My First Meme

This is a meme that I got from a colleague whose blog I like to read regularly. I have never done a meme before, but this one sounded interesting, so I thought I would give a try!

meme - n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

This started as a list compiled from a poll of 2000 people of the 10 books that you could not live without and has apparently "morphed" into a list of 100 books.

If you would like to participate then follow the rules below:

1. Bold the titles that you have read.
2. Italicize the titles you intend to read someday.
3. Put an asterisk* by the titles that you LOVE.
4. Strike out the titles that you have no intention of reading - ever.
(I couldn't figure out how to "strike through" the titles I don't intend to read, so I just left the text plain)


1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter series - JK Rowling*
5. To Kill a Mockingbird*
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984 - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials series - Phillip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott*
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier*
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis*
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis*
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown*
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas*
66. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White*
88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas*
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I have read 52 of the titles listed, how many have you read or want to read???
Happy Reading!
Liz

Middle School here we come!

I DON'T WANT TO GO!
This is John's comment! He is a little nervous, but I think he will really enjoy it. The charter school he will be going to offers lots of advanced classes in Math -- one of his favorite subjects, plus they offer a really interesting variety of electives. They have a unique 6 weeks program of electives that allows the students to rotate between things like; strategy games, engineering, cooking, clay arts, la crosse, computer classes, etc.
Anyway, it looks like it will be an interesting, exciting, and fun year for both of us! The only real drawback is, sigh.... getting up early again :(.
Wish us luck!

Loki at his first BIG show

Here is a video of my young boy Loki at his first big show in the Best of Breed ring, he is still very young but he looked pretty good even with all the "Big Boys" in the ring!

Podcast test

John's book review

Test post
trying out posting a podcast using switchpod

How to Steal a Dog

Thing #23 - Summary

This was a great journey!
Although I had a part in creating this program there were areas that I really had not investigated before and that was great for me. Often in both my personal and professional life I get so busy that I forget to "Play" and this was a great way to force me to play with the neat tools that are out there. I am so thankful that I work where I do and with the people I work with, even when I get in a rut doing the "daily" tasks I have to, my colleagues push me to go farther and find more and that is something that you can't get just anywhere or from anyone!
I will, of course, take part in another version of this, because I know that there are ALWAYS new things out there to find and discover! What a wonderful world!!!

Thing # 22 - Ning, nang, and ping

I have been a member of both the TeacherLibrarian Ning and the TexasSchoolLibrarians Ning for at least a year, so I know a good bit about them. I think that Nings are a wonderful way to collaborate with others in your profession from all over the world. When the last Harry Potter book came out, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the TeacherLibrarian Ning had a discussion group totally devoted to discussing the book and the ending of the series. It was awesome! I got to share my ideas and thoughts about the book with librarians all over the world and read what they thought about the book! The Teacher Ning was great, I liked that it was split by grade levels and that you could join discussions that directly related to problems and ideas that you would deal with on a daily basis.

For me Nings are a wonderful example of the potential collaboration that the web currently offers! I am SOOOOOOO glad I live in today technological revolution ---- what a great time to be a teacher and a librarian!

Thing # 21 - Pods, casts, vods, and more!

I have been playing around with Podcasts and Vidoecasts for a couple of years now, and I believe that they have unlimited potential in the educational setting, especially in elementary! What a wonderful way for students to show what they have learned about a topic AND using technology for the final product!

Anyway, the thing about blogs and podcasts that is frustrating is that you can't directly load an audio file into a blog, so you have to have a place to host or keep your audio file or podcast, or you have to do a photostory. The file below is one I created when teaching a class on podcasts and videocasts, it is on the Alamo and instead of talking through the pictures I put in background music.

As a side note; in the previous "Thing" I did find a website that will "host" your podcasts and you can link from there, so there is a way to do it, it's just not easy!

Here is my pod/videocast:

Thing # 19 - And the award goes to.......

