What would I do if I couldn't keep up with my nephew's kids as one of them celebrates a birthday or graduates from kindergarten? Social Networking is a wonderful way to keep in touch with family and to find great ideas to use at work. I also use Facebook and Twitter to let companies know how I feel about their products or to ask stores to carry certain items.
I belong to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Teacher-Librarian NLing and Pinterest. It was joining this last one where I found and modified a trivia game for the Hunger Games back in the early spring.
Another site that I joined was paper.li. I LOVE this daily newspaper that has filtered out everything except what I am interested in reading.
On Twitter you can find me at DeborahLyman@Bay119. I use this to keep up with various publishers, Goodreads, etc....and those are just the professionals I look at! LOL
Unfortunately the major social networking sites are blocked here at Columbia High School. The tech guys haven't figured out that Pinterest is a networking site, or I'm sure that would be blocked, too. Besides Pinterest here at work, I can also access the Teacher-librarianNLing network. I really like that network for great ideas and helping other librarians solve problems.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Cool 10 and I'm Finally Finished!!!
http://lymande.wix.com/columbiahslibrary Please take a look at a work in progress. After trying out many web page design sites I chose this one. It was by far the easiest to navigate. The few that were offered by Google I found to be cumbersome. I'm excited about using this one and the design I chose. Before Sept. I'd like to add the links for the databases and have more photos up of the library. I plan on including plants in each of the photos. For now, these are from a perennial garden I kept up for 15 years. Alas, I no longer have it now that I'm in a condo. It's container gardening all the way now.
Cool Tools was fun to do this year and I learned a lot. Some technology sites I'll use. Next year should be just as much fun learning about all that is coming down the pike.
Cool Tools was fun to do this year and I learned a lot. Some technology sites I'll use. Next year should be just as much fun learning about all that is coming down the pike.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Thing #9 eReaders and lending
Columbia HS owns 16 Kindles and 5 Nooks. The Kindles have 54 books loaded on them both purchased and "free" through Amazon. One Nook has 20 books on it. The other 4 haven't got anything on them yet because they are brand new.
Our Nook and Kindles have been circulating all year. Both students and teachers have signed them out. The students need a signed permission slip from home in order to borrow a reader.
During the year I have shown both teachers and students how to use Overdrive through the QuestarIII SLS site. At this point I'm not sure how many are actually using it.
Individual teachers who own their own Kindles have practiced "sharing" books with us through the Amazon site. We have found though that either the books aren't allowed to be borrowed or once the book is borrowed it can't be loaned again.
For this assignment I checked out BookFriend.me for the Nooks. Since I personally own a Nook Tablet I thought this would be a cool site to get to know so I'd be able to borrow books from Nook Friends. The other site I have been navigating through is Lendle.
Both sites had to be set up at home because the school's server is just too slow and having a hard time handling these. I have found in the early stages of exploration, the BookFriend to be more user-friendly. Lendle just seems to be more complicated to use at least for me.
I have decided to look at the Nook as a reader to hold onto because Barnes and Noble is a local company and very easy to communicate with. As the Kindles break or wear out we plan to replace them with Nooks. The Kindle support, to say the least isn't school friendly and they are out on the west coast.
Our Nook and Kindles have been circulating all year. Both students and teachers have signed them out. The students need a signed permission slip from home in order to borrow a reader.
During the year I have shown both teachers and students how to use Overdrive through the QuestarIII SLS site. At this point I'm not sure how many are actually using it.
Individual teachers who own their own Kindles have practiced "sharing" books with us through the Amazon site. We have found though that either the books aren't allowed to be borrowed or once the book is borrowed it can't be loaned again.
For this assignment I checked out BookFriend.me for the Nooks. Since I personally own a Nook Tablet I thought this would be a cool site to get to know so I'd be able to borrow books from Nook Friends. The other site I have been navigating through is Lendle.
Both sites had to be set up at home because the school's server is just too slow and having a hard time handling these. I have found in the early stages of exploration, the BookFriend to be more user-friendly. Lendle just seems to be more complicated to use at least for me.
