Meme: Passion Quilt

VWB from A Library by Any Other Name tagged me to participate in this social meme. I must admit that I had never even heard of the term until today . Basically, a meme is a virtual chain letter. Usually I never pass anything like this along but I thought this would be interesting.

Here are the rules:

Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about...and give your picture a short title.

Title your blog post "Meme: Passion Quilt" and link back to this blog entry.

Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pounce.

Las Senoritas uploaded on October 30, 2007
by catface 3 from FlickrCC.

Our school is 99% Hispanic. Many of our students are recent immigrants and non-English speakers. Culture plays an important role in our students' identity. I see education as the way for our students to advance and succeed in our society while not forgetting where they come from.

Now I get to tag 5 people. Christine Reed, Mary Lou John, Maricela Sierra, Anne Cespedes and Lynda Corbeil. Tag, you're it. I'm hoping that if you do not currently have a blog this will inspire you to create one. Speaking for myself, I'm hooked.

Thing # 23

To sum everything up:

1. My favorite sites are del.icio.us, all the image generators and LibraryThing.
2. This program has made me realize that we can never stop learning. Just when you think you
have mastered something you realize how much more there is to learn.
3. What was unexpected for me was how much I learned and how much I enjoyed the program.
4. For me, the format was perfect. Self-paced and very non-threatening. Offering the program
over the summer might bolster attendance and completion.
5. If another discovery program was offered in the future similar to this one, I would definitely
participate.
6. The more I learned during this experience the more I realized how much more I had to learn.
Technology is a great thing. Beam me up Scottie.

Thing #23

What a difference a few weeks can make. I have learned so much and realize that there is still so much more for me to learn. This is what I love about my profession, it is constantly changing and the ride is so much fun. I have been informing my faculty about what I have been learning through my newsletters. There are plans for an inservice and I am very excited about sharing what I have learned.

Our school district filters blogs, but Edublogs is not filtered. Our library has already set up another blog, Porter Reads, and are encouraging our students to visit and leave comments. It is still in the very early stages but we are very excited about our new blog.

The format of 23Things was very non-threatening for me. If there was something I did not understand I could read other blogs or ask for help until I figured it out.

Many many thanks to the Spring Branch school district for allowing this librarian from South Texas to tag along in this fun project. Hopefully our school district or Region One ESC will offer something just as good for Valley librarians.

Here it is, thanks to my great sister-in-law who did some sort of magic, my Photostory video is finally up.

Thing # 22

You know, I just couldn't quite muster up the nerve to join MySpace. Ning, however, had me at "Hello". So many groups, so many choices. Who knew? I have learned so much while participating in 23 Things.

Explored a few of the groups, the ones that really interested me are the professional groups. Texas School Librarians and YA Lit in School Libraries are two that I will join. As I looked through High School Teacher Librarians the first post was by a librarian in the Bronx who seems to have issues with incoming freshmen students that are not motivated and have little knowledge about the library. It seems that those scavenger hunts we all use with freshmen are not quite working for him. It really doesn't matter how far away we are from each other, we all seem to have the same concerns and are dealing with similar situations.

Thing # 21

I surrender!!! You have got to believe that I read all that I was supposed to read, I created a podcast on Audicity and a video on Photostory, which is so easy to use. What was not easy to do is to upload my podcast or my video into this blog. When frustration hits I walk away and gather my thoughts. Well my thoughts are neatly gathered and I still can't make it work. Both of my endeavors sound and look really nice and I am very proud of myself. I only wish everyone else could view my accomplishments. So sorry to disappoint. I will continue to get this to work. Tried saving as different extensions and it still would not help. Any suggestions?

Thing # 19

Drumroll....the winners are!!! I recognized quite a few of the Web 2.0 winners. Thank you so much 23 Things. Explored quite a few of them and here are some of my favorites.

Biblio.com was already one of my favorite sites, I've used it to look for rare and out of print books. I did a search for the book Stories that must not die and found some available. LibraryThing is now familiar to me also. As a lover of music I had to investigate Pandora. This is one cool site. I entered Van Morrison and then sat back and listened to some pretty great songs.

del.icio.us which I can't seem to live without now is a winner but we all know that. As I am currently trying to help my daughter plan a senior trip the travel sites were a great help. Germany anyone?

Thing # 20

I'm a little bit out of order but I wanted to do this first. YouTube is blocked by our school district but TeacherTube is not. Located quite a few videos I would like to use both with faculty and students. Really couldn't resist this video. My youngest daughter had to recreate a Picasso when she was in the 6th grade, she actually did a pretty good job. Our Art department would love to show their students a video like this one. They are very good with technology and would jump at the chance to show their students something different.

Thing # 18

Okay, so I downloaded OpenOffice and began to play. Maybe it's just me but it was very easy to use. Microsoft Office anyone? I really like the fact that it downloads to my computer and is not stored elsewhere. Google Docs seems more like a Wiki to me, my opinion I may be wrong. I plan to play a little more with Google Docs and see in what other ways it would be useful in our high school setting.
What I really find cool about OpenOffice is the fact that students could download it from home. Many times our students have computers that don't come with Office installed and use Works instead. This would be a great product for them to use.