ESC Thing 12, Week 5

For some reason this gave me just as much of a hard time this time as it did in the spring. Creating your own Searchroll is not difficult. What is difficult for me is finding it once I have created it. Here is a link to my Rollyo account. I created a searchroll titled Young Adult Lit. It was a little confusing at first, not creating the searchroll, that part is easy. What is difficult for me was finding my searchroll once it was created. I was able to see my searchroll as a category in my Rollyo page but was not quite sure how to link it for this assignment. Kept at it and eventually figured it out. Is there an easier way to find our searchrolls? Here is the link to my Searchroll.
Every year I make it a point to attend department meetings to remind teachers what the library has to offer and how we can help them achieve their objectives. I have so many teachers who would love Rollyo and would either create their own Searchrolls or would like me to do it for them.

Wordle

Ms. Ovalle suggested I import my del.icio.us account to Wordle and view all of my tags as a word cloud. Thank you, it was very easy to do and my tags look great.

Just for Fun

As I attempt to keep up with all of the blogs that I like to read I came across this site, Wordle, where you can make "word clouds" from words that you provide. Has anyone else noticed how some companies are using these "word clouds" as a marketing tool?

ESC Thing 11, Week 5

Since I have been down this path before, 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 great and I find myself going back to it often. 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.

Maybe I'm really dense but I just don't get Twitter, it's my age maybe. Ning is more my speed, I have joined the Texas School Librarians group and while I am not as active as some other members, I confess to lurking.

ESC Thing 10, Week 5

This is my favorite of all the free graphics generators. Comic Strip Generator is just great. Great for school newsletters or to add that little bit of spark to your blog or school web page. I started exploring some of the other generators mentioned in Generator Blog and tagged many for further use.
Made with free image tools @ TXT2PIC.com

ESC Thing #9

Looking for new blogs to read is always fun. Different people often commenting on the same topics really interests me. As long as the RSS feed button is available, and the blog interests me, it is easy to add to my Google reader. Google is always my favorite blog search tool and I have it set up on my iGoogle page. Technorati is easy to use and I have recommended it to others.

ESC Thing #8

When I first took 23 Things with Spring Branch ISD, I set up my own Google Reader and linked it to my iGoogle page. It is easy to get lost reading all of the news and fun stuff that I subscribed to as well as the library related blogs that I added as part of the assignment. Since setting up my Reader account I check it daily to keep up with all of the blogs that I want to keep up with.

ESC Thing # 7

Posting about something technology related is difficult in the sense of where do I begin? As I continue my Web 2.0 quest, the realization of how much there is to learn hits me in the face like a sledgehammer. How to serve our school population in the best possible way is always my ultimate goal. Converting our library web page into a Wiki is something I have been pondering. Do we add RSS feeds to the page? Would it be possible to create IGoogle accounts for our students so they could set up their own personalized pages? How do we make sure that our library databases would be properly utilized by our students? So many questions and so much yet to learn.

ESC Thing # 6

So many possibilities as I continue to explore Flikr. I liked going over some of the toys. I really enjoyed the badge maker, CD cover creator and the trading card maker. Would love to use the badge maker with our library helpers. We could probably have some kind of contest where we could have kids create their own card and we would judge the most creative. Endless possibilities.

ESC Thing #5

Flikr is a great site and I love all of the tools and applications it has to offer. It is extremely user friendly, you can upload your photos in a snap and it even gives you the option to blog. As I uploaded a recent picture I took in the library, it was easy to post a blog and it was sent directly to my blog. My only concern is, when do people find the time to sit down and apply everything Flikr has to offer?

Senior Bulletin Board

Senior Bulletin Board
Originally uploaded by sandd23

Every year we have a bulletin board for our Seniors to sign. The past couple of years we have added their Freshmen class pictures so they can see just how much they have changed. They really get a kick out of seeing their Freshmen pictures.

ESC Thing # 3 and 4

My blog has been up for a while but I can say it was a breeze to set up. Setting up my Avatar was just fun. I've worn that outfit for a while so I might change it up a bit. The only problem is I love what I'm wearing, it looks like something I like to wear. My poodle, Cosita, looks great doesn't she? Since setting up this blog I have also set one up in Edublogs which actually gets through our filter. Here is the link to our school blog , Porter Reads.

ESC Thing # 2 Lifelong Learning

After viewing the 7 habits of highly successful people I began to think of the way I learn. As a former teacher and now librarian structure tends to be important to me. I consider myself a lifelong learner with a pretty good stash in my learning toolbox. My weakest habit would be having confidence in myself. Not so much as an effective learner, which I think I am, but just confidence that the task is sometimes beyond my ability. Once I get over the mental block I work extra hard to succeed.
This is what I wrote the first time around and it still holds true. Learning about new technology is always fun for me. When I participated in 23 Things the first time I was scared to read ahead, it sounded so intimidating and beyond my scope of knowledge, but I finished and loved it. Now I know that with a little bit of help nothing is beyond my ability and new technology is just another challenge to overcome.

ESC 23 Things

Here I go again. This was so much fun the first time I decided to give it another go. It's like reading a book twice, you discover passages you might have skipped over and suddenly the book seems like new. Thank you Ms. Ovalle for allowing us the opportunity to learn about all of the new aspects of Web 2.0 technology.