ring-a-ding things

OK, I've been lurking & reading - time to jump back in! I helped my daughter Liz move to Milwaukee and set up her new 4th grade classroom (Hooray for Willard School librarian Marcia Ryan, who gave me boxes of weeded books for Liz' classroom library), and then took a day yesterday to help my daughter Mary set up her math classroom. (In fact, there were more contractors than teachers, trying to get everything done before school starts - it's a beautiful new building.)

SO - trying to get back to posting with 21 Things! I am feeling the information overload with all of the new things, readers, alerts, etc., but enjoying seeing it all. I still need to figure out how to avoid internet indigestion from over-indulging. :)

It's been a busy time with a lot of back-to-school stuff, including welcoming 2 new school librarians to our district. I'm looking forward to a great year of school/library collaboration, and I'm hopeful that the wiki I set up will help - once we all start to use it. Our staff wiki @ the library has been great - so glad we have it.

More later, I hope!

A million things on hold

OK, I think 21 Things will be on hold for awhile, along with about a million other things in my life - as my library's Outreach person, I am swamped with back to school events, meetings, etc. I'm also helping my daughter Liz move to Milwaukee & set up a new classroom there, and my daughter Mary move into a new classroom in Chicago. (At least their schools haven't started yet!) Thank heavens I'm not moving! I'll try to keep reading blogs but may not post much - hopefully I'll be back before too long!

Why I have a twitter account

Our library uses both FB & Twitter (and Meebo, and text a librarian), but I have a Twitter account b/c of a conversation I had some time ago with my daughter, who teaches math in a Chicago school.

Me: I kind of don't get Twitter. Why would people read a play-by-play of my day? It's not that interesting! And I have so much I want to read already that I can't see adding tweets...

Mary:the only reason I would have a Twitter account is b/c my students say the funniest things - they're really amusing.

Me: well, if you join Twitter I'll follow you

Mary: OK!

and I do enjoy her tweets, and am now following a bunch of people, but I don't tweet much. I am being followed by some martial arts dude in Australia who apparently picked up a tweet about ninja librarians I sent - hmmm.

Some Mary tweets:
(which are much funnier if you know her voice, and also this is what happens when you post at 3 AM - maybe I should try sleep?)

J (17, male, wears motorcycle boots) raised his hand and asked "can I go the bathroom so I can try?"

I told a kid who said I was boring that he'd have a few more years to experience it if he didn't start doing work.

My new student looks at me and goes, "they're not going to look in our bags are they? Cause I sell....not drugs"

1. There are over 20 cops here. 2. We're on lockdown. 3. For a gang fight. 4. Between PARENTS (that's class)

Grandma: We had a cinco thing tonight...watered down margaritas and only one person had to be taken out in an ambulance.

In other news, I got a fwd from my granddad titled: Fwd: no viagra, its really from me (glad we got the spam issue fixed)

ha ha ha ha...my class is "worse than jail"

Ah yes, Nancy B. Jefferson...the "selective enrollment"* school. (*you select to go there via some sort of crime)


Kid says he "took a trip out of town". Which is true if by "out of town" you mean "jail". I know how that one works...

My grandmother would prefer I get married sooner rather than later because "I'm old and I could be dead by then." Not likely.

OK, I threw in a couple of grandparents so it wouldn't be so heavy on the jail/gang/crime thing...

electronics don't like me

...but they are keeping me company. Well, sort of - I grabbed a book on CD to listen to in the car and I got an error message - never seen that before. AND my CD player at home just went on the fritz.
I am too wired to sleep after an unexpected midnight trip (emergency averted), so I thought I'd work on 21 Things. But I still get messages that I need to sign in - when I was signed in. It does seem to be easier on a Mac.
I'm enjoying everyone's blogs but not doing much blogging myself... does that make me a lurker? Does anyone still use that term?

Back to work!

I just returned from a vacation in Colorado, where I went biking & rafting and even did a little "21 Things" with my niece and nephew. We had a lot of fun with the Image generators - here's a sample!

Unfortunately my tendency to wander the web is worse when I have fellow travelers! Fortunately I (and my library) already use Twitter, Facebook, and IM; I also use Good Reads but need to be more consistent with it.
I'm a little conflicted about posting photos to Flicker - we do post pics on our blog & link to albums, but I'm a little leery of privacy issues. We had one mom who asked that we remove all of her child's pics from our online albums, which could be viewed by clicking on a link on our blog.
Check out some pics from our Crazy Costume Capers on our blog:
http://www.rfplkids.blogspot.com/

Falling behind...

...and likely to get further behind! No access to my work computer for a few days b/c our room is being carpeted (YAY!!), and very busy with all the moving that entails. Also doing a lot of moving stuff @ home as my younger daughter will be staying with me til she has a confirmed job & place to live. And leaving to visit family & meet my daughters in CO tonight, so unless I work on this on vacation... or finish all the other last-minute stuff I CAN do w/o access to our shared drive... might need a life preserver when I return!

I am enjoying reading others' posts & seeing the links - hope to get some things up soon!

Shiny

My older daughter & her boyfriend stayed overnight with me so I could take them to the airport @ 5:15. I forgot how chirpy she is when she wakes up - please! But the night before she looked over my 21 Things, and helped me narrow down the feeds I subscribe to so that they're it's not (as) overwhelming. (She also made me promise not to subscribe to anything new for a week, til I see how the current list feels.)
And she was helpful - and patient - as I tried out some of the new stuff. But (as usual) I started wandering the web, intrigued by one thing after another. After a couple of "Mom, why don't you finish what you were doing first?" comments, she just started saying "Shiny" in a hypnotic voice every time I went wandering again. Shiny. Distracting. Bewitching. I have to learn to watch out for Shiny Syndrome!

