It was difficult to get started because 23 Things seemed overwhelming. Once I got about half done, then I felt commited to finishing the entire list. It was a good opportunity for me to use some of the web tools that I had previously only heard about, but not used. Actually creating samples was important for me because that's how I learn best. The course was very well organized and easy to follow, had many examples,and links. Some of the things that I plan on using is a blog for teachers of new resources available from CEMaT, a wiki for the media specialists for planning agendas,bloglines for me personally for RSS feeds to keep informed.
I probably won't use Flikr because I already have a system and backup for my photos, and I don't think I'll be using Facebook and MySpace at this time.
We already use delicious, a blog for LMSA minutes,google docs for REMC meetings.
I need to spend some more time cleaning up my delicious folders, seeing if there are other widgets I want to use, and checking out any links that I may want to add to the LMSA delicious site. I will likely look at Teacher Tube, podcasts, and Slideshare more for using the resources than as a contributor.
Thanks for all of your hard work in putting this together, and I look forward to the next 24 Things!

Somehow I added then deleted a post to the 23 things wiki because it showed up in the history. It seems like a great way to get input from everyone in a group. I created a simple wiki to use with the media specialists for gathering ideas for the meetings. I would have preferred it be private, but that was only available for 30 days, then I assume there was a fee.
The blog is one person who initiates the content periodically and others respond to it, whereas the wiki is intended for many to contribute content. A blog might be more appropriate for a teacher presenting content, but use a wiki when the intent is that each student is going to present an idea or topic.

I found the wikiHow to be quite fascinating with over 50,000 how to's. In the course of looking at wikis, I realized it would be a great tool for the media specialists to use for brainstorming ideas for the meetings through out the year, and using it for building agendas. It seemed quite easy and straightforward to develop.

I struggled with the iTunes and will have to explore it some more. It seemed like everything I found came with a price tag. Then I couldn't watch the movie because it said I didn't have Quicktime. I used to have it, but I went back and installed it again and the video still did not load. Somewhere along there I started losing interest, so I went to the Education Podcast Network and subscribed in bloglines to a Sirsi Dynix one that had a lot that was interesting to me. I'm starting to build a nice collection in bloglines, so that is probably where I'll keep the RSS feeds.

I saw several podcasts that would be good examples for teachers to use and critique with students before having them create one. I subscribed to Mike Flanagan's podcast. I'd seen a couple of his, but I hadn't stayed current with them. It's necessary to know what MDE is thinking of doing. His link is http://www.michigan.gov/rss/0,2348,7-140-45259--50035-,00.xml

If your library media center needs some marketing tips, take a look at this presentation, Market @ Your Library:

Marketing @ Your Library™

View more presentations from Nebraska Library commission.

I'm sure there are many presentations here that would be helpful to teachers and consumers as well. I think I followed the steps correctly, but the presentation does not play. The slide number advance, but it seems to be stuck in "Loading."

I used the bubbl to create a visual representation of our personal daylily business. By the activities that I put on it, I could see where we had put our efforts and areas that I'd like to do more of. What I didn't like was that once you'd attached three bubbles to a main one, the next ones were down below, somewhat appearing that they weren't coming from the main point. It's free, but I probably would only use it for very simple representations.

Although I'd used Google docs as a participant at REMC meetings, and have had a few glitches along the way of not seeing documents because they hadn't been shared with me, I had never posted or edited a document there. The process seemed quite intuitive. There are times that I'm at a meeting and don't have my laptop that I could login and share a document that I'd stored there.
Google docs is used in business for collaboration, so it would be good for students to be familiar with it. It certainly saves all the confusion about multiple versions attached to emails.

I subscribed to the Detroit News headlines and to a delicious tag for PhotoShop Elements. I can see the value in being able to customize the information you receive. No one has time to review it all, so sign up just for what you want. It's certainly not a habit yet. I thought I'd set up a reminder for every Friday afternoon at 4:00 p.m. since that isn't my most productive time in the office.

The Lenawee media specialists have been using delicious for a few years for collecting websites that are of interest. Since I already had this site I've been contributing to, I used this time to do some housekeeping (combinging folders "website" and "websites" or "collaborative" and "collaboration."

I'm not particularly interested in a social network for my personal life so I joined the NECC ning since I just got back from the ISTE NECC conference in Washington DC. I invited Kathy Schrock to be my friend. I'll let you know if she accepted. KATHY IS MY FIRST FRIEND!
Twitter makes sense for sending the oneliners when there's not enough time for a note. The length of communication keeps getting shorter over time (letter, postcard, email, text, tweet). Just a reflection on how busy we are, or our priorities have changed.
Children, as well as adults, need to be cautious about how much information they give out. Unfortunately, there are people out there looking for victims.

I have seen these at other sites, and it couldn't have been any easier to do. I'll have to send my blog address to some friends and relatives around the world so I get some international input! I think relationships could be as meaningful as long as the participants are being hones. I think of the one country song, I'm So Much Cooler Online. That could be disappointing if they met face to face. I do know of a couple very successful marriages where the couple first met online, so once again, honesty is the best policy.

I enjoyed reading others' blogs and commenting on them. I think a person would have to be careful if they were critiquing work, because a constructive comment might come across quite negative, and be more harmful than helpful.

Librarians' Song



I was able to do the download, but when I tried to play the lower quality one, there was only audio. When I saved as the mpg4, both audio and video were fine.
If you need a video to initiate a conversation around customer service, watch Angry Librarian. It's great.

There are a lot of great videos with instructional value in uTube, but like anything there are also ones that are not appropriate. I'm able to access it at school, but most buildings can not.

I played around with some of these tools and found them to be fun and creative. My own photos that I downloaded weren't appearing yet in flickr and I had wanted to create a mosaic, but maybe later.

The steps here were to copy the html/edit html above/then preview - pretty easy. I see it's not displaying quite right because of the size of the letters, but didn't want to mess up the html and it wasn't obvious to me where the size was in the code

The process is similar to uploading to an ftp site that I use for my personal webpage, with the additional step of adding tags. Thinking about the tags that someone searching would use is a very important step.

I enjoy looking at Flickr to get ideas for my own photography. I could spend hours browsing and enjoying all of the entries. Certainly the creative commons photos would be beneficial to students and teachers for presentations.

I tried all three ways to add feeds, and unlike the video I thought the first and second ways were easier than the third. I could certainly spend more time finding feeds of interest.

I can certainly see how having all of the information I want coming to me could keep me informed and save me time. I often have magazines stack up that I never get to reading, so I think this could be quite helpful.

The media specialists already have a blog that Tecumseh HS manages where we post the minutes of the meetings. I'd like to use my blog more for posting new resources from CEMaT or links that I've found - some of the things that I typically report on at meetings. Then the links and information would all be in one place.
I think a teacher could use blogs in many ways with students and students would like the interactivity.
The training video was very good. I'd like to also create such tutorials for the online resources we provide.
The concern is primarily the time to do these tasks and deciding what to let go of to allow the time.