Thing #7

It has taken quite a lot of time to go through all of the Google tools and try everything out. I actually don't often google (yes, I specifically mean "search the internet using the Google search engine"!) I have really fallen in love with duckduckgo.com, which I read about on an SLJ blog. I did set up a Google Calendar to share with my family members. I may be able to train them to look at the calendar for appointments and family events! I would like to encourage our students to use the Google docs feature when they are working on group projects. Working in a K-8 school, some Google tools are blocked and I don't know whether they will be able to use Google docs at school or strictly to be able to share projects on their home emails. The Web 2.0 tools are fabulous and K-8 teachers and librarians usually have to downscale any ideas we have about using them with our students.

Thing #6

Mash-ups are a ton of fun. I would love to use some of the Big Huge Labs applications as reading promotions. Students could make trading cards for each title they read from one of the state reading programs, design movie posters to advertise books they recommend, make badges to show that they are members of a lunch bunch or a book reviewer on the library's website. We are blocked from Flickr at our school but we can definitely upload our own photos to use.

Thing #5

What amazes me most is how many incredibly talented photographers are out there, uploading and sharing their work. People are so creative! The photos available for view on Flickr are both daunting and inspiring. I so appreciate having a source for photos to use for the "small potatoes" marketing that I do in our little school library. My biggest question about all of these cool Web 2.0 tools is: "What was everyone doing 20 years ago, when there were no Web 2.0 tools to fool around with for hours?"

Thing #4

I've just sent in my blog registration email so I am looking forward to being officially part of the Library2Play students and alumnae. Yeehaw!

Thing #3

Setting up a blog has been absolutely terrifying! After some reading about blogs and twitter and some soul searching, I realize that there may just be two kinds of people in the world: Those who think that anything they think, say, write or create is worth "dos pepinos" and those that aren't that disposed towards exposing themselves so publicly and with such chutzpah.

The other thing that is unnerving about all of these Web 2.0 tools is that for the digital immigrants these tools are not intuitive. I keep thinking, can't I have a manual to check back and forth to see if I'm doing this correctly? Web 2.0 technologies seem so very impulsive and it seems that one has to try and try and do this and change that and figure out why that didn't work and how to get around the failure of such and such to appear. It's all disturbingly random and without a horizon line.

Nevertheless, such as it is, I've DONE IT! I've created a blog and pasted in my avatar (which, by the way, in order for it to appear, I saved it from Yahoo as a jpeg file, then pasted it into Blogger.)

Thing #2

I take it for granted that learning is continuous in all areas of life so I'm quite comfortable with Habit #2 and I accept responsibility for my own learning. This may be easy for me as I never think that I know enough about anything but, in any case, I do push myself to move ahead and learn new things. However, though I don't feel "old", I think that middle age has, indeed, slowed the speed at which I learn and accomplish new things.

Habit #3, viewing problems as challenges, is sometimes a challenge! Though I usually think of problems as always having a solution, especially after some brainstorming and creative discussion, those are usually problems OUTSIDE MYSELF! The colleagues I most admire seem to regard problems, even personal ones, as GAMES to be played and won. I can do that with objective problems but personal ones are often accompanied by emotional baggage that depresses any energy I have. "AAAAAaaaaack!", as cartoon Cathy would exclaim.

Lastly, as far as making and signing contracts with myself . . . oh, please! I even get crabby when I have to fill out paperwork at the doctor's office! Contracts with myself are like diets for me . . . they just spell FAILURE!