There were so many options!!! It was really hard to choose, but since I have done a lot with podcasting I picked Odeo to explore first. It is a site where you can store a list of podcasts for future listening and search other podcasts to find ones you want to hear. You had to register, it was free, but you did need to sign up. I thought at first that I would be able to upload podcasts I had created there, but for that they suggest you use one of two sites where you can upload and save your podcasts, so I went to Switchpod and registered for the free service that will allow you to upload 450 mb of audio files. Here is the link to my son's book review podcast that I uploaded;

Your podcast url:http://www.switchpod.com/users/philippi/Johnreview.wav

I also took a look at YourMinis, this site has a collection of Widgets that you can add to your blog, webpage, or Google page. It has everything from a weather widget, quote of the day, calendars, and even YouTube videos. I have just started playing with Widgets so this one was pretty fun for me!



I also looked at Farecast, a travel site. Our family goes to visit my inlaws twice a year and occasionally we do get a real family vacation, so this was a great site for me to keep an eye on the price of flights to New Jersey, and prices for Disney trips!

Thing # 18 - Online tools, or Can we really get it free???

I tried both of the word processing tools mentioned. I found that OpenOffice took a good bit of time to download but was useful when I got it loaded. I was however VERY impressed with the ease and simplicity of GoogleDocs. I also liked the way that you can share and edit documents with GoogleDocs. I have used GoogleDocs with a class that I am currently auditing, all of the students are located in different parts of the state and the U. S. and we were able to take a document and all look at it and make our comments and edits in one place without the hassle of emailing and sending a document all around to get the changes and ideas we needed to get a finished product. I think that both tools offer a viable alternative to Microsoft Office with the added benefit of sharing the document with others for either viewing or editing. It is like being in a "virtual conference" room and collaborating with others from all over the world --- what an awesome world we live in!

Thing #17 - Playing in the Sandbox!

The Sandbox Wiki was really fun. I have contributed to wikis before, but the fun thing about this was reading all of the comments of the other Library2Play players! What a good way to see what everyone else is thinking about this professional development tool and reading what other players are experiencing. Collaboration is the heart of education (at least in my opinion) and what better way to collaborate!

Thing #16 - Wicky, wacky, wikis!

I have worked with wikis for at least four years, thanks again to my incredible boss, and I think there are unlimited uses for them!!! In our school district we have several wikis that we use for a variety of things, we have one for posting new websites that are good for different subject areas, one that we posted reviews of "required reading" titles for our secondary schools, several that solicited thoughts and comments on different school district initiatives like new library construction, technology in libraries, etc.
Anyway, I even started a wiki to record family information from relatives all over the U. S., essentially a place to write down antidotal stories from our childhood about our long lost relatives. I think wikis a an awesome tool for sharing thoughts, ideas, and stories for anything! They allow us to share in real time with people who live all over the world, they really are a boon to us in this mobile information society.
As for education uses, it's a great way to share student thoughts, comments, and ideas in a common space, I even know of a school where they use a wiki for teachers to order lunch from a local salad and sandwich restaurant. What a great example of the use of digital technology!

Thing # 15 - Library 2.0oooooooooo

In the office that I work in I have heard about Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 for at least the past 5 years! This is primarily because I have the kind of boss who is a "visionary" and a great "leader", so we are always (or at least trying) to keep up with the newest developments in libraries, school libraries, and technology. After reading the articles on Library 2.0 I can honestly say I knew a lot of what they were talking about, but there is still so much out there to learn! I was especially intrigued by the metadata ideas and the new browers that allow your library catalog to behave like Google and the thought of sharing materials world wide via the Open WorldCat Project.
I guess the bottom line is that in the Mid life of my career I feel like I am sitting on the edge of a whole new school library world! I am so glad that I have gotten to see this door open and that I have the opportunity to experience it! What a wonderful gift to the world of education and libraries!!! And to quote a popular song, "the future is so bright(for libraries) I've gotta wear shades".

