Thing 14

Wow! I cannot believe how large the blogosphere is! I still am in awe of how much time people spend on the web. It actually is a little scary. The internet can be viewed as a blessing or a curse. There is so much information out there at your fingertips - that is the plus side. The negative side - I believe it is replacing face-to-face interactions. Something to ponder, anyway.

Technorati is a great site for searching for blogs or posts. It is easy to use. I did join, but my e-mail server is down, so I could not retrieve the confirmation e-mail required to finalize the membership. When I can, I plan to add my blog and see what happens. In my searching, I did come across another SBISD blog. What a coincidence!

Thing 13

I did most of my social bookmarking research in del.icio.us . I set up an account, but I had a heck of a time installing the buttons. I had to do it four times before I could get it right. The trick was to not Run the program, but to Save it first. For some reason, the file couldn't be found in the Temp. Folder for the run option.
I added a few bookmarks to my account using the buttons and tags. It was super easy.
I can see this being quite useful if you move locations a lot and use multiple computers. This is what our students do at school, so it certainly would be beneficial to them.
Since I use mostly one computer, I don't know if I will utilize this social bookmarking account much. Maybe, I will just have to play with it a little. It does make it easy with the buttons on the toolbar...
Oh, and I did like the feature in Furl to make a bookmark private. So, in looking in the settings menu I see where you can make that an option in del.icio.us as well. Maybe there are some sites you don't want to share for some reason...

Thing 12

I think most of the sites about commenting are common sense. We need to make sure that we don't do commenting in a hurry. Take time to reflect on your comment and be sure to re-read it several times before posting. Also, I think it important to be kind in your comment, especially if you are disagreeing or criticizing. This may be the hardest of all!
I found several blogs worthly of commenting on. When I got out of the "23 Things" community, it was rather hard to choose a blog to read. I tend to look at those with blog names that are intriguing. One with the title, Gargoyles in the Library, got my attention. I am not sure if I commented on that one, but it made me look. Marketing is an integral part of blogging - the catchier the title, the more likely someone will take a look.

Thing 11

I spent about an hour discovering Library Thing. I guess I am not much into social networking. I looked at some of the groups and even joined one - Read YA Lit, but it didn't make much sense to me. Unless I am mistaken, the posts are in reverse order. You have to scroll all the way to the bottom to see the most current post. Also, this particular group is supposed to be a monthly book discussion, but I could figure out what books they were reading and when. Oh well... Maybe there just isn't that much action in this particular group.

I did create a personal library and rated the books I added. Adding books was super easy. These were books I just finished reading, so I was interested in their reviews. I am not sure I would ever use Library Thing. Maybe if I was looking for recommendations for good reading. But even at that, I don't know if I would use this site. I'd rather look at library journals or check out the blogs of those that have given me good book recommendations in the past.

I am getting the feeling more and more as 23 Things progresses that people spend WAY too much time on the computer!

Thing 10

This was similar to Thing #6. I had already created a Trading Card and visited some of the sites mentioned. So, I stayed clear of those and went to ones I did not discover on #9.

Image Chef was my favorite. It was very simple to use. This is the football jersey I created there. Notice the color - orange! They didn't have the burnt orange shade available. It looks like I am a Tennessee fan!

Another creation of mine was the magazine cover from Custom Sign Generator. At first I had a lot of difficulty figuring out how to upload my photo. But I finally snapped and put a student from my school on the magazine cover of Millionaires magazine. Isnt' he precious?

Here again this can be sooo time consuming! I can see students absolutely loving seeing themselves on a magazine cover or inserting them into various scenes. Great fun!

Thing 9

From a practical standpoint, I cannot see how anybody would use these searches for blogs and be very successful with the amount of time it takes. You could spend hours and hours looking for blogs on various subjects. But then the blog needs to have certain criteria for it to be useful as noted in the Cool aCat Teacher video. There is definitely an overabundance of blogs on the internet and most of them are not high quality.

Of those blog search engines that I perused, Google Blog Search was my favorite. It seemed the easiest to navigate. My least favorite was Syndic8.com. The site was boring and plain. I was disappointed that the librarian search Suprglu was not working. I will have to investigate it later.

I think the best way to find useful blogs is "word of mouth" or I guess those words don't really apply here. I usually will look at what other bloggers that I think highly of have in their blogroll. I have found almost all of the blogs I subscribe to from others.

Thing 8

I created a Google Reader page with about 7 feeds. I then linked Google Reader with my iGoogle page so I don't have to go to two places to view all my up to the minute news. This is too cool!
Yahoo pretty much has this same feature that I have been using for a couple of years. I created a My Yahoo page that has RSS feeds to blogs and news of interest. This seems more comprehensive than Yahoo, however. I will use both for a while and see which I prefer.

