Scenes from the LaCygne Library

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Ladies at the Spring Fling Tea Party

Wrapping up

Wow, once the weekly sessions were over, I kind of let my blog slip. I guess I'm not a real blogger. I do good to keep up with Facebook and Plurk and emails. But this has been a good thing and I will probalby use it to blog about our Summer Programs.

That newsletter will give you a glimpse of all the fun things we have planned for the summer. I hope to use some web 2.0 tools in my computer classes and on my Monday Morning Math games. (hint if you have any good learning sites for math let me know) I also plan to use animoto with our kids to create some short clips of summer fun.

I had a hard time picking favorite things, but one of my favorites was the movie the lady made driving around her town. That was something that I think would be neat to do...especially for someone who has moved away so they can see what their hometown looks like now.

I would definitely be interested in participating or helping with something like this in the future. I enjoy technology and love libraries and learning, so this was something I enjoyed doing. The saying is when you stop learning you get old...and i'm not ready to get old yet.

I think probalby my biggest surprise was learning that Jing could do more than I thought it could, i'd never played with it beyond using it to do a plain screen capture.

Thanks again to all the mentors and i hope that everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.

Week 15 ...Wikis

Twenty-three things Kansas has been very interesting and I've learned some new things and I've refreshed my brain on other things. It definitely has been worthwhile and I'm glad that I decided to do it. Sometimes you just need an incentive to sit down and investigate the new things out there. I had never blogged, so that was probably the one thing that I tried that I liked. Learning to embed things in the blog, make it more worthwhile for me. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to see what's out there and do it in a safe friendly environment. I also enjoyed meeting some of the participants at the Kansas Library Conference. I edited the Kansas Library Camp Wiki adding #14 to topic list. Then I went to Wikipedia and added a couple of sentences to the article on LaCygne about the history of libraries in La Cygne. Thanks for all your hard work in organizing this program

Week 14, Library Thing, Etc.

Interesting tools that I had not investigated previously. I created an account on Shelfari and added it to my blog showing books I've read or am reading currently. It was very easy to use and I liked that the widget took it straight to blogger. I looked at goodreads and Library Thing, but decided I liked hte looks of Shelfari better. I also looked at We Read, but got lots of popups wiht that one. I will investigate some of these more as i have time, but for now Shelfari will be my pick :)

Week 13 Slide-Sharing

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

This is my slideshow, using some pictures I took last week of Spring finally making it to Kansas. I used Animoto because I like its features and the way that everything is right there. I had used this before and think that it's a very good tool for short clips.

Week 12 Screencasting

http://www.screencast.com/users/librarygal62/folders/Jing/media/b8b70583-7e7c-4a5b-a93f-343fbc41c447

This long link will take you to the screencast I made using Jing to tell you how to use our online card catalog. I had used Jing to capture certain screens before, but had never used it to create a movie. It is pretty nifty and I can think of several how-to tutorials that I might create using this (if I have time). This was probably the lesson I procrastinated the longest on and had the most trouble with, because I hadn't seen this before. But it was worth learning how to do.

my You Tube video

Final C. E. Hesser

lacygne's Podcast

Week 10 Video on the Web

One of my favorite hobbies is genealogy and I use Family Tree Maker Software, so decided to embed that clip from YouTube into my blog to meet the requirments for activity 1. I did have to look up to see how to embed it in Blogger using the link that was given.

Now for activity 2. I'll have to play with this one a little and post it when I get it finished, so until then, happy videoing :) to my 23 Things Kansas friends.

Instant Messaging

Now you're talking about something I use daily. I have been a fan of instant messages for a long time. When I was teaching in a small school with only one incoming phone line, AOL instant messenger was our link to the outside world. People could reach me for a brief question or answer. And I used it a lot to keep in touch with the public library.

I am an addict. I have AIM (AOL), Yahoo, google chat, and MSN chat. I also chat in facebook. For several years I monitored an IRC chat for our church group and chatted daily in there. My resources are endless through the connections I've made on these. I have actually met some of the people I've chatted with online and some are a close as my "real" friends :)

When I was teaching 3rd grade 7-9 years ago, I had been playing and chatting in yahoo games with a cop in Kitty Hawk NC. We played checkers often and soon he and his wife began talking to me. They soon adopted my class and would send us stuff, and my kids learned to write thank you letters and practice their cursive writing. We occasionally could talk online at school, but our bandwidth was so bad it didn't happen often. Being midwest kids, we were talking about hurricanes in social studies and Bill said if we get one i'll send you video. Since he worked for sheriff's dept. he was out in the storm, and sent a video to my class that was awesome and they never forgot, because it was"real" happeneing to someone they knew. He also talked the people at kitty hawk and Roanoke into letting him video tape some stuff, to share with kids in Kansas who might never see it. Those kids have all graduated, but they've never forgotten Bill & Cher and their salt water taffy and the fun we had. All of which happened becasue of instant messaging and chatting on games.