Thing # 20 - You TUBE, I TUBE, let's ALL TUBE!

I have played around in both YouTube and TeacherTube for about 2 years now, and I have found many, many, videos that could be used for both student/classroom use and professional development use. I LOVE the ease of using Zamzar to download YouTube videos! Since that site is blocked in our district it is a great way to use these resources!!! What fun!

Below is a video that I found through Stephen's Lighthouse blog by Stephen Abram. It is a great way to give some educators today a "wake up" call where technology and our students are concerned. Hope you think so too!

From YouTube

Remember this site is blocked within our district, so to see it you will have to view it at home!

"A Vision of K-12 Students Today"







A really good video from YouTube about learning to "listen" to what stuiedents are telling us about their world and how they "learn" today!

Thing # 14 - Technorati

Okay, this was fun! I had played around in Technorati before and had even add a page element, but this time I went in and added a couple more Technorati widgets. I have played with widgets before, but this was way more fun than I had before using widgets. The widgets in Technorati that I used were the "Tag Cloud Favorites" and "Technorati Link Counts" these both keep you updated on the tags used in your blog, The "Technorati Link Counts" will display in REAL TIME the number of links from your blog (not that I expect many of those :). Anyway, it was a lot of fun using the widgets but it's even more fun learning about tagging and using tags to identify things on the Web. I knew about tagging before I did this blog, but I have since had to learn to use them with my work. Before I just thought of tags as a way to identify material for my searches, or identifiers to use when searching, now I have to "tag" my self and that's a whole new ballgame! So happy tagging everyone!



Liz's Bytes

Tag and YOU ARE it!

Okay, this "thing" is about tagging and del.icio.us I downloaded the del.icio.us link and bookmarking tag on my computer, but unfortunately the laptop is fried! My biggest problem now is finding a way to load it on to the laptop I am using. This is a problem for me, I love the idea of saving all of my bookmarks in one place and being able to access them by logging into del.icio.us, but I would LOVE to have it on all the computers I use!!!
Anyway, I am a big fan of tagging and I really have gotten a lot out of del.icio.us and the concept of tagging. I can see a real usage for schools in that if you tagged and created your list of bookmarks then you could use it in a classroom to direct students to specific sites for research. One thing I really LOVED about this exercise is discovering and using tag clouds! Tag clouds are awesome!!! I love the idea of teaching students to use tag clouds to help them narrow down and zero in on the specifics of a topic or to help them find the "heart" of what they want to their report on. I can really see some practical uses for this "thing"!

Thing # 12 - Rolling, Rolling, Rolling.....

American Presidents

Select...American PresidentsSearch The Web

This is my Rollyo search on American Presidents. It was fun, a little confusing at first, but after I explored a little I did find a way to post my ROLLBAR! It was fun after I got a little better at finding my way around!

Thing # 11 - And the THING is Library Thing!

What fun! I put in just a smattering of some of my favorite books into LibraryThing and it was so much fun!!! I put a widget on my blog that shows some of the books I read along with pictures. It was so easy and fun! What a great site for librarians to play with.

Library Byte by Byte

Thing # 10 - or FUN, FUN, FUN!!!

WOW, so this is real meaning of "play"!!! My son and I have had a blast playing with all of the cool ways to create and use image generators! I posted one earlier about Favorite Presidents, and then shared it with his Social Studies teacher who absolutely loved it and wants to use in with his class! Too Cool!!!




Below is a Thank you message to my friends and colleagues at Spring Branch for nominating me for Employee of the Month! Although it totally embarrased me, I am so touched and honored that I am thought of so highly! So......here's a little thank you from me!

Thing # 9 - Locating blogs or how to navigate the ever expanding world of blog information!