I have decided to look at the Nook as a reader to hold onto because Barnes and Noble is a local company and very easy to communicate with. As the Kindles break or wear out we plan to replace them with Nooks. The Kindle support, to say the least isn't school friendly and they are out on the west coast.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Thing 8# Databases and Search Tools.
The students and teachers are excited to use SweetSearch.com. Both have found it much less cumbersome than weeding through everything at Google or Google Scholar. Even though the College Prep students and PIG students are near completion of their projects this semester we introduced the search tool to them anyway. So far, some of them have found it very useful for those last minute entries they may have needed to polish up their presentations.
In East Greenbush, especially in the high school, we rely on the webmaster at Questar to handle any revisions and updates on our webpages. I have asked the webmaster to add SweetSearch to our library's webpage as well as WSWHE. We already link to Questar III and Overdrive but WSWHE has many other areas our students and teachers can explore. I love BrainPop at WSWHE's site. What a great search tool. I can see upper elementary and middle school students having a ball with that.
Ed Kilmartin is an assistant principal in our HS and he heads the technology committee. Through out this assignment I forwarded him anything that has excited me. SweetSearch was the most recent and he wrote right back and told me how much he liked it as well. When we saw each other in the hallway later in the week he asked me where I was finding all these great resources. I forwarded him the entire Cool Tools page to let him browse through all of our Things and blogs. I can't wait to hear what he has to say about it.
In East Greenbush, especially in the high school, we rely on the webmaster at Questar to handle any revisions and updates on our webpages. I have asked the webmaster to add SweetSearch to our library's webpage as well as WSWHE. We already link to Questar III and Overdrive but WSWHE has many other areas our students and teachers can explore. I love BrainPop at WSWHE's site. What a great search tool. I can see upper elementary and middle school students having a ball with that.
Ed Kilmartin is an assistant principal in our HS and he heads the technology committee. Through out this assignment I forwarded him anything that has excited me. SweetSearch was the most recent and he wrote right back and told me how much he liked it as well. When we saw each other in the hallway later in the week he asked me where I was finding all these great resources. I forwarded him the entire Cool Tools page to let him browse through all of our Things and blogs. I can't wait to hear what he has to say about it.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Cool Tools #7
This was a harder one to complete because so many of the options were blocked at school for one reason or another. For an example, Scribd. was blocked for "pornography". I looked at it at home to see what it was all about and found it to be a great site for downloading books or at the very least, reading an excerpt from a book.
I am very familiar with all the Google options and daily I tell the students to use Google Docs if they have an email for the username. Using Docs will save them from remembering to bring a flashdrive. We do have a problem at school with Docs because the server is old and whatever Docs runs we can't do powerpoints. Working in the word documents is fine.
For Cool Tools #7 I chose to learn more about two bulletin board sites, Pinterest and Stixy. Both options open up another way for the students to present their projects to the class. So far Pinterest is available at school. I don't know about Stixy since I accessed that at the house. During the work week I will try to access it at work to see if it's available. My concern is if the tech dept. finds out about these bulletin board sites they may pull them believing they are just another social network.
If Stixy is available at school, I may work with the art dept. One of the teachers has a project where the students have to research a photographer. This bulletin board site would be a great place to organize the photographs.
I am very familiar with all the Google options and daily I tell the students to use Google Docs if they have an email for the username. Using Docs will save them from remembering to bring a flashdrive. We do have a problem at school with Docs because the server is old and whatever Docs runs we can't do powerpoints. Working in the word documents is fine.
For Cool Tools #7 I chose to learn more about two bulletin board sites, Pinterest and Stixy. Both options open up another way for the students to present their projects to the class. So far Pinterest is available at school. I don't know about Stixy since I accessed that at the house. During the work week I will try to access it at work to see if it's available. My concern is if the tech dept. finds out about these bulletin board sites they may pull them believing they are just another social network.
If Stixy is available at school, I may work with the art dept. One of the teachers has a project where the students have to research a photographer. This bulletin board site would be a great place to organize the photographs.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Using Cool Tools #6
Finally I get a chance to try out Ping. Every time I'm logged in at iTunes, Ping shows up on the side. This assignment gave me an opportunity to see what it was. I linked it to every social site that I've got an account at! My e-mail will be overflowing.
