I'm Back

Yes. I got back on. It has been a wonderful month. I like this job so much that I sometimes think it is going to come crashing down around. I love the variety, I love the lessons, I love the school, I love the kids, I just love it all! One thing about moving into a new school where you know no one-who can you trust? I just will have to bide my time and figure that one out. I am somewhat of a loner, so it does not bother me that I have no one to talk to. I haven't made it to the teacher's lounge yet for lunch. I suppose I should, because that is where I can make connections. I have been trying to get useful information out to the teachers that they may be able to use in the classroom.

One thing about a new job is "That's not how we did it before" syndrome. As you know Common school funds should only be used for items for the library. This year 1/4 of my budget was taken for computers-now allowable. They are in the library. However, I haven't quite received an answer if that will happen every year or -maybe- I actually have a say on that! Some teachers were allowed to remove materials from the library and have them housed in their rooms. A NO_NO. But tradition is hard to break. Before I hand anything to a teacher I say "This was bought with common school funds, that means it must be housed in the library" Most teachers are agreeable-some are vocally (behind my back) aghast. Will if they don't want to house it in the library-they won't be getting anything ordered by me! Hard-nose that I am. Also there are magazines that have been ordered for certain teachers and then the magazine disappears-That will stop.

My biggest priority that I see is a HS population that does not read, I haven't seen a book checked out yet. Library is a social hour-Which I have cracked down on, so it is actually quite sometimes. I want to start a book club and I think I got some kids hooked at freshman orientation. I also am having the HS library open two nights a week for homework help-Hope that brings some students in.

I am so happy to be back on line-I will keep in touch.

School starts

WOW! August went fast. Have already had four days of school-without students. I am trying not to panic. I don't know what the standard is, so I don't know where I stand in terms of what I should have done but after working 4 days on Library stuff I feel like I have done nothing. Teachers are already trying to pull me in all directions. "Last year we had lessons on Fridays, we aren't going to have the same this year?" No one told me that until I had my schedule all made up. One teacher's comment that "I don't know what you do in the library, you just read to them, right?" I have three schools to juggle and three aides to meet. I am starting to freak. Luckily the administration has allowed me 5 days before I start lessons, so at least the aides and I can be on the same page. I am all ready getting "That's not the way we did it last year" Well that's last year! I have a particular teacher that seems to smirk to get their way. Sorry isn't going to happen. "Are the materials in that I ordered?I need them the first day." Not, going to happen I have the MARC records in the system, but I don't know about the rest of the processing. "I need to send my students to the Library the first day of school." Not going to happen. Libraries open the second day. My desk is already buried in catalogs and material. My predecessor kept everything on the computer. I have to have it in front of me on paper. One thing I do have down is the budgeting, I understand all of that, with the purchase orders and the packing slips. And I LOVE opening the boxes and seeing all these wonderful books. i hope to keep blogging now, I think I will probably use it to vent my frustrations and hopefully enlighten and amuse someone out there. Oh yesterday we had an inservice on Web 2.0, the teacher ask who was using del.icio.us and I was the only one that was. I now have a inservice topic. By the way, she mentioned all the web sites we used in class, but didn't really show them to us, SO people were confused and somewhat uninterested, because they really didn't understand.

What have I gotten my self into?

Good morning, Yesterday I went my new school district and visited with the former librarian. She is an awesome person and more than willing to pass on any information that she had ( and all her written lesson plans). When she started she was left with a less than desirable position. The district went from two librarians to her one. One of the librarian left nothing for her to work with, no notes no nothing. The other librarian left some notes. During this past year the new librarian did an unbelievable amount of work in organizing and cleaning up the libraries. And she spent eight hours with me , on her own time, helping orientate me to the libraries. This is were it gets sticky. How do I follow that? I am not even certified yet, she had four years experience in the library. She has a business degree, too. So she knows how to set up accounts and work spreadsheets. I don't.
I guess I just work towards my strengths, and that is analyzing the collections.