I'm librarygal62 on Yahoo, and lacygtch on the other messengers. I have used Trillion on my PC to run multiple accounts. Message me if you want to talk, but let me know you're a 23 things person.

Today while the kids were state testing and i had to be QUIET, i checked out the 23things irc chat, talked with Heather and Liz and Sharon for a bit. Watched while they talked library tech stuff too.

Week 8 Cloud Computing

Sandy Wilkerson from SEK library system contacted me about collaborating on a Google Doc assignment for this week's project. Since I had a google account, i shared my info with her and we were off and running. She set up a Google doc about top 5 picks in the library and shared it with me via google docs. I responded and we shared info and she is using the info for the newsletter.

I have used Google docs before to collaborate with a person in Inman, KS and one in Sterling, KS. We planned 3 days of in-service activities using Google docs, Plurk and Skype as our main tools. It's amazing what you can do with the "cloud".

I taught a computer class with homeschoolers last summer and we learned to use Weebly. It was a lot of fun.

There's so much that you can do if you just have time to play and learn. I've played with Dropbox and some others like it, and I have a Wikispaces account, but don't use it very often.

Week 7 Microblogging

As Heather pointed out, I'm a "Plurker", I was introduced to microblogging by Kevin Honeycutt in Nov. 2008 and I became a plurk addict. We have PLN "Professional Learning Network" on plurk and my user name there is Librarygal also. For me having my PLN on plurk has been extremely helpful and healthy. We've been through many struggles the last two years in Kansas education and it's been extremely helpful to share with my online professional friends. They have listened and given a lot of advice.

Some of the biggest successes I've had with microblogging, include networking. I signed up because Kevin encouraged me to after he did a workshop at our school. From there my PLN has grown to over 180 friends who are educational professionals, teachers, librarians, tech people. I know that if I have a question, I can usually post it on Plurk and i'll get answers and advice almost immediately. It's been fun going to conferences and meeting people face to face that I plurk with on a regular basis.

I chose to remain on Plurk and not start a Twitter account because I don't have time to keep up with all the "social networking" i'm doing already. I know many more librarians are using Twitter but at the moment it's not in my time schedule.

I haven't added a lot of new people lately on Plurk, though just this week I did add a teacher from Oregon, who had heard Kevin present and she was looking for education friends. For me it was very easy to get friends on Plurk. I looked at people who were following Kevin Honeycutt, Dean Mantz, Alan Beam and others and when I found things in common I would add them as friends. I chose to keep my profile private and not have fans to limit the spam.

For me it's been a good experience and the networking aspect has been a great help.

Since I didn't Twitter Heather, I can't do your bonus work :) but you know me, I'm stuck in Plurk :0)

Week Six: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

I was introduced to Delicious at the MACE conference in the Spring and then again at the I Connect I Learn Conference in Hutchinson this summer. I have a bad habit of clicking and adding to favorites on whatever computer I'm on and then not knowing where to find the site again. I've found it very helpful to look at some of my colleagues delicious accounts for things that I was searching, like free legal music downloads, and web 2.0 tools for teachers.

I imported my favorites from this computer to my Delicious account and deleted some things. I sent a link of planning favorite tea parties to rbrown3 as instructed. I created a tag bundle, but i need to go in and add more tags. I wanted one for computer class stuff and one for summer reading, but i need to work on that some more. I did have to go in and add the tag button, i didn't have that on my toolbar, makes it nice as i tagged 23things site and my blog site for quick access.

I have looked at Diigo and Stumbleupon, both again recommended by some of techie school friends. If I ever slow down long enough to tag my bookmarks, they would be especially helpful and I see great value in a good Delicious account.....now whether I ever get that organized, i'm not sure :)

I do like the thought of making a library delicious account where I could post sites that I would like to reccomend for my summer reading and computer classes.

Week 5--RSS Feeds

I had heard about RSS but hadn't ever taken the opportunity to learn about them. I listened to the information on Google Reader, because I have most of my stuff on Google and rather than add another forum, I'll use Google Reader. It was pretty easy to use. I liked the fact that it had all the blogs I'm following already on there when I sat up the account. I checked out those and really like the feature where I don't have to go to each person's blog to read their new posts.

Then I started messing with the "Browse for Stuff" and that had a gold mine of opportunities for me. I had to be careful or I would end up with way more subscriptions than I would have time to read. The first one I chose to follow was Kevin Honeycutt's web 2.0 stuff. I know him and he actually was one who talked to me about RSS feeds first. Then because genealogy is my hobby I picked a genealogy feed. From there I went to the recommended sites and chose an ancestry feed that was recommended. I was looking for local news feeds and ended up adding Osawatomie Library and Linn County News. Since I'm involved in a lot of education stuff, I added one that was KASL and KSDE.