Okay, I checked out all of the sites for locating blogs of interest to me and the two I liked the best were Google Blog search and Technorati. I liked Google Blog search because it was such a clean easy way to find what I wanted, most of the other sites I visited were so full text and options that it was difficult to navigate and find what I wanted. I like Technorati primarily because I already have a Technorati account and have done some playing around in it. Anyway, all of the tools are helpful in narrowing down the list of blogs out there and finding what specifically suits your needs!

Thing # 8, or how to read your favorite blogs without going nuts!

I have actually had a Google reader account for about 6 months, it started slowly because when I set it up I didn't really have to time to play with it, after about a month I went in and began to add some of the blogs I like to read. I have been a dedicated blog reader for over a year --- I am really a "lurker" in that I like to read blogs and comment on them, I am just not a really good blogger. Anyone who knows me will readily tell you that I am MUCH more of a talker than a writer, hence blogging is not my "preferred" form of communication, but I really LOVE reading what others write!

Anyway to recap the assignments for this Thing I need to answer the following:

1. What do I like about RSS and newsreaders?
I absolutely LOVE the fact that I can get all of the new posts and information from my favorite sites in ONE place! And yes, it is VERY addicting, I check my Google Reader account at least twice a day. I also love the star and share features, this allows me to mark the posts that I want to refer back to and it lets me share the posts that I think others might benefit from.

2. How do you think you might use this in your professional and/or personal life?
Well, that is simple!!! I am able to keep up with the new ideas and news that help me improve my professional abilities and knowledge this in turn helps me to be better at my job and to help other librarians that I work with. Knowledge is power and this helps me be a better systems administrator and librarian.

3. How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?
I think that as a librarian the first thing you can do is share this technology with others in your school or library, this will help others keep up with their interests both professional and personal. Recently I taught my Mom how to use Google Reader to keep up with the quilting blogs she likes to read, although we weren't in a library I felt like the librarian showing her a new way to accomplish something. In other words the librarian in me was able to pass the power of knowledge on to someone else, score!!! Also, there are so many great book review sites that would help any librarian keep up with what is new in literature, how can you miss with that?!?

Finally, I made my shared items on my blog, so if you look in the left column you will see the posts that I thought were worth sharing.

Thing # 7 Lions, Tigers, and Google ..... Oh My!

Okay, I titled this post with an altered quote from one of my family's favorite movies, The Wizard of Oz. I did that for a couple of reasons; first I really LOVE that line from the movie, next I think that this "journey" through Web 2.0 tools is a lot like the movie, we are all experiencing things we have never seen, heard, or even thought of before, and finally I think that many people (I am not one of them) consider Google the "big scary monster" out there! Well, they certainly are big, and at times it can be kind of scary to see all that Google has and can do, but they certainly are the monster that some think of them as! For me Google is kind of like being an extra on Star Trek (another family favorite), I am watching from a far a journey that is taking us all into the unknown! Going through all that Google has to offer is amazing, mind boggling, and at times totally overwhelming ---- but still FUN! I think after exploring some ( I am still not through it all) of the great tools that Google has to offer I found a few new "favorite things" that I am really excited about using. The first we actually get to a little further down in our "playground fun", but I am already using it and have been for the last 2 months, it is Google Reader and truthfully I am not sure how I got along without it!?! Being able to keep up with all of the blogs that I like to read in ONE place is totally AWESOME!!! I visit my Google reader at least twice a day and I'm not really sure how I functioned reading blogs before it.... although I guess my incredibly long list of "bookmarks" tell that story :) in any event, Google reader rocks! The other two things that I am now "Google addicted" to are the Google toolbar, and Google notebook they are both so useful. The Google toolbar has this great "AutoFill" function which fills in your name and address when you have to fill out forms and other great fun things! Google Notebook gives you the ability to copy and paste information from the web and keep it in a file to refer to later, you can have file folders for different things, like recipes, instructions for cleaning granite, information articles, and any other little things you want to have access to without having to find where they are on the web again! What a great tool! Okay, this post has gone on for way too long and I am sure I should be coving other things, but I think I'd better quit now and go "play" with Google some more!
That's all for now folks!