Mistaken idenity

Wanted to get the repeating podcast off the site and print the text, so went to look up the text and found that I was attributing the piece to the wrong person, as were many other people. In fact, so a web site says, Mandella never even quoted this text and it was written by Marianne Williamson. A lesson learned "Don't believe everything you read on the Web, even if it sounds authoritative. " It will be a very good example to use when teaching a lesson. Speaking of lessons. Anyone out there have some good lesson plans for elementary students?

Hi all,
I got a job! Not the one I thought I would get, but probably the one I need to keep me humble. It is in a small midwestern town. The logistics are not good, too far from home to drive home. So I have to board somewhere. That should be an experience in itself. I am the district librarian. Three schools. I have visited once, and will make a effort to get the lay of the land a few times before school starts.
I also want to talk about collaboration. As a final project in this digital media class we had to write a paper via google.docs. I found the process totally frustrating. My co-writers were very good writers and very precise. I however, am not and I always felt like I could not contribute in a positive manner. Now I know how kids feel on a collaborative project.
I am going to be blogging about my experiences as a new librarian, hope you enjoy!?!

Job interviews

Good Morning,

Last Thursday I had a job interview. It was definitely I job I would want. I find out on Monday. Then on Friday I got a call from another district for an interview. That job had been filled , but the candidate must have pulled out so they are re interviewing. I find out on Monday about the first job, and even if I get it I am going to go to the interview on Tuesday because I think interviewing as much as possible is a good thing. I find out more of what schools are looking for and attitudes at different school districts. The Thursday interview was just one person, the interview I has three weeks ago was seven people. The one on Tuesday is multiple people too. Every situation allows us to learn something.

Buzzword

Maybe I should just keep reading before I post! As I read it, Buzzword is not quite as collaborative as google.docs. Multiple people can make comments, but those comments have to be dragged into the document. Our group used google.docs for one of our study teams meetings, one person couldn't physically come. So we worked via cell and google docs. It was amazing how we were typing at the same time and came up with about the same ideas. And it was all incorporated into one document. Then we edited together. Maybe buzzword feels that many people typing in at one and editing at once is messy and there has to be a "controller". However, we thought google.docs worked very slick.

Buzzword

Just a note for those of you somewhat frustraed by Google docs. There is a new application called Buzzword by Adobe. It says it has a lot more flexiblity and there are a lot more features. It sounds like it is collaborative like google.docs, also. A new site to go to for the next web 2.0 class.

http://bussword.acrobat.com

I don't know if it is more useful than google docs but it sure is prettier! The tool bar is very colorful.

Web 2.0

Last night, as I was leaving class Louis ask me if I was having fun. WELL, FUN as in Frazzled
Uncertain and Naive, or Frequently, Uneasy and Numb. Fun is not the right word. It has not been fun, it has been challenging. I thought I had this whole library thing wrapped up. The last three classes were a piece of cake (well, maybe not the cataloging) and then came this class. Those of you with kids will understand this analogy. You know how children act when they don't want to do something and you make them do it. Well, that was my attitude about this class. I have to do it, but I don't have to like it and I am going to make it as miserable as possible for those around me. But guess what (are you listening Brett Farve) sometimes one has to do stuff we don't want to do and WE LEARN FROM IT. I apologise for being whinny. I am, admittedly, a "half full glass" type of person.

There is lots of exciting and relevant stuff happening on the web. And we best be leading, or we will be sputtering in the dust. Does this revelation make this class easier for me? No. However, I have come to terms, I hope, with my inner cynic. I even heard the words come out of my mouth last night that it probably would be a good thing to retake this class every couple of years as to try to keep up. Most teachers do not even know this "stuff" exists, ah, blissful ignorance-like before this class started-so we will be the leaders into the wild web yonder.

Fun? Well maybe. In the end I view the class this way, essential, interesting, thought provoking, and challenging.

