Monday, April 27, 2009

Fair Warning to Followers

To all my professional friends who are following this because of 23 Things... This blog is going personal. My daughter and her husband have recently started blogging and were surprised to find out that I had been doing it for 6 months already. So this is your warning. This blog is about to go "family" very little professional content will be found. There.... you've had your warning ... now don't blame me if you get bored -- my life just isn't that exciting.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Friday, April 3, 2009

Thing 22 -- Staying Current

Time for reflection. Hmmm. I was really looking forward to 23 Things. I mentioned it at every staff meeting from the NEFLIN Annual Meeting until it actually started. Did it live up to my expectations? OK brutal honesty time. It was too much. I consider myself pretty tech savy and it overwhelmed me. Too much in each thing. WAY too much. I feel more overwhelmed now than I did in January. I'm like, "why bother" -- I can't keep up with all the new stuff. I'm having trouble cherry picking what is useful for me. This is someone who was using myspace, facebook, delicious, youtube, rss feeds and podcasts. I can't imagine how anyone to whom all 23 things were new handled the onslaught. If I were to do it for a group of newbies I would do it over a year. A new thing posted every Monday -- small bites.
Will I keep up my blog. Why? People followed it because of 23 Things. I'm not working so what would I have to say that professional friends would find interesting?
Positives? I did add several RSS feeds and started using Google Reader rather than MyYahoo. I had to discontinue my Life Hacker feed as it was just too prolific and had far too many posts. I signed up for PaperBack Swap and have already mailed off a paperback of mine and received on from someone else.
What did I learn today (actually yesterday since it is too early for much leaning today)? I do not want to move to Kingsport. It has a huge Chemical Plant and a stinky paper mill. See not very library oriented. I did visit the library, however. Reading rooms on 2 floors with high or normal ceilings. Stacks are on three floors and low ceilinged (height of the 2 floors plus a little lower level divided by 3). The floor creaks alarmingly and you have to wonder if the historic building was designed to carry the load of a library. Sitting out bad weather today -- doing Things, reading and cross stitch. On to Cleveland, TN tomorrow.

Thing 21 Student 2.0 tools

I compared Assignment Calculator and Research Project Calculator. The dates for each came out similar with what seemed to be a little more time in the definition portion in Research Project Calculator. I also liked that the RPC had an evaluation section for after it was over. However I did like the e-mail alerts available with AC. I looked at the teacher tools available . I did not download any of them as I am traveling and the hotel Internet connection is not the strongest. I would like to take a closer look at Boolean Basics and Google Seach Tip Sheet.
I can't really see using these personally other than to get suggested dates. I used a white board in my office for similar project tracking and prefer something before my eyes. I'm just a visual learner.