Readability is a wonderful addition. There are so many news sites with many ads floating around the sides or videos that annoyingly start playing right in the middle of reading. This will hopefully cut down on much of that nonsense. I'd like to see them add other eReaders to their list besides the Kindle.
Unfortunately both of these tools aren't accessible at school. Yes, we can get to them, but signing up and actually using them had to be completed here at home. Readability is a download which is a no-no on a server.
I will put these out to the faculty to try at home and as I have conversations with some of the students I'll mention that they may want to try these on their personal electronics.
Readability is a wonderful addition. There are so many news sites with many ads floating around the sides or videos that annoyingly start playing right in the middle of reading. This will hopefully cut down on much of that nonsense. I'd like to see them add other eReaders to their list besides the Kindle.
Unfortunately both of these tools aren't accessible at school. Yes, we can get to them, but signing up and actually using them had to be completed here at home. Readability is a download which is a no-no on a server.
I will put these out to the faculty to try at home and as I have conversations with some of the students I'll mention that they may want to try these on their personal electronics.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Funny Thing About That Old Resume
Last week at a grant-writing meeting between me, the head of special ed. in our district, the school's nurse and the librarian from Albany Medical Center, we were asked to submit a resume with the grant.
Tonight I dug out that old resume that hasn't seen the light of day in 14 years! First off, I was stunned to realize it's been that long since I first stepped into the job in East Greenbush after 17 years at Ichabod Crane. The second interesting item I came across was the section on "technology experience." My, my, my how that has changed. There was so much more to add in just the Internet-based category alone, i.e. blogging, social networking, etc. not to mention all the new gadgets in technology that needed to be included.
When I first started teaching back in the early 80s I remember thinking to myself, "Computers? I am frightened about this new machine." All I saw in my mind were my college buddies slaving over their computer programming homework and thinking at the time, this is not for me. Now these PET computers were making their way into our classrooms and we were forced to learn to use them. Boy, was I wrong.
Today, I don't know how I'd live without this Dell computer with Microsoft 7 and all of the wonderful things it can do for me from writing up a resume without having to use white-out or carbon paper to uploading and scanning the latest photos from the Daytona 500 weekend from my iPhone.
Who would have thought 31 years ago I would be writing a blog, surfing the Net for a present for my Mom's 77th birthday rather than running to the store or keeping up with friends and "not-so-friends" from the high school years on a social network? It's truly amazing and I'm so happy to be in a field of work that forces me to keep current with all the new technology that is still evolving.
I don't want to be my grandmother who couldn't figure out how to work her new turntable back in the 70s nor do I want to be my mother who refuses to use the computer for more than e-mail and an occasional game of Solitaire.
Tonight I dug out that old resume that hasn't seen the light of day in 14 years! First off, I was stunned to realize it's been that long since I first stepped into the job in East Greenbush after 17 years at Ichabod Crane. The second interesting item I came across was the section on "technology experience." My, my, my how that has changed. There was so much more to add in just the Internet-based category alone, i.e. blogging, social networking, etc. not to mention all the new gadgets in technology that needed to be included.
When I first started teaching back in the early 80s I remember thinking to myself, "Computers? I am frightened about this new machine." All I saw in my mind were my college buddies slaving over their computer programming homework and thinking at the time, this is not for me. Now these PET computers were making their way into our classrooms and we were forced to learn to use them. Boy, was I wrong.
Today, I don't know how I'd live without this Dell computer with Microsoft 7 and all of the wonderful things it can do for me from writing up a resume without having to use white-out or carbon paper to uploading and scanning the latest photos from the Daytona 500 weekend from my iPhone.
Who would have thought 31 years ago I would be writing a blog, surfing the Net for a present for my Mom's 77th birthday rather than running to the store or keeping up with friends and "not-so-friends" from the high school years on a social network? It's truly amazing and I'm so happy to be in a field of work that forces me to keep current with all the new technology that is still evolving.
I don't want to be my grandmother who couldn't figure out how to work her new turntable back in the 70s nor do I want to be my mother who refuses to use the computer for more than e-mail and an occasional game of Solitaire.
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