Monday, April 7, 2008

Reflections

Thinking back, I have to honestly ask myself what did I expect from doing this. I did not feel at all like I knew enough about Web2.0 to even carry on an intelligent conversation. So to be able to identify some of the "things" that are out there was a good beginning. I thoroughly enjoyed some of the playing (avatars and rss feeds) others I found to be a struggle to get through (the sandbox). I learned that the Zoho writer could be helpful to me in my current position...I also think that with a little more refining I will do better with RSS feeds. The thought that kept coming to my mind over and over through this excercise was how much information is readily available. I could spend hours researching and following up on ideas.

My thanks go to the Eastern Shore Library system for allowing us to join in. Also to our tech person at SCPS who challenged us to do what we expect from students daily - LEARN!

audio books

I perused the top 100 list of books and found some interesting titles. I did not want to download them to my computer - I would never listen to them there and I am old fashioned in that I just don't get as much out of listening to a book as actually curling up and reading it. Some of the more interesting titles included:
Grimms Fairy Tales; The Raven; Alices Adventures in Wonderland; Amusements in
Mathematics; the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn...many that I read in my growing up years!

Podcasts

I found a really neat pod cast talking about the power of focus. In fact it said that the ability to focus (concentrate) is the determinant of success or failure. Concentrating on one subject at a time has been the secret to success (paraphrased from Charles Dickens' autobiography)....obviously Dickens hasn't worked in the education industry!

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

I have now found it all!

I was reviewing some of the award winners. I found Judysbook.com which had a multitude of money saving coupons for lots of different things - such as Sandals vacation, $25 off airline tickets, etc.

But the really big thing - and the reason I named this "i have found it all" was I found a website called cocktail builder which you list the contents that you have on hand and it will tell you what cocktails you can mix.

I have now seen it all - these activities continue to amaze me with the information avaialable.

Zoho!!! It has clicked!

Here is the link to zoho. this is something I really can see myself using!



http://writer.zoho.com/index.do?docId=what-I-can-do-with-zoho

Week 7 Wikis are a real possibility

This lesson has been frustrating. I couldn't get my blog to post to the sandbox (talk about not being allowed to play in the Sandbox)! I was excited to learn about Wiki's and can really see a way to use a wiki for a Central Office reading list. We are often given articles to read and they keep getting lost in the piles of paper that each of us have on our desks. A reading list on a wiki as demonstrated in the demo would be a good collaborative tool for A&S or Central Office or both.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Week 6 - coming down the stretch!

As I worked on the week 6 activities, I was struck with how the librarian of my childhood has really had to change and adapt to be today's librarian (although I doubt any of them are still working).....This tagging really went over my head Technorati....well I didn't do well with that either. But when I read the Library 2.0 and its stories about how the power for research is now in the hands of individuals, not the librarians, I was really struck with the changes that I have seen in my career. No longer do we have to search through pages and pages of print material - info is at your fingertips and you can tag and sort it at you leisure. And today's librarians have to be teachers - how to access all of this. No longer are you searching card catalogues hoping to find that "golden article" that told you what you wanted to know. And I wondered....have educators dedicated themselves to the same principles or are we clinging to teaching the same way we did 10 or 2o years ago?