Happy Thanksgiving!

An Old Irish Blessing

May love and laughter light your days, and warm your heart and home. May good and faithful friends be yours, wherever you may roam. May peace and plenty bless your world with joy that long endures. May all life's passing seasons bring the best to you and yours!

Endings & Beginnings

Wow, it's hard to believe that Project Play (Semester 1) is winding down. I remember feeling nervous about adding one more thing to my plate. These weeks have been so informative. It has been well worth investing the time to learn these new ideas. I am so IN for the second semester. Kudos to the instructors for a job well done! I relate to the remarks of Stef who is wondering about learning thresholds. As an educator, I know that new learning occurs when the task in not too easy nor is the task too challenging. That is very difficult to gauge when there are so many of us participating with differing prior knowledge bases. I would encourage you, during Semester 2, to keep doing what you are doing. Your assignments were offered to us in a range--try this OR this and also had "extras" that one could try or not. That flexibility,I felt, was both innovative and respectful!
How does one pick a favorite week? All of the weeks were FUN! If forced, I choose week 7. I am enjoying Library Thing very much and I thought the Dummies book template was hilarious! I have been keeping up with Shelfari and Goodreads.com--they are great for learning about reading tastes and great books. They help me both professionally & personally. I would like to utilize Survey Monkey at some point. I use Doodle all the time (not sure if we learned that in class or not) which I feel is a fabulous tool for a person like me who is involved in SO MANY teams.
Sometimes I feel smothered by all the exciting technological opportunities that I have to sift through. Having Project Play give me direction has been marvelous. Imagining all the creative minds that are out there coming up with these social networking opportunities blows me away! Slowly, but surely, I am reaching out there to be a part of these on-line communities. My heart is full to think about all the sharing, generosity, goodwill and peace that happens because of the web!

This wonderful afternoon

I was driving this afternoon and saw this billboard in the country--AWESOME! I love the Dalai Lama. It says, "Doesn't just wish for peace. He works for it. Hope. Pass it on. The Foundation for a Better Life." I felt my spirits uplifted immediately. Then I went to give blood and I have reached the two gallon milestone--yippee--such a great feeling. I encourage everyone to give blood if they are able. Finally, for someone who for the longest time believed that LOL stood for "Lots of Love" I found a great link for e.mail/text messaging shorthand. It is Hints and Things.
Maybe it can help you to get with it, too. Ha ha! TAFN

Back in the Saddle again with wikis!

What an exciting morning! First, I learned a new word, "outlier". I LOVE Wikipedia. It is often my first source for information on anything. I found the Wikipedia page about Seymour, WI (the city, not the town) and added a link to our library website. How empowering! I want to further explore the Library Success wiki. What a neat idea to have a place to share and highlight like that. I like a wiki as a place where information is pooled and at your leisure you can examine that information and alter it, give feedback, etc. (The sandbox is fun!)
I totally get what Beth says about the trust issue, only in reverse. I am a little apprehensive about putting my stuff out there and having it tweaked. However, what really makes me fearful is when I am offering and/or making changes. My stomach starts doing flips--I have questions like, "Am I doing this right?" "Is this worth making a negative comment on?" "Should I choose my battles?" "Will Y's feelings be hurt?" I think maybe I'm learning to be TOO political from being a director. Anyway, I'm just being honest. Sometimes I will be completely passive for fear of making a mistake. Character flaw--I know! I am willing to try new things in a "safe" and "welcoming" environment. I'd say blogs are more comfortable than wikis for me at this juncture. How are the other Project Play participants feeling?!

I'm a week behind!

Yikes! I'm a week behind for Project Play. Last week was filled with all sorts of assorted challenges and Project Play fell to the wayside. It's okay. I'm now back on track. I love the idea of tagging and how many people are working on it at once. (folksonomy) The adage, "Two heads are better than one" comes to mind. Multiply that by several thousand and patterns are bound to emerge--cool! How to use that with our patrons? When patrons begin contributing reviews to Infosoup, perhaps tags could be utilized in some way. Maybe tags are being currently utilized with book recommendations on Infosoup? A teacher friend, Joan, introduced me to delicious in May. Here is my link: http://del.icio.us/Emtimmins
You can see that I didn't get very far! However, I LOVE the tags that are attached to despair.com! I liked seeing that 929 other people have a dark sense of humour like me! Reading their comments was interesting but oppressive--so many people, when I began to really think about it, made me feel claustrophobic!
I am really interested in tag clouds. They are both artistic and informational. It is fascinating to see which tags are in the largest font and are therefore the most frequently explored topics. I am interested in Irish news. This tag cloud intrigues me: Ireland's Current Affairs website

Ms. Bijou!

Here is Ms. Bijou, She loves me unconditionally!