Podcast #21

I had great fun with this assignment and can't wait to use Parkrose HS Media Center's idea of having the kids do podcast of books in the library. I think my middle school kids will love doing this as well as the high school. I learned a little bit about Voice Thread from a tutorial from the New Canaan High School librarian on Youtube, which somehow lead me to some information about ProQuest K12 that I had not had time to explore. I have a little trouble just listening to the podcast on the computer, but really do want to play with the idea of setting up a virtual tour of the library. I thought the voice quality was excellent on everything I listened to, but didn't subscribe to anything.

Youtube-Assignment 20

I know, I am not doing my assignments in order. I think I read somewhere that you didn't have to. My experience with Youtube has been very limited since our school has blocked the site because we have such a problem with band-width. My one experience with it (before it was blocked) was to see a child watching a very pretty love poem turn into a dancing penis. Oh well--it was very artsy. Today I watched a few videoes about libraries and found that there are tons of them. I plan to explore more with more time--ha-ha. I watched the video on the opening of Azle's new library. I got to see the library a couple of months ago and was blown away. The video was a little long, but nicely done. All of us would love to have a library like that. Wow!
I also discovered Crafty Creations from the Abliene Public Library. Not being very crafty myself, I am always looking for crafts for the kids. They do a monthly video of crafts matched up with books. Real cute and easy to follow. I have subscribed to their "feed", I think. I also watched a few of the clips about using Texshare. All were very pretty, but kinda dull.
My favorite was the UNT Library Portal to Texas History. It was nothing but picture after picture from Texas History with a little publicity thrown in, but I couldn't stop watching it.
I couldn't find a way to download the clips to watch later, but I'll explore it more.

Assignment #10 NING

I decided not to join Ning right now, but did explore a little bit. I found a travel group I had found before and lost called There-U-Go. I was able to read the comments and look at all the photos I wanted. It seemed the only thing I couldn't do was make comments myself. I also looked at Gardening sites, but couldn't get into any of them without joining. The same was true of Photography. I tried Mystery and found a very interesting site called Mystery Writers and Lovers of Mystery. I was able to browse around there a little, but finally they wanted me to join there too.

Assignment 9-Groups and Pages

Today I joined two groups--I Wanna Travel the World--for people who love to travel, of course, and one called Recipes. I like to cook and I also noticed that a good friend that I haven't heard from lately is a member and hope to hear from him. I had already joined Venus Graduates--for people who graduated from Venus High School, where I taught for years. As I have said before, I have had a wonderful summer hearing from lots of former students. The page I became a fan of is The Dallas Summer Musicals. I think I will enjoy that, even though the season is almost over.

RSS Assignment #7

I added some Feeds to my blog reader. I can see why you need to put them in folders. This will make it easier to keep up with sites I'd like to. Just have to get in the habit of looking at things at least once a day.

Blog Reader--Assignment #6

I just set up my blog reader. I can see where this will save me some time. Just a quick click to see the web sites and blogs I want to keep up with. I subscribed to my brother Jim's blog about our family. This will make it so much easier to take that five minutes to read it. I also added a blog suggested by School Library Journal -a great weeding blog called "awful library books", a humorous look at the awful books some of us still have in our collection. I also found a couple of great children's book blogs called "The Well Read Child" http://wellreadchild.blogspot.com/ and "Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast", http://www.blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/ which should help in developing my children's section.

Facebook

I set up a face book page several weeks ago to view some pictures my sister-in-law had posted and didn't have a clue what I was doing. Suddenly, I had "friends" all over the place. I taught English and Theatre Arts for 25 years and began to hear from many of my former students. Some had very nice things to say about their time in my classes and send pictures of their families, so it was a real "feel-good" thing for me. I've been able to keep up with my nephew in California and my niece as she toured Europe. I'm still not sure what the real purpose is. It's more fun than e-mail and I plan to do one for the library to see what happens.