Week 5: Exercise 12, Rollyo

I made a "Shopping" Rollyo with my favorite stores: Anthropologie, Liz Claiborne, Banana Republic, J. Crew, Nordstroms, Macy's, and Eddie Bauer. Then I searched for "white sweatshirt women" and it worked! I couldn't get the search box on my blog, though. That was very frustrating. I tried to follow CSLA's instructions, but it didn't work. I got a search box which didn't work, but it wasn't the red Rollyo search box which I have seen on other blog sites for CSLA 2.0. Oh, well. I can see a use for Rollyos when students are conducting research and you want to limit them as to where to search. BUT, that would require figuring out how to put the Search Box on the library website!

These activities are taking much longer than I thought. There are so many parts to each Week. I think I better just do what I can do quickly and not worry so much about doing optional activities. I don't want this to become frustrating because then I will not finish. And I do want to complete the "23 Things."

Week 5: Exercise 11, Web 2.0 Award-winning applications and Ning

I chose the category, "Travel," and explored realtravel.com I liked this site because it was "real people" blogging about their vacations. Their pictures were great, also. There is also a free trip planner if you register, which I did, but could not get the trip planner to work. I spent way too much time trying to figure it out. That was very frustrating. I was trying to plan a trip to the Tuscany area in Italy. I love that area. My husband and I want to stay there for a month and just travel to all of the little towns in the area. It's a beautiful place. So I looked at farecast.com It's a great place that tells whether you should book air flights now or wait for the fares to go down. Of course, none of the really good deals include flights from Fresno. :( But, my husband will like this website when he arranges flights for our trips. He's always looking for the best deal and tries to figure out when the best time to buy is. We fly a lot from LA or San Francisco, so this website will be useful.

I joined the Teacher-Librarian Ning. I was very impressed. There are groups within groups that you can join. For example, there is a YA Lit in School Forum Group which has some great contributions. Joyce Valenza has many sub groups. I think this will be beneficial for me--even more so than RSS feeds. You get to hear from the top LMTs in the country! I really enjoyed perusing the Teacher-Librarian ning. I also used my "Warholizer" picture that I made from FD Toys for my profile.

Week 5: Exercise 10, Online Image Generators

This was a fun exercise. The image to the right is about my son, James, who is a skater. And the heart represents how much I love him.

I used the image generator, Image Chef, at http://www.imagechef.com/ I chose the template, "Skater" under "Sports." I then changed the picture to a brown and beige tint. This was very cool.

I also experimented with FD Toys at http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/ I chose the template: "Warholizer" and uploaded my picture. See below. A very cool tool.

Week 4: Exercise 9, School Library Blogs/RSS Feeds

On the school library blogs that were recommended I found a post that recommended Outlets to Go, a 4-outlet portable strip, from Monster for only $20--great for traveling. Interesting what you can find on blogs.

Feedster - blog search for: California Library news. They have sponsored links which show up first. Not impressed.

Topix.net - Interesting...this website opened up to my town with all of the news, blogs, etc. about it. There's even a city forum with posts from people in my small town. I never knew this existed. I searched "public school library" but I didn't come up with any feeds.

Syndic8.com - Many feeds available on this website. This is the way to go to find feeds. I subscribed to Variety.com for new movie reviews.

Technorati - The tutorial was great! Searched for "School Library" blogs.

Google Blog Search - Searched: School Library Learning 2.0. Many blogs about this. Fun to read about us.

Blog Pulse - Searched: CSLA 2.0. Many of the participants' blogs came up. Mine included!

I had fun with this exercise, but still too much to remember. I remembered to put some of these websites on my deli.cio.us site, though, but I need to go back and tag the rest.