I think I will play with this some more and see how I could add an RSS feed to our public library site. I like the feature of using the J key to go down between feed items and the K key to go back up. That makes it really nice for navigating.

All these blog activities are from http://www.23thingskansas.org/ It is a class or workshop that many librarians across the state are taking this spring. It's been a lot of fun.

Cat in the Hat & Daisy Head Maizie

Cat in the Hat & Daisy Head Maizie
Originally uploaded by LaCygneLibrary

I'm not sure, what I'm doing now, but I am taking a photo from Flickr and posting it to my Blogspot account. We will see if this works.

Week 4: Photo Sharing

I chose to create an account in Flickr because the Library already had a yahoo account. I created an icon and profile with information about the LaCygne Library. I added photoes to Flickr that I had taken at some events at the Library. I have used some other Photo Sharing programs like Kodak and Shutterfly and Snapfish and enjoy getting pictures from friends this way. This is the first time I have actually tagged photos, though I notice that in Facebook a lot of photos are tagged. I have also created movies in Animoto and looked at things in Photobucket.

I would like to associate the Flickr page with my library's website, and show pictures there. If I do that, then parents can see the activities that occur at the library. I have some concerns about posting photos, but will try to do groups and not identify by name the people in pictures.

I think that photo sharing sites are a good way to preserve your memories as well as share them.

Week 3--Online Meetings

I have attended several meetings using Wimba, the last live one I attended was the session on Illuminar. It works pretty good to be able to sit at my desk and listen to the session and take notes as opposed to driving 2 hours for a hour or two session. I see a lot of good for this type of meeting and have suggested that maybe the Southeast Kansas Library Board meetings might consider some sort of online meeting, as I find it hard to get away sometimes to attend those board meetings. But so far we haven't worked it out, so I missed the last two meetings.

Since I'm involved with curriculum and testing at school, I have attended several "Live Meeting" sessions. The only issue I find with those, is the bandwidth. There is a big lag time and part of the time it drops out and i have to refresh several times in order to get the jist of the meeting. In a perfect world, it would be an exccellent resource.

I listened to an archived program on Chocolate on Opal by Judy Graves and Angela McMillan, and Allison Kelly. It was neat to hear all the information that they have in the Library of Congress and the links and sources that they showed were pretty awesome, since Chocolate is a particular favorite of mine :)

I have signed up for Technology Essentials 2010 and hope to be able to participate in more upcoming webinars. With shortage of funds, this is a good way to train people and I forsee over the next few years that it will be perfected, so bandwidth won't be a huge issue and we can sit at our desks and attend conferences around the world in real time.

Week 2--Online Communities

I decided to join the Facebook world a few months ago, and it's addicting. I've found and reconnected with many of my former students (can't believe it's been 25 years since I started teaching). It's been a lot of fun. I chose 3 people from the 23 things to ask to be friends. Hope to hear from them soon.

It's also been rewarding to keep up with my "distant" cousins through Facebook. I get to see pictures of the new babies, birthdays, and weddings, even though I can't be there in person.

Facebook is easy to use and seemed to be the one most of my educator friends are using. I have a hidden profile, as they prefer that we don't friend our current students. Many of them would like to be my friend, so I find it easier not to have a public profile.

I have been playing around with creating a facebook page for the public library in LaCygne and I do have somethings posted, but only the director and I are fans. I think it would be used more if we get the historical reenactor grant for this summer to keep our kids in the loop.

I am a fan of 23 things on there already. I belong to several educator's Ning groups. I joined Kansas LIbrary Association and Mountain Plains Association groups on facebook. Since I'm in SEK I chose to be a fan fo Iola Public Library.

This ia a lot of fun.

Week One Blogging

Hi!

My name is Janet. I have library in my blood. I spend most of my waking hours in one or the other library. My full-time job is as Library Media Specialist at Prairie View High School near LaCygne. This is my 7th year in that position. I enjoy working with the high school students (didn't think I would after 18 years teaching elementary). I work with testing, curriculum and some technology for the school district also. Some days I think they forget I'm a librarian. (That's me in the pink--we're being honored for years service to our school district).

My other job is one that I've had since I was 17. I work part time for the public library in LaCygne. This summer I completed my 30th year there. I can do just about everything there, but my main responsibilities are keeping the technology up to date and working and cataloging. I also enjoy planning activities and programs for adults and children. Picture shows one of my Curious George Events.

Last summer I taught 6 weeks of lessons on Web 2.0 tools that our patrons could use. It was a lot of fun to introduce our patrons to a "whole new world of things on the computer". I haven't blogged before, but I use Plurk and Facebook.

I like to learn and like to be able to help others, so when I saw the "23 Things" offered, I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to learn more about tools that I can use for both personal and professional growth.

Blogger was easy to set up and use and I feel that I could use it for various purposes at both jobs. Thanks for encouraging us to explore more things that are out there.