As far as RSS feeds go in general, they are great. The information comes to you rather than vice versa saving you valuable time. It keeps you current on most any topic. As a librarian, I believe we need to know a little bit about everything. This will help us in that endeavor. I am also going to keep my eye out for the RSS symbol when I visit new web sites.

I also want to comment on the videos from CommonCraft. They are precise and to the point, but most importantly they are fun to watch. They make me laugh! The hand signals and tossing the cards out of the way are stupidly entertaining. Such low technology to advertise high technology...

Thing 7

Wow! What fun tools Google has! I was familiar with a few already, but found some I had not ever taken the time to explore. Some of the tools I see as useful, and some not so.

Let's take Google Alerts. It is a feature of Google that I am currently using. I am a HUGE Longhorn fan and I have the Google Alerts set up to alert me on news of the Longhorn sports and also of Vince Young. Obviously, these are just personal alerts, but I could see these as being useful as a librarian or teacher. You could certainly keep your eye on current events, politics, etc.
The other feature I chose to blog about was iGoogle. I would compare it to my Yahoo homepage, only more powerful. A great way - here again- to keep tabs on current events, policitics, etc. Sort of like having your own personalized newspaper. I may end up changing my computer homepage to iGoogle. I need to tweak it a bit. Right now it has too much information.

I am not sure this link will work since it is customized for me, but we can try. I moved some of the articles around and created some new pages.

Thing 6

The whole mashup things is confusing. Too many fancy words explaining it all that I don't understand.. Thank goodness there are actual examples. That helped in the understanding - somehwhat! I visited one site that compared items on four different online shopping sites. That looked useful in a personal way.

The Flickr mashups were interesting. I didn't create a Librarian Trading Card because I really didn't see how I would use it. However, I did created a Lone Star Award Book Trading Card. I used the book Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt. Included the photo, along with the summary at the bottom. I don't really like the way the photo uploaded into the card. I'll have to work on that.

I am going to be doing a Lone Star reading incentive program this upcoming year and maybe I could make them into trading cards. The kids after they read the book, could get a trading card. They would trade them in for prizes and rewards. Just a thought!

Another feature I liked was Captioner. I used a photo of some of the students at my school browsing books at the SBISD annual book exhibit. I don't know how I could use this, but it was fun!

Thing 5

Exploring Flickr was easy. I was already familiar with it. I set up a vacation picture album on it this past year as a way to share pictures with family. It works great. I did have some family members have difficulty creating an account and viewing the pictures if they weren't already members...I had to field several calls for help.

I was however, not familiar with the Creative Commons aspect of the site. I am still somewhat confused about all the different copyright categories. I don't see me using photos or pictures from Flickr anyway.

But here is one that I thought was interesting. I might use this somewhere. According to the rules I need to give credit to Paul Keleher for this photo.

Thing 4

Well I sent all the necessary information in to get me registered. Hopefully I will receive a welcome e-mail that tells me I have done everything up until this point correctly. So far so good.
I have completed four things in about 1 1/2 hours on my first day. At least I got started. I am going to try to do at least one thing a day until I finish!

Thing 3

For those of you who remember CB radios...L'l Bit was my "handle!" I have always been petite, so it just fits. And of course, the blog will have a little bit of "this and that" as well.
Creating the avatar was easy. I already have done it for my personal Yahoo mail account anyway. I just imported it into the blog. I love the beach and in my bag are books to read while relaxing my time away. There are sooo many choices, that I do see how people could get bogged down in this particular stage and spend way too much time deciding on the perfect look for your avatar..

Thing 2

I don't usually give too much thought to the concept of life-long learning. I see two reasons for learning.
1. You need to for your vocation. (Which is why I am doing this!)
2. You want to because you like it.

My weakness in the 71/2 habits are Viewing Problems as Challenges and Setting Goals. Unfortunately, it seems that challenges arise at inopportune times, thus not giving one ample time to fully learn or enjoy the learning process. Also, I don't tend to set goals. I begin things without really knowing what I want out of them.
My strengths would be Having Confidence and Using Techology to Your Advantage. Once I begin the project, I almost always have the confidence and commitment to finish. I also don't shy away from technology. So long as the technology is functioning properly, it most always eases jobs and makes it exciting along the way.

Thing 1

I am thrilled that SBISD Library Services created this online learning opportunity for librarians and educators. I am looking forward to learning many new technology skills and applications along the journey. I have two goals in mind. 1. I hope to be able to support the teachers at my campus in their endeavors to incorporate technology into the curriculum at the completion of the class 2. I hope to learn some "cool" technology that I can use on a personal level.
I didn't feel I had the time to devote to this journey during the school year. I am now in the right state of mind to begin as summer as officially begun for me! Yeah!