The Joys of Learning

It is time to really get into gear. We are up and running with our new (to us) Follett Destiny Automation System. This week I will be presenting the online catalog (OPAC) to the students in the school computer lab. Hopefully everything will work, I always need a back-up plan in case the server is down for any particular class. It always feels that I write two lessons for each week that is scheduled for the lab.

Back to Blogging

It is time to resurrect this blog. After completing the CSLA summer camp 2.0, I have been ignoring this blog because I did not think I could use it for students. I am working with an edublog for student use. I hope the district will allow access at school to Edublogs.

Now that I am a proud newbie student in the Fresno Pacific University Library Teacher Credential program, I need a blog for some of the class work. Yes, you read that correctly, I have decided to become a real teacher librarian. Very exciting.

So, if you are interested, follow along on the journey. It will be exciting.

A few notes on the moving. We successfully separated the computer lab from the library. I believe things are better this way, not so crowded, but a whole different set of problems have evolved.

Something to consider

Tashi Lives.
I came across this blog by randomly clicking "Next Blog" and thought it looked like an interesting use. Some of you may know a lot more about it than I do.

What next?

I officially go back to work on Thursday, August 23. In case you haven't noticed that is really soon.

I am trying to figure out how to use this blog to do my job better. I teach information literacy and computer "skills" to first through sixth grade students in a Hayward, CA public school. The library media period is a prep period for the classroom teachers so I have each class for one 50 minute period each week. We will soon physically separate the library from the computer lab so I need to figure out how to manage the time between the two rooms. The move hasn't happened yet so making the change actually happen will be a challenge in itself.

If anyone out there in blog world has some ideas for using this blog, I would really like to hear from you.

Week 4, Thing #9

I actually did most of this "thing" when I set up my Google Reader Account. Like many people exploring cyberspace, the problem isn't finding information. The problem is organizing and evaluating the information. The 2.0 tools can be helpful but it is easy to get swamped. In using the different searches for blogs, I quickly found myself with too many interesting sites to explore. One that I found very useful was An Action Plan. This is from a university setting, however I particularily liked the "General Principals of Library 2.0" because it clarified for me the goal of using 2.0 technologies to make the library a better place. The statement:
"Libraries make collections available via open, personalized, interactive services that encourage content creation, editing, commenting, bookmarking, rating, tagging, etc. by users."
from the general principals summarizes for me what we are trying to accomplish.

The main lesson I learned from the technorati tutorial is to use tags often and carefully.