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.