Podcast musings

Last week I set up my Gcast account, that went very easy. Over the weekend I had family obligations (PARTY!) so didn't get to the recording until today. I called in, read my thing and reviewed it, pretty good but I could stumble over a few less words, second time, third time, fourth time, that's it I go with this one. Hope you enjoy. The whole process was definitely too simple!
I don't know about you, but I am getting over whelmed by all the "stuff" out there for free. Before I was in blissful ignorance, and now I feel, well, too informed. By that I mean, which do I use? how do I use it? should I use it? when do I use it? I could see us spending a whole class on just one site and not really seeing the sites full potential. All this information coming at us, it's kind of becoming a blurr. Which one does what and how?!

Blogging in schools

Good Rainy Morning,
When I was checking out a school library web site (one I had applied at) the librarian had a great resource for information about blogging to present to a staff. I think it could be used as an inservice or a do on you own. It introduces blogs and wikis, gives the staff time to explore and brainstorm and there are also examples of real blogs. I tagged this to my del.icio.us page. Now that I have read the material and looked at a few other sites I understand-at least- how I can use and tag information to retrieve it later.

http://www.manawa.k12.wi.us/Library%20Reference/Pathfinder%20Files/Blogging%20Staff%20Development.pdf

Actually you should check out her main page, this person must be very up to date in terms of on-line sources, she has 20 online resources, 11 homework help resources and project pages for teachers that have in class projects.

http://www.manawa.k12.wi.us/Library%20Reference/index.html

School library Journal

School Library Journal has some feeds for
Book reviews
collection development
technology
curriculum developments
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/

I checked out the technology part and there was a link to "safe social networking" I thought it would give sites for safe networking, but what it has is four sites that talk about social networking and how you can make them safe for schools. Actually I am going to put that on my wiki (a fake library), as if I introduced social networking to a group of teachers I think they would have a lot of questions that I may not have all the answers to, so I could sent then to this site.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6574015.html?industryid=47078

In one of the sites there is a suggestion for parents to go to Onguardonline.gov to find out what your children need to know about internet use.

Plurk

Just finished reading Roy Tennant's comment. I am as gitty as a school girl. I went to his blog roytennant.com and he has a feed to his name so when anyone "tags" it I guess it comes up and that's how he found me. Anyway I was checking out some of the sites he follows and I found www.walkingpaper.com and on there the person was talking about a new site called Plurk, it is like twitter I guess, but what I found interesting about it is that you gain "karma" , you do or say dumb things you lose karma. You do and say good things you gain "karma". I find it interesting the way words for programs and sites are being used to mean something in a slightly different way. Twitter, karma, Flickr, wetpaint, ect. Are you understanding what I mean? Take for example karma. We all understand the definition, so therefore when the plurk site uses it for rating peoples' postings, it is understood. Or pbwiki, we all know making a peanut butter sandwich is easy, so the name implies easy. The words carry feelings which the creator wants us to implicitly feel and understand. Making sense?

Roy Tennant

Just found a blog I want to follow, written by Roy Tennant. You may recall from our last class that Mr. Tennant was a advocate of the move away from MARC records (aren't we all after that class?), anyway, he blogs about technology and libraries. He stated that he just was at the ALA convention and Google was not there as a vendor. He thought that quite odd as Google is with in a short plane ride of the convention site. He muses that "something" is up with Google and he hopes its not all bad for education.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/blogger/2748.html

His personal blog
http://techessence.info/blog/1

PBwiki Power Educators Wiki

Hello,

Online looking for some good feeds and I ran across this one
PBwiki Power Educators wiki

It is a wiki for educators including examples of how teachers are using wikis in their classroom. And it is a wiki so you can edit.

As others have said, with all this new information bouncing around in my head, I hope this is a new site and not one that Louie has all ready told us about

http://educators.pbwiki.com/

How do you.....

How do you get a a general picture onto the wiki page. I don't want to download a picture of my own, just a image of books from a google search?

Outstanding in my field

Good Morning,
Hope everyone had a beautiful 4th. I just posted a picture to my wiki, but I need to rotate it, is it too late to do that when it is already on the page? I tried working in paint, but couldn't figure that out either.