Liz's Bytes

Thing # 6 Part Two

My son and I played around with the trading card link from thing 6 and we came up with the attached trading card since they are studying the presidents in Social Studies. It was really fun and I can see LOTS of educational possibilities for this! Way fun!!!

Thing # 6

I went in and played with the fd Flikr toys and created the mosaic below. It wasn't easy, but once you signed up and using your Flikr account it was a little easier. I must say that the instructions were not very clear, but with a little poking around it worked. I might have to do another post on mashups as I play with some more of the fun options out there!




Till later --- Bytes from Liz

Thing #5

Okay, I loaded a "boatload" of photos onto to Flikr and it was pretty easy, it took a bit of time to get them loaded, probably because I did all 250 at a time! Anyway, the whole set of photos were from my family's 2 week vacation last summer, my husband, son, and I drove from Houston, TX to Barnegat Light, NJ (in a Ford Mustang), with several stops along the way. We went to Williamsburg, VA, Washington, D.C., and Knoxville, TN then finally the shore in New Jersey. The cool thing about Flikr for me was that I used the organizer tools to seperate my photos into sets to send to various family members, that was really cool! I haven't played with all of the Flikr tools, but so far it has been lots of fun and I can see it as a great way to share photos of family life here with our relatives in N.J.!

Test posting --- I am testing some new settings.

Thing 4

Okay, my blog is registerd, I am on PDLC for district credit and rarin' to go!

I did think about curriculum connections for blogs and as a librarian I think one of the best ideas for using blogging with students is having them express their views about books and reviews of books by using a blog. Two of our elementary schools are already doing this and it has been really fun to watch and successful for both the librarians and the students. Anyway, I would love to see that expanded, especially at the secondary level. I also thought about how you could use blogs in a classroom setting, and I think that the idea of posting and have students respond is a great easy way to use blogging.
How about this --- in a social studies class to study current events you could post a current article from a local or national newspaper and have students respond by posting comments that agree or disagree with the news/issues reported. You would be encouraging writing, analyzing, and forming opinions and expressive writing all in one assignment. I think the best thing about using blogs in an educational setting is that they would allow the student and teacher to address several educational goals with this one awesome tool!

Liz's Library Byte

Thing 3

Well I created my blog and avatar and it was really fun! My son helped me pick the template for my blog, but I decided how my avatar should look. I have used and avatar program before, it was Meez, I found it on a friend's blog and it was really fun to play with. Yahoo avatars was fun too, the only problem with any avatar program for me is that there are so many choices!!! It gets pretty confusing but I did manage to find an image that is somewhat close the the "real" me --- just add about 50 pounds and that would be a good representation of what I look like. Anyway, avatars are fun!
Choosing the title of my blog was the hardest part. Since I work as a library systems admin. for school libraries I wanted something that would reflect that, I think "bytes" does that, but of course my first choice "Library Bytes" was already taken, so I had to come up with another play on the "bytes" reference --- that took a while, but once I decided it was good to have it done!

One to the next "thing"!

Liz's bytes

Things 1 & 2

Well I have kind of combined the first two things in this post. I have set up my blog and gone through the seven habits, and I think the habit that I struggled with the most is "setting up your tool box" I have lots of tool boxes both at home and at work, but at they the BEST tools for the job? I think this is a question I will need to ponder throughout this journey. Recently I heard a fellow educator say that although she had better tools at home for minor repair jobs, she often used the same pair of needle nosed pliers for everything because they were handy and familiar --- I think that I do the same thing with technology, I often use a familiar program to accomplish my tasks even though they are better tools out there to do the job just because it is handy and familiar. SO I think my goal with this "playground" is to find new tools for my "toolbox" and become familiar with them.
On to more fun!

Liz's library bytes