Thing #8 Share Your Creations

Okay, I wimped out and took the quickest, easiest task. I did look at all of the tools and they are incredible - like, no Powerpoint? No problem! Who'd a thought?! And the eFolios look like THE way to go. I'm just trying to get through as many of the 23 Things as I can before our deadline. I definitely plan to share what I've learned about these tools with my coworkers (hopefully they'll be impressed). There are plenty of ways that teachers and students could make use of the tools and I think the kids would have a blast playing with them.

Thing # 7 Web 2.0 Communication Tools

I use e-mail at school to communicate with the rest of the staff. Sometimes, if I need to be sure that the message is received right away, I'll call on the phone, but otherwise e-mail is the preferred method of communication. I could use e-mail to send overdues out, but I haven't tried that, mainly because I don't have addresses for our students. Managing e-mail is always a challenge. I like to keep my inbox clean - if I have to scroll to see everything, there's too much! I empty the sent folder and the trash at least once a day.
Online reference - this isn't something that I would do at my school, but I know it's been used at public libraries and college/university libraries, using IM. I've also seen it done more simply, just using e-mail. I would have trouble with IM because it takes me too long to type and that would be frustrating to me (although if I did lots of it, no doubt my typing would improve).
Personally, I don't care to text or chat. For one thing, I'm too cheap to pay for texting. I visited with my 26 year old son about these tools and asked him how and why he uses them. He told me he texts sometimes because he has bad reception inside his home - also, he uses it when he doesn't REALLY want to talk to the person receiving his message. He said he doesn't use IM much anymore (did when he was in college) but he knows some offices that rely on it - rather than calling each other on the phone, (and when they need something that provides faster interaction than e-mail) employees use IM. I would be more likely to pick up the phone, but I can definitely see how this could work, too.
I've registered for a MINITEX Webinar next week on the Discovering Collection. I recently participated in a Webinar on the newest update to my library management program. I can't say that I enjoyed it - the presenter really moved too quickly through too much information - I know she had only so much time to cover the information, but to me it was almost overwhelming. Participants had the opportunity to send in questions, which were then dealt with by the presenter. Let's put it this way: it was better than nothing, but definitely not as good as a live training session would have been. Also, I had numerous distractions (people coming into the library) while I was trying to listen to the Webinar. There are certainly challenges to planning good webinars. When they are done well, however, they can be real time and money savers.

Finally Figured It Out!!!

I thought I'd never get this to work - found out it had to be entered under the Edit Html tab.

Thing #6 Online Image Generator

Here is my trading card. I couldn't figure out how to edit the font - also, I think I should have cropped the photo first, but I don't want to take the time right now. So this is my best "quick" effort. And check out the license plate - don't know why it shows up on a white background - hmm. I can imagine that some of these things would be fun to do with my students at school. We could make Dewey Decimal Classification cards and lots of other things, too. How about a license to read?! Lots of possibilites...

Even More Fun With Flickr

Thing #5 More Fun With Flickr

Here is my puzzle picture!

Thing #4 Photosharing with Flickr

The Common Craft video explained the why of photo-sharing Web sites quite nicely. This was much easier than I anticipated - and lots of fun, too! It certainly does encourage me to take more pictures. I could use this to share pictures of my library media center, of wall displays I've made in the easy reading area, and I could share pictures of projects my students have created - the sixth-graders have made some great "wanted" posters for the fantasy books they've read this year. I could add pictures of books that I feature (I'm thinking of those Maud Hart Lovelace books or the new award winners).