Kicking and Screaming into the 21st Century

Podcasts…something my children are familiar and comfortable with, but me, not so much. Oh, I’m not scared of them or anything, it’s just that I see them as potential time-takers and I don’t have much to spare. So, I haven’t really pursued podcasts in any meaningful way.

So, for Thing #3, I gotta do podcasts! I was reading Cathy Nelson’s post and she recommended the K-12 Online Conference as a useful podcast. It seems tailor-made for me, in that I can pick and choose among offerings, only listen to what I really want to learn about and do it all for free. I subscribed to this one in my feed reader, which means that it will be right there ready for me to listen to anytime I open Google Reader.

Then I was reading Heather Loy’s post about Thing 3 and I found ANOTHER podcast to get. This one is Nancy Keane’s Booktalks Quick and Simple. I subscribed to this one via iTunes. It was very simple to subscribe to, and I even found some other podcasts that I added. Unfortunately, you can see that this has the potential to use up even more of my not-very-available free time, which is what I was afraid of in the first place. It is a vicious circle!! However, I consider all of this to be PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, which is important to me, so i shall persevere. Wish me luck!!

As part of SLJ’s 2.0 Learning Experience, participants are asked to set up a feed reader. This is an easy one for me, because I have been using Google Reader for months. I LOVE it. Before I started using Goggle Reader, I had a Favorites folder of all the blogs I read and I would go to each website daily to see if there was a new post. It took FOREVER and many days I would just skip it because of the time involved. Then, I discovered Google Reader and my blog reading became easier and much more manageable. I learned how to set up folders and moved all my blogs into subject folders, like “mom stuff”, “school library media” and “funny stuff”. Not very imaginitive titles, I know, but it works for me. I subscribe to over 50 blog feeds, and they are well-organized into folders. When I go to my feed page, I can quickly scan and see which blogs have new posts.

If you haven’t tried using a feed reader, you should. It will change the way you feel about blogs.

Well, I have arrived at Web 2.0 – scary and exciting at the same time. I am a school library media specialist in South Carolina. I have spent the last 17 years in a high school library, but this year I begin my career as a MIDDLE SCHOOL media specialist. Talk about scary and exciting at the same time….Somehow, the idea of learning all about new tools and technologies seems to fit with starting out in a new school environment. In a mad-scientist sort of way, I will get to experiment on my new teachers and students, to try out on them the things I am learning here. So, I guess this blog will be a witness, of sorts, to my learning and teaching. Wish me luck, and check back for more posts.