As far as I can get down this road!

Even with the interruptions (TAKS) and minor chaos that is our everyday life, I have to say that I have found this exercise to be very illuminating. Much has been revealed and I now feel a little closer to becoming a digital native, though I think I will be navigating these waters for many a year before I can have that embroidered on a shirt.

Thanks Keira for pushing us off the digital cliff! I for one have enjoyed the ride/fall!

Oh sorrowful me!

Drat, I am not going to get to finish this final task for our project, 23 Things as it requires the use of YouTube and Podcasts. These are bandwidth hogs and I am sure the district would rather I peruse these at home but I am one of the last people still on dial-up! Therefore, it would take an hour to download something that lasts about 2 minutes!

I hope to be working Summer School this year and may have a chance to finish then when my usage will be less taxing! :-)

Troubles with Technorati

It seems like a cool site but with blog access still being somewhat blocked at our district, it is difficult to use it to it full potential. Having said that, the concept of having a search engine for blogs, etc is a useful idea.

Of course a librarian would like a keyword driven search engine....!

I have found Pandora! (online radio, that is)

While digging thru the sites on our Web 2.0 assignment, I found Pandora, an online radio that plays only music that you like! The little that I played with it was blissful but at home, I am on dial-up still and fear that my new obsession will not work. After all, it takes minutes to download a song from I-Tunes and to preview anything is not worth the agony. So, I will enjoy Pandora when and where I can....and hope it doesn't take up much bandwidth! :-(

WOOOO HOOOOO!! My first Wiki!

okay, excited about all these cool techie things but not as up to speed as everyone even though many would decry me. Today my fearless leader, Kiera Elledge challenged me to make a wiki page for our districts summer reading and IT WAS EASY!!! Maybe I shouldn't have said that, cause now I will be expected to do it again....... :-P

Zoho, Googledocs and the "Ah Ha Moment!"

Oookayyy, I finally get it. And I think I will love it. As soon as I REALLY get it. Since our district will be doing alot with Googledocs starting this summer, I will catch the first inservice so that I can "surf this new wave" with gusto.

Zoho Writer and Sharepoint!!!

Our district is in the process of upgrading to Sharepoint, a REALLY useful way to access our curriculum and other works in progress from any computer. In this way, Sharepoint is like having everything (blogging, email, Office, etc) all with one login and available to anyone you give the access to from any computer with internet! Best of all worlds....hopefully....when our tech people feel comfortable enough with the service to then teach us Newbies how to use it.

It is wonderful to see that all of this productive software is available to everyone for free. I will tell my students next year about this so that when they are at home working on something, they can type it in Zoho and then finish it or print it at school without worrying about e-mailing it or bringing their flashdrive. This will go over well. :-)

Testing and timelines!

Obviously, I have not been the good little beaver that I was when the gauntlet was first thrown out during the Library Meeting! We (my staff, students and I ) are furiously trying to get all the research projects in before the end of the year with constant Mock/Map and TAKS tests thrown into the mix. I am most sad that I will not finish in time to be in the hat for the Kindle but I am determined to finish as I have learned tons. I will probably explore more during the summer when I can really spend some time enjoying what I find.

Wiki or not to Wiki, only time will tell!

I love the video explaining a wiki in a format the any goober can understand! I think that a wiki for students to share their book choices and discuss books would be very cool. Will not have time this year to implement it but would like to give it a try next year. I will introduce it during my "new Technology at BJH" and password change lesson. That will give me time to really think about how I want to "control" it. Come on, you know how clever Junior High can be....

Hamsters and Delicious...

No, I did not cook a hamster! I have put one in my blog and don't seem to be able to get rid of it but it is cute.

Love Delicious! Will use alot and could see it as an awesome tool if there were no Nettrekker. We could set up sets of good websites to use as we did in the very beginning...but honestly, Nettrekker is the bomb!

Hamster

The fish are back!

Had 2 comments on them so I thought I would put them back cause they are fun! Run your mouse over the pond and they will follow. Click your mouse and you feed them. Very Zen.
Enjoy!

