The Bubbly Librarian

I am totally enjoying my participation in SLJ’s All Together Now project!  I haven’t exactly followed the steps in order, so last night I went back to Thing 8 – Social Networking. One of the suggested activities was to join Facebook, which I had been hesitant to do.  Aren’t I too old for Facebook? Apparently, the answer is a resounding no.

I have been a member for less than twenty-four hours and I am already friends with two of my favorite authors, some much admired fellow librarians, and have discovered an old college classmate who is running for state senator! This is so much fun! I am operating on less than 6 hours of sleep because I was setting up my profile. 

I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover many legitimate professional groups and fellow librarians here. I’ve been wanting to be able to offer parent classes on social networking and I think it will be much easier if I have a presence of my own to use as an example.  Knowing what’s here will also help me address internet safety issues with the children using actual examples.

Summer ends in three days.  I’ve learned so much, but now I have to get back onto a school schedule.  That means it’s bedtime. NO MORE FACEBOOK TONIGHT!

My daughter has been scolding me for failing to update my blog.  I’ve been busy building my Moodle site, which has its own blog and wiki features and isn’t blocked at school.  Blogging is definitely going to slow down as school begins.

Thing # 10 in SLJ’s All Together Now was Twitter.  I set up my Twitter account back in January but I haven’t done a lot with it.  I got my brother to sign up with me, but he didn’t last long.  He quit after a couple of months because he couldn’t see the point. I follow some library and educational tech folks that I admire, as well as my sister and a couple of friends.  I thought maybe, with it being one of the SLJ “things” that I might have an ah-ha moment and finally get the hoopla.  So far, not so much. My Twitter name is msmolly27, in case you want to follow my oh-so-exciting life.

Yes, it is sort of cool to check in and see that my sister must be trying a new recipe and is wondering if she really has to follow the cooling directions.  It’s fun to notice that someone else is doing the same thing I am at the same time. It is cool that I can follow Barack Obama, but it would be cooler if HE was doing the update and included the mundane stuff. 

I do find useful links through Twitter occasionally, but I wonder how many I miss. I don’t click on many of the posted links because they are not typically accompanied by a lot of descriptive information. That’s the downside of the 140 character limit.

I discovered Tweet What You Eat, which is exactly what it sounds like, a place to post what you eat when you eat it.  The point, I think, is to keep you from downing a whole bag of Hershey’s Miniature candy bars in one day, because it would be embarrassing to post that for all the world to see. But that assumes total honesty.  I do follow and post TWYE, but if you think I really Tweet everything I eat,  you don’t know me very well.

Most importantly, Twitter is blocked at school, which means that by the time I get online, I’ll be hours behind everyone’s updates. The reality is that, even with the ability to send and receive updates with my cell phone, my day to day use of Twitter is not likely to continue after September 1.

Will Richardson wrote a provocative post about Twitter on his blog.  If you are at all interested in Twitter, I highly recommending reading his post as well as the ensuing comments.

 For those of you who have been working on learning Web 2.0 this summer, PBwiki offers a challenge with the potential to win $1000 in school supplies.  At the very least, everyone who enters and accomplished a few basic tasks will be awarded a free upgrade to a premium account. 

I’ve been intending to create a wiki for book sharing.  This challenge actually got me started. 

Has anyone done any research on how the plethora of information available on the Internet affects those with ADD?  I sat down two hours ago to accomplish one specific task; to get directions to an appointment I have next week. Here I sit, still online having wandered down many different paths.  I’ve read a few blogs, which had links I followed and then shared with friends. I considered copy and pasting my history here, but it is far too long. I did get some actual work done on my Moodle site, but in reality, I probably only spent about 20 minutes on that.

There are dirty dishes in the sink and clean sheets that need to go on the bed before I can sleep.  

I have lesson plans to write. The last time I sat down to write them, I caught myself wandering.  It’s sooo easy to slip from looking for a specific resource into browsing the links that come up.  How do students with attention problems manage? Do you teach them strategies for staying on task?  (Can you teach them to me?) I used to justify the browsing as educational, but some days it really does hinder productivity.

Part of me wants start looking for the research, but my shoulders are balking.  I think I must be hunching over the keyboard or something.  Besides, it’s time for bed.  

My new school is introducing Moodle as an instructional tool.  I was invited to the training even though I am not officially employed until 9/2.  The first part of the training was Thursday and I’ve spent some time working on my site.  I’ve never used Moodle before, but I think I’m going to like it.  My current roadblock involves trying to come up with a catchy, interesting, paragraph to describe my course. Any suggestions?

So far, my favorite part of Moodle is the calendar. I used to try to maintain a monthly calendar of author’s birthdays and special days (like Talk Like a Pirate Day), but too often I would get busy and the calendar would go up late. With Moodle, I can add all the special dates I want for the whole year, now, before the the daily schedule gets overwhelming.

I also like the survey and glossary features they showed in the training, but I haven’t figured out how to use them yet.  I think these features will offer a fun way for the kids to demonstrate what they’ve learned. I had hoped to jump right and start blogging with the fifth graders, but I think I’ll use these Moodle features first to get my feet wet.

Do any of you have suggestions for interesting ways you’ve used Moodle with your elementary students?