The good thing was that I actually felt caught up - for about 12 hours. And I was sleeping for 6 of them. But still...

Wiki Wacky

I'm wandering the web.... it's so easy to get sidetracked; I set up my wiki but spent so much time reading help pages, best practices, etc. that I haven't done much with it yet. I hope it will provide organization for next year's TV Tune Out Week, plus a place to organize resources, track planning, etc. We'll see! For now, I've finished today's root beer float, and my garden is calling its siren song. Have a great weekend!

Caught like a bug in the web

Actually, it's pretty funny - here's the notice I just got:
This email was sent by riverforestlibrary.org to
notify you that we have temporarily prevented access to your account.

We have reasons to believe that your account may have been accessed by someone else. Please run attached file and follow instructions.

C'mon - I'm having enough trouble! ;)

what's linking where?

OK, I think part of my frustration is that when I'm working on my mac at home, it automatically links some things to others based on which gmail I have open (or maybe it's just capricious...)
I have a Google account with a Yahoo address, a personal gmail, and a work gmail - and the work gmail doesn't support all of the apps. So I get utterly confused trying to figure out why Blogger gives me messages like "You are not an author on any blogs" - from my own blog - or why when I click on something in Google Reader it changes the options in other windows I have open. I'm trying to decide if I should try to figure it out (again) or just go with the current approach - blinders, and the same password for everything.

Why I haven't tried Social Mention or Addictomatic

It's very simple, really. I ran out of root beer for my root beer float. I started with Google alerts, set up 3 alerts, and messed around with some other stuff - reading comments, changing blogs I'm following, putting stuff in folders on Google Reader. By the time I was down to the last slurp, I figured I NEEDED a root beer float in hand to work on 21 Things. I know I'm behind (still finishing Thing 6!) but I think I only have one root beer float worth of tech concentration in me, at least when I'm doing this in the evening. And with the speed-freak summer reading atmosphere @ work, evening is the only time I can manage!

Summer reading is great fun, but I will be relieved when we're done. By next summer I plan to clone myself. Either that or learn to set more realistic goals - hmmm, cloning's probably a more realistic goal than me being realistic...

more "what was i thinking?!!"

OK, summer reading WILL end at some point (actually fairly soon; our wrap-up party is Friday - YAY!)and I might actually catch up - right now I've just been browsing other "21 travelers" blogs & enjoying those & the comments. Thanks Kelley for your feedback! I haven't finished last week's "things", but I already use Firefox, so I'm looking forward to exploring that more. As far as wikis, we use one for our library staff and I've found that very helpful. We just had our first meeting for next April's TV Tune Out week today, so I may use that for my wiki.

delicious

I imported my browser bookmarks, which included one for Library 2.0 in 15 Min. a day. I'd added that in 2007. Hmmm....

delicious

importing now...
We use a delicious account for some reference sites, and I like having that available; hoping delicious will help me keep MY stuff in a more organized manner. Love that I can search bookmarks!

that's why it's called the web...

...because it's connected in so many ways, and I am the poor bug trapped in the web, waiting to be devoured! I subscribed to Google Reader, and then a coworker told me about igoogle, which I really like, but in the process of creating blogs and subscribing and posting I have gotten utterly confused about what goes with what account, AND what the passwords are - I have reset a couple of them more than once, to the PW I had written down, but the next time I try to post a comment or switch to google reader, I have to sign in again (in a new window) and it says that PW is not correct.
I am confused :(

passwords

If there's a max on # of times you can reset your password, I'm getting there - and I swear I keep setting it to the same thing. It seems like every time I click on a link in blogger it asks me to sign in AGAIN, and then tells me my password is incorrect - the PW I typed in 10 minutes ago, and wrote down on the pad of paper near my computer...

I finally got back to this blog, and am relieved I'm not the only one who hasn't posted recently. I did subscribe to Google reader - clearly I need to be more selective about WHAT I read online, or I'll have no time for books!

Making a Splash - or drowning!

I'm probably not the only one saying "what was I thinking?!!" as I race through "Make a Splash" summer reading projects & programs, manage all the usual stuff, AND do 21 Things!
I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, but then that's why I signed up in the first place. :)I'm hoping this will help me get a handle on some of what's out there, and find the tools that will help me be efficient & effective. Right now I feel like I'm drinking from a fire hose!

School Gardens Can Improve Literacy, Numeracy, Study Says

Not tech-related, but something I thought was very cool & plan to share with the local schools that have gardens!
School Gardens Can Improve Literacy, Numeracy, Study Says

I'm a digital immigrant

If you haven't read Born Digital by John Palfrey, you might want to pick it up. He refers to the generation born after 1980 as digital natives, and suggests that they think, learn, and use technology differently than us older folks. For some of us, us, learning new technologies is like learning a new language - we can do it, but the neurological wiring isn't there, so we need to create it. One of my struggles with technology is wanting to understand the "whole picture", or the complete operating manual, before I start. I think it's just not possible anymore to grasp even where the borders are of the huge amount of information on any subject.

My kids & those digital natives who are kind enough to help me with tech stuff say I need to learn to pay selective attention - in "my way" of learning, I want to grasp the whole and then focus on the specifics. The whole is now far too huge - and I start feeling lost. I'm hoping this project will help me keep my bearings!

Here's a link about the book:
http://borndigitalbook.com/

I'm sure there's a way to insert that as a hyperlink, but I'm out of time!

starting out....

I'm looking forward to this - and I'm happy I've at least started the blog. I use a PC at work and a Mac at home, so it will be interesting to see what the differences are for blogging. I've done a lot more with pics @ work than I have at home, so my tech project here is 21 Things, and at home it's organizing my photos. Of the two, I'm guessing this might be easier - just based on the boxes of photos @ home!