Play time has been a blast AND agony...

But honestly, haven't I used this as a "gripe"vehicle for my angst anyway so there should be no suprises in the last part of my title.

Happily, I have found all kinds of cool sites that I will use in my library, like Letter James and cartoon creator. I have also shared these with many friends.

Library Thing is something that I will never use but thought was an interesting idea. I agree with Leah that it would be useful to keep as a list of personal books so that you don't keep rebuying stuff for your own collection. I agree that it is much like Shelfari and think that the former would be more esthetically pleasing on a website or blog.
Rollyo is cool but again, I will never use past this assignment and here's the gripe, I can't figure out how to get the gadget for my personal Rollyo to stick on my blog page. I see that George and Julie have been successful and I am miffed about it! :-)

Ha, even more fun with RSS :-)

Thanks to Angela, I have figured out how to add my "feeds" to my blog page. I know that all my followers wanted to know the latest on how to keep their horses healthy! Actually, I found a group of really cool blogs on YA literature in a previous SLJ and added them along the side of my blog. Enjoy!

Wheeee, fun with RSS Feeds!

This is fun!!!!! I did not have to yank out the Girl Scout Cookies cause I was able to get onto Bloglines and add my "Feeds" rather easily. The instructions were clear and I am looking forward to checking these daily! I even found one that will update me on the latest "techie" toys and another on "Horse Health"! Yea!
I only hope that the rest of this assignment flows as easily!

Now to the actual blogging assignment: I love the expediency of RSS and think that I will enjoy being updated on subjects that work both professionally and personally.
I can see Library feeds keeping patrons up to date on new aquisitions, activities and meetings.
Finding feeds was easy at first as Bloglines gives you some choices that you can collect on your first screen but then I had a bit of a problem finding others once I left that screen. Sooooooo, I googled some of my favorite sites to see if they had any RSS's and collected those to add. Happily, the instructions on how to do this were simple enough that I managed it after only 2 tries! Much less drama than Flickr :-)

Forgiving Flickr

Ok, I will stop sounding like a bratty 5 year old when talking about Flickr. Seems that the reason that I am having "issues" with access is that our districts protective measures block all the pictures that are linked to "suspicious" external links. Now that I know that, I will explore the site this weekend on my agonizingly slow dial-up.

For the other confused people out there who do not know the definition of the terms: Blog Posts Permalink URL The definition is the address given to each individual post in a log accessed by clicking on the time that the post was uploaded! TaDa!

Fighting with Flickr

Yesterday and today, I have been trying to discover the delights of Flickr. Unfortuately, I am having fits with getting to actually see the pictures that are displayed there! Most come up with red X's and therefore are not available to me...argh!

I was slightly successful, I found a group that have taken some breathtaking shots of full moons! I just happen to be a bit of a "moonie" so it seemed like a good search to me. Eureka! Most of these shots came up!

And this one....well, a view like that and a porch swing would be bliss! Okay, I have not yet figured out how to upload the picture correctly!!!! Guess the size is wrong, so......

ANOTHER LEARNING SPEED BUMP! I will figure this out, right after I inhale a few more cookies....!@#$%

An addendum to my first blog...cause I didn't read the instructions fully either!

I love new technology but am really a slow learner at it....that may come as a surprise to some but I honestly struggle with all of this! However, as a good Librarian should, I soldier on until I either have a meltdown or I master the new project. I am sure with the aid of MANY Girl Scout cookies, I will master blogging with a minimum of squeals of anger/angst!

I have been a Library Media Goddess for 24 years, the last 12+ in HEBISD. I work with Jr. High students and have found my niche. They are as confounding as I am, just as silly and like the same kind of reading materials. Thank goodness I have an open minded staff, supportive Administrators and students who write me off as "crazy but not dangerous".

Floundering along the Digital Pathways...

In the beginning, we were bloggless...we actually "spoke" to people (now called "facetime") but we (Librarians) must drag ourselves into the 21st century and the technology required to "speak" to our digital natives that we serve.

So, I will blather here about my learning or lack of as I stumble thru the digital wilderness :-P