to my public page with Google Reader. http://www.google.com/reader/shared/01366153850376477684?hl=en

Thing 7

2007-10-28T17:00:00.000-06:00

I have been exploring the Google's web tools for two days now. There are so many options with each tool that it is going to take a while to really understand how to use them. I tried to understand how to add a link to my blog so that others could view my iGoogle, but I didn't figure it out yet. Google calendar was really easy to get started. It is similar to other computer calendars and is very user friendly. I added iGoogle to my tabs on my Yahoo account. I like being able to customize my own homepage. Now, I can control what information comes up. I selected several areas that were of interest to me.

I think the calendar would be especially useful for teachers to keep track of events, testing, meetings, and more. Teachers always have so many dates to remember that it would be great to list them in one place and be able to merge it with their own calendar. Plus, they can access the calendar wherever they can get interet access.

Google alerts would be an excellent tool for studnets to use in Social Studies. Sixth grade is World History and much of the information is constantly changing. They could set up alerts for countries they study throughout the school year.

The Google Notebook would be an excellent tool for research projects. Students can locate information and add it to their notebook. They can organize the information as needed. All the data is kept in one location and will make their final project much easier when it comes time to put it all together. My daughter will be using this for her project on Montana.

Thing 6

2007-10-27T20:47:00.001-05:00

Playing in the rain
Originally uploaded by kyra801

I am having a hard time stopping. I love all the different things you can do with Flickr Toys. I am already thinking of other fun things I can make with this new found "toy".

At my campus, we could use this to create posters of our Character of the Week and place it on the bulletin board. We also have a writing club that is working on printing a school paper. They could use this site to create interesting photos to put in the paper. Another great use would be during research. As a final project, students could search flickr for photos for images of their subject and then create any number of products.

I had trouble with mappr. The site would never work. However, the other sites worked great and I had fun exploring the many uses and ideas they provided.

Thing 5b

2007-10-26T12:25:00.001-05:00

The new look.
Originally uploaded by kyra801

Our school is finally complete. This is the front entrance of our newly remodeled campus.

Thing 5

2007-10-25T19:26:00.001-05:00

Dad, Kyra, Amanda, Rachel, & Bud
Originally uploaded by kyra801

Amanda's wedding day. June 2007

I created a flickr account this summer but I haven't added any pictures since then. I was not aware of the tutorials they offered. I went through them and learned some great things. I now know I can send pictures via email from my cell phone to my flickr account. One of the really cool features they now have is Maps. I love maps and I think it is neat to see where the photos were taken from around the world. It was fairly easy for me to understand how to add flickr to my blog. The problem I have is what picture to add. There are so many people using flickr and it is amazing the quality of photos that can be found on this site. I'm not sure how I can use this in my library program, but I will be thinking about some uses.

Thing 4

2007-10-25T10:42:00.000-05:00

Blogging can be very useful in an educational environment. It is a great place for teachers to post ideas and lessons that were successful for them. Many times teachers re-invent the wheel when the information was already out there. Posting technology tips would also be helpful. Many people are afraid to try new things that relate to technology. If it were in a blog, they could follow the directions on their time at their convenience.

This is also a great place to post books during the summertime. Students could look at the librarians blog and see recommended titles. The students could also do book chats or recommend books they have read.

The more I think about blogging, the more uses I think of. The possibilities are endless. I think it would be great for keeping people in touch and updating them on events such as family or school. Instead of emailing everyone, you could post a blog and they can read it when they have time and not fill up their email boxes.

Thing 3

2007-10-24T21:26:00.000-05:00

I just created my Avatar and it was so much fun! I didn't even know that existed on Yahoo! I was surprised that it was so easy. I had trouble uploading the Avatar, but I think it uploaded even though it told me there were errors to be corrected. I just did it over and when I finally decided to look at the preview I discovered it was on the page three times. Fortunately, it was easy to delete the extras. So far it has been fairly simple to navigate around the pages. I hope the rest of the lessons go this smoothly. I can't wait to show my kids how to create an Avatar. I'm sure they will be changing theirs frequently.

Thing 2

2007-10-24T20:31:00.000-05:00

Of the 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners the most difficult for me is probably the last one, Play. Don't get me wrong I love to play. However, it seems as if so many things always get in the way and need to be taken care of before I can play. At work, I am given so many extra duties that it is difficult to get everything done in a timely manner. At home, my kids schoolwork and activities take up any extra time I may have.

Another area of difficulty for me would be #3, view problems as challenges. This is not always a problem, but when I have to work for a long time to figure out how something needs to be done I can get frustrated. If it is really difficult and I don't have any help or instructions I tend to "shut down" and not accomplish anything. However, if I sit back and think it through I realize I need to break it down into smaller pieces.

The easiest habit would be #7, mentoring or teaching others. I love teaching! There is nothing that brings me greater joy than to share my knowledge with others and help them achieve their goals. This includes classroom teaching, professional development, and one-on-one with my peers. I have already helped several teachers understand some of the new technology on our campus. I hope that completing the 23 Things will allow me to teach others what I have learned. So far, the lessons have not been too difficult and I believe I will be successful in completing all 23 Things by February 1, 2008.

Thing 1

2007-10-24T10:00:00.030-05:00

I am very excited to be getting up-to-date with the latest technology. I know I am far behind the techno world, but on my campus I am one of the few knowledgeable people when it comes to technology. I am hoping that what I learn in the next few months will be something my campus will want to learn. Blogging is a fairly new experience for me and I hope to finally understand it better. So far, I have read through the first 3 or 4 lessons and I think I am up to the challenge of learning so much in a short amount of time.

Although, I have heard of RSS news feeds, tagging, wikis, podcasting, online applications, and video and image hosting sites, I am not sure how to use them. I am especially looking forward to learning about RSS news feeds. I have heard just enough to peak my interest and I see it on my toolbar and would love to know how to use it. I am looking forward to learning about these things and being able to share my knowledge with others.