Good Day,

Happy 4th A little early.
Beautiful weather for a holiday. Our garage project has come along in the last two days, got all the rafters up and then the OSB and the tar paper. And today I bought the shingles, which we will do this weekend-I hope.
Have a good 4th and those of you with smaller children, enjoy watching your children watching the fireworks-I really miss those kinds of times.

Now pictures are public (I hope)

I think I have the pictures opened up to the public now

Horicon Marsh

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeonthemarsh/?saved=1

Hello, just created a new page for my fictional library with sources for rubrics. I have used rubistar and found it very user friendly. Thinking back on the last year of teaching in CD, rubics would have been very useful. I did do 2 rubrics at the very end of the year and it made grading so much easier. Also I think I was much clearer in my own mind on what I expected from the students. What was interesting, I had one student that did very well in class, but when I had a rubic for a poster project, she missed one of the major points of the poster completely. It was a wakeup call for me and my students about what the expectations where. I think I learned much more than the students last year.

http://goodbooksforreading.pbwiki.com/Rubrics

Flickr

Have been fooling around with Flickr a little. I am still in the mode of "I can't do this, I might break something ( or ruin something)" I am hard wired, those darn synapes again, to not mess with "stuff" until I know what I am doing, so just messing with stuff is not easy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeonthemarsh/sets/72157605937945734)

Hope you enjoy the pictures

Wow, what a day, running around doing all kinds of errands. Finally got to the computer and was looking up RSS and classroom and voila, I finally hit on the combination to find useful blogs, website, information, ect. "Classroom and _(whatever)___" Found some great info on RSS. It's funny now that I am at least a little familier with the terminology and the process, I am recommending it to people. A farmer who looks up all sorts of sites for crops and marketing, he could use a RSS, my cousin who just got back from Alaska who wants to show everyone his pictures, Flickr. There's a whole new world out there.

Good Morning,

This the first day of my real summer. My summer school class is over. I taught beading, the girls did beautiful work, some is posted in my wiki.
Also, I have finally recieved my book and am starting to read and catch up with the threads and some of the "stuff" is making a lot more sense since I have read the book.
In a couple of wweks we are hosting a party for my husband's graduation from WCTC. We have never been ones for worrying about what our house and property look like, in other words a mess-so we have some major cleaning to do here.
I have committed myself to at least two hours a day on the computer, just to catch up and start forward thinking.
What a beautiful day.

Today I was setting up my RSS. I had a little problem getting it to confirm that I exist, but once I had that I was good to go. I put in a few links that I had found. I still haven't found what I am looking for in terms of a library type blog, but will keep looking. Then I checked a few interest areas and ended up with some blogs on investing. I have wanted to understand more about investing, so now I can have many places to look about investing on my RSS. Which I will have to hold off on until I finish this class. I am a very linear thinker, so this class has been, so far, very hard for me. I can not jump from place to place, and stay focused on the task. I was reading someplace that because our synapses are formed early in life, we older persons have a hard time adjusting to the "new" way of thinking. We can get it, it just takes longer and goes on a different path in our brain. Anyone find a cool site about librarians? I can see where this feed will be very useful. I am already thinking about post class use for a RSS in my personal life. As for school, well that will be in my paper!

I just received my book so am trying to catch up on the homework, and had posted some replies to threads.

Teaching with Technology

Finally I found a site that looks useful to all of us.
100+ Resources for Teaching Without Textbooks
http://www.teachingtips.com/blog/

This afternoon I was trying to find some blogs that interst me in terms of library information, but I must be searching wrong, because I wasn't very successful. Then I went looking for list servs for librarians and there is a nice website listing some of the most popular listservs

http://www.rpls.ws/Links/listserv.htm

Back to looking for blogs

Recipe up but not running

This afternoon our study group had a very productive meeting. Having two English majors in my group really puts the screws on me as I spell atrociously (had to use spell check on that one).
Anyway, I posted my recipe in Recipe wiki, but I could not get it formatted correctly. In the process I had to type it in three times. The last time I typed it in Word first and copy and pasted. Wasn't smart enough to do that after the first false start!
http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Creamy_Peanut_Butter_Pie

Wikipedia lowering test scores?

