redswingproject.org

We were heading from the Rothko Chapel to the Menil this morning and ran across this swing in the park between the two. Of course the kids had to swing for a bit before we went to the museum. On the front of the swing was 'redswingproject.org' and on the back '054' so when we got home, I looked up the website. Turns out they put up swings in urban locations as 'a tribute to the spirit of childhood.'

Get out there and swing like no one's watching!

Thing #8 RSS Feeds and Readers

Here are a few of my favorite feeds:

Found (and it's stuff like this that makes me love Found)

YALSA's podcasts

Google Entertainment News

BBC has a helpful 'how-to' and 'what it is' here.

And if you're into free music: iTunes offers free songs each week. Videos, too.

I've been using the iGoogle page with Google reader. Good stuff.

Thing #7 Cool Google Tools

The most frustrating thing for me about Google is not anything to do with Google itself, but the fact that I love so many aspects of what Google offers (I use so many of these tools already) and I can't use them from 5 a.m. to about 5 p.m. most days. Our district has restricted almost every aspect of the best Google tools since they require you to be logged into your Google account to use them. From alerts (sent to your email) to the notebook (linked to your account) to the calendar (which would be great if I could use the widget that integrates Outlook's calendar with any other iCalendar--like Google's calendar).

Oh, and a thing that's coming up soon is also blocked: StumbleUpon. I wonder what the benefit is for students when the restrictions are so strict. I'll add some sharing of my Google like my Picassa Web Album in Thing 7, Part II which will be coming to a blog near you soon.

For now, feel free to read this article reaffirming the need for school librarians.

Thing #6 Part II

I forgot that I'd meant to put the image of the faux-tivational poster on my blog, so here it is:

Thing #6 Mashups and 3rd Party Sites

CampusExplorer is an example of a mashup I can see being very useful for my kids. Search for your future alma mater by location, degree type or area of study. They include a Google Map with your search results.

Of course, I had to make some things using the fd flickrtoys. There's a picture I took a few weeks ago while we were at the park of a very small snake in the process of attempting to eat a much larger (but still pretty small in the grand scheme of things) tree frog. The snake's ambition, while slightly nauseating for a semi-vegetarian, was admirable. So I had to make one of those motivational posters out of the picture. I also created a librarian trading card and put it on flickr. If you haven't noticed by now, I'm much more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it, hence the avoidance of my real image in any of these fun little tools and apps.

I wanted to Simpsonize myself for the card, but no matter what image I tried, I couldn't get the website to accept a picture and allow me to Simpsonize it. The South Park tool was much easier, though the bobblehead nature of South Park characters means that it looks nothing like me (as if a Simpson's version of me would be spot on :) ).

All in all, I've been enjoying going deeper into the tools I've been using already and learning about some new ones that I hadn't explored quite yet.

And finally, here's the South Park avatar that I used for the librarian trading card:

Thing #5 Explore flickr

In the realm of 'funny how things always end up connecting back,' here is the first time I remember anything about the LibrarianInBlack:

Get your library into Facebook!

And as I was perusing some of the pictures in the Libraries and Librarians group on flickr, I ran across some of her photos.

No matter how often it happens, it's always so fun to discover those random connections in life.

My explorations on flickr lead me to the BigHugeLabs site, where I pulled together a set of old photos for this:



p.s. Here is where you can find me on flickr.

Thing #4 Register your blog

As a matter of housekeeping, I'm all registered to play.

As an aside, today marks my first day in the library. I couldn't be more excited. I've been waiting for this day for as long as I can remember. I got my MLIS years ago, but as things go, life happened and I got caught up in corporate America for many, many years.

For the last year and a half, I've been teaching reading to students who are 2 or more grade levels behind. In most cases, the students are averaging 5 grade levels below their actual grade (this is high school, by the way). It's very rewarding to see progress in these kids, but I only have a chance to impact about 35 kids a year. I hope by moving into the library, I'm able to make a more broad-reaching impact at my school.

If you are reading this and have any advice for me as I start down this path, please feel free to comment. I know that there are others like me out there who may benefit from the sage advice of the more seasoned librarians out and about in the world.