Week 4: Exercise 8, RSS Feeds

I subscribed to five RSS feeds--professional and personal. My favorite is the New Movies RSS feed. I am a movie fan. In fact I saw Ocean's 13 on Thursday--I was the only one in the theater at 11:30AM. I went on the spur of the moment and it was a great diversion! Vacation is great! Getting back to RSS feeds--I think Rob Darrow always has interesting technology information and I would rather go to his blog rather than sift through all the various blogs, so I subscribed to his. I also liked the Reader's Club Latest. I'm glad the 2.0 Team put that on the list. I had already set up a Bloglines account at my Infopeople Workshop last Friday, so I spent most of my time searching for RSS feeds. My only concern is keeping up with the feeds and going to Bloglines often. I can see getting bogged down with too much information. But it's better than trying to read everything that's out there. I could not figure out how to make my bloglines public, even with all of the instructions. My username is incorrect. I get the link, but the RSS feeds are not mine. Oh well.......time to move on.

Week 3: Exercise 7, Technology

On Friday, I went to an Infopeople's Workshop on Web 2.0. I had signed up to attend months before CSLA came out with their School Library Learning 2.0. It was a great overview of what we will be covering here AND it didn't overlap with what I had already done--created a blog and used Flickr. What I did learn about was del.icio.us and RSS feeds. Although I had heard about del.icio.us at the CSLA Conference last November, I didn't come back and play around with it. Now I know the advantages of it versus Bookmarks/Favorites. I really think I will use del.icio.us. RSS feeds was another Web 2.0 feature that I think I will use. I know that's Week 4's "Thing." So, I am very anxious to get started on that. Joe Barker did the Infopeople workshop and did a good job of giving background information about Web 2.0. A few of us also had lunch with him and he talked to us about nings. I feel I'm really learning the 2.0 language and have a better feel for what our students are using.

Week 3: Exercise 6, Library Trading Card

I wanted to use my avatar for this trading card and after many tries, figured out how to upload the avatar to the card. I tried uploading from Flicker, then from my computer, and now that I think about it I'm not sure how I ended up doing it. I'm sure there was a much easier way. If I had used my own picture, it would have been much easier. You can see the pixels on this picture. When prompted by Flickr Toys whether I wanted to upload to Flickr I decided not to. I don't know if that was the right thing to do or not. I saved the trading card to my computer, then uploaded it to my Blog. I did download the Flickr Uploadr, though, and that is slick! What an easy way to upload your pictures to Flickr!

Week 3: Exercise 5, Explore Flickr

This is a picture of one of the libraries in my district--Jefferson Elementary School. I was able to upload 4 pictures of different libraries in my district to Flickr. I created an account and was able to use Flickr's blogging tool AND Blogger's photo upload feature to post my photos from Flickr. However, I decided on this one to finally post. Being able to save a post in Draft form is very handy. Flickr was an interesting site. I think I would use it more for finding pictures of things I might use, but not for uploading my personal photos. I'm not sure if I'm ready for that. I'm still thinking about how I would use Flickr. As much as I enjoy our vacations, I can't imagine people being thrilled about viewing my pictures--I know I don't have the time to spend viewing pictures online.

Week 2: Exercise 3, Blogging

OK...I was put to the test already with creating/manipulating my avatar (Habit #3--View problems as challenges). Thanks to the CSLA 2.0 Team for giving instructions on how to export the avatar. I viewed this lesson as a challenge and not a problem.

So far, this online experience is well worth the time. I have learned so much already!

Week 1: Exercise 1, 7 and one-half Habits

For me, Habit #2 is the easiest for me--Accept responsibility for your own learning. Whenever I know I need to learn or hone a new skill I will always sign up for workshops or online courses (such as this) to help me implement current strategies/programs. I am a lifelong learner. I probably could have stayed in college forever. There is so much out there to know and not enough time to learn it all. I am very excited about this online opportunity because although I have attended sessions on Web 2.0, I have not gone back to my office and actually used the online resources about which I learned. This online project will give me the opportunity to "use" what I learn.

Habit #3 is the hardest for me--View problems as challenges. I view problems as problems. Once the problem is solved, that's when I can look back and say it was a challenge (but only if the outcome was positive). I don't like puzzles I can't figure out and many problems are like that. So I need to work on this Habit and I am sure I will do so during this online course because I 'm sure there will be times when I will view some of the activities as problems because I won't be able to figure them out.