Found an article about test scores and Scotland, and how they are blaming the overuse of Wikipedia.

http://news.scotsman.com/education/Falling-exam--passes-blamed.4209408.jp

In someone's blog they invited us to share our favorite poem. I ran aross the is one when I did my clinical in 7/8 Language Arts. The students had to do a poetry book and includes a variety of types of poems. This one just spoke to me:

Langston Hughes' Mother to Son

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor
--Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

This (see light bulb above my head) would be a great way to bring a wiki or blog or web page into the L.A. classroom, have the students do this on the computer, with links to poetry pages,etc. I haven't thought how this all would work, but at least my mind is slowly starting to think in a new direction!

Another beautiful morning

Good Morning,

Entertainment weekly's new issue has a rating of the "classics" of the last twenty five years. Pulp Fiction is ranked number one. I am a big movie watcher, but some genres are completely off my radar screen, such as fantasy and horror flicks. Anyway, what are your thoughts?

Good Morning,

What a string of beautiful days.

This morning I went looking for sites that might be useful for asepecical ed. classroom teacher. I found one that might be of interest. Which I will incorporate in my wiki, but the best site I found was super factory. http://www.superfactory.com/content/tours.htm tours of factories , which I love to watch, like on Mr. Rogers. The best though is a tour by Red Green to a duct tape factory!

Now I am heapping out to the beautiful outdoors. See ya.

The garage is an on going saga. Yesterday we had a carpenter look at the building, basically he wanted us to do much more than we wanted to do and many more dollars, of course. So, my husband and I thought about it over night and we aren't going the cheap route, but we aren't going the expensive route either. The carpenter ask us how long we want it to last and I said it was our son's problem not ours, because we won't be using it for many more years. We figure that in all reality if someone wants a really nice garage, they will add it on to the house, which can easily be done, but we don't have the money for that.

In a couple of weeks we were going to have a neighborhood party for my husband's graduation from WCTC, just as we were about to hand out invites our new neighbors with a new house stopped in and handed out invites to their neighborhood party, ON THE SAME DAY AS OURS. So, for a neighborhood that has a party about once every five years, we are going to have two on the same day, actually we are moving ours to a later date, so the neighborhood can party all summer as there is another one in the end of Aug.

Anyone out there a big summerfest fan? What do you think of it now that you are a little bit more mature. Honestly, I have that small town mentality that I am not quite sure of the big town safety. Would like to go hear Rush, though.

Good Morning,

This summer, as last summer, I am teaching a beading class (making jewelry with beads) for students in 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. Like any classroom there is a variety of skill levels. But on the whole the girls make beautiful projects. They put together the most unusual colors and get wonderful results. On the home front my husband and I are doing a roofing project, on Tuesday night after I talked to Louie we ripped all the shingles off, it was a good release of tension, as it is obvious that I am not understanding this stuff. The garage was built by my husband father and grandfather, they even cut the wood to build it. We are going to put a whole new front on it too, so we can actually put vehicles inside.

My husband Gary and I have farmed on the beautiful Horicon Marsh for 30 years. We were dairy farmers, but 2 years ago got rid of the cows and now crop 320 acres. We grow hay, corn, soybeans, and wheat. The crop prices are very high this year, as you can tell by food prices. But don't blame that all on the farmers as there is about 10 cents worth of wheat in Wheaties. What I am saying is, is that the shipping and processing is what mostly is driving up prices.

This past year teaching HS CD was challenging, to say the least. I am not trained in special ed and there was no written curriculum. The classroom functioned on about a 3rd or fourth grade level. I have great appreciation for the people that teach special ed. There are a lot of jobs out there for special ed. waiting to be filled, because it is a burn out type of job.

Up and running

Thanks to Louie I am up and running-stumbling actually-into this course. The class I was going to take was canceled and the school did not tell me. So Louie was nice enogh to let me into this class and just spent 2 hours working with me to try to catch me up to you guys. This class may be a challenge to my non technical brain, but Louie sounds like he has infinite patience, which I will need.