Thing 46: WebJunction

I've been a member of WebJunction for quite some time (since the beginning, I think) but I haven't been a very active member. 

Why not? 

I'm not using an RSS feed on it - so I don't see new topics of conversation and I forget to regularly check it for news and information.

There are so many great resources - that I just can't keep up with them all.

It was fun to go back and look through it again. I was disappointed to see that there hasn't been a huge amount of information posted there. We have the same issue with the MEMO ning. It seems that people may stop in to take a look but they don't see it as a resource or come back often to visit and gather new information or take part in the forums. 

I wonder how we can change that - so that these resources become powerful ones that media specialists view as necessary tools of their jobs. I think WebJunction has done a great job of organizing materials and offering courses - and I don't really know the usage statistics, so perhaps I'm speaking out of turn - but I'm guessing there could be more traffic to make it more successful. 

Thing 45: Cloud Computing

I must admit to not being familiar with the term "cloud computing" - but to being very aware of the services. I've been using Google docs and Zoho for a long time (as well as several other sites). I do two things in particular with these sites.

1. I use them to share documents with others - or to give them access to my documents. 

This is such a great way to collaborate on a project - but also is a super way to share pictures and video - which are often too large to send through email.

2. I use them to store or provide a backup for special projects or presentation.

It's great to know that even if my laptop AND my flash drive fail me I can always get to my presentations because I've stored them online. I don't think I've ever really had to use this backup, but I do know that I feel much more secure knowing it's there!

In my media center I use "n computing" with several monitors all connected to one PC. The processor allows all students (we use 7 on one setup and 3 on the other) to access the information and work without realizing they don't actually have a computer at all: they are sharing one cpu.

I also consider Delicious to be "cloud computing" when used by a group of teachers to create a shared list of resources. I've taught my grade level teachers how to do this and they have found it a great way to save their links and let their peers (and their students) view them. They can organize them using the tags available - and it's been a really great organizational tool.

Thing 44: Money, Money, Money!!

Although I don't find the economy to be one of my favorite topics...especially in light of today's budget shortfalls...I must admit these sites were fun to use and could be very helpful for people. I love shopping sites that give tips for saving money, or help with comparison shopping. It always makes me feel better when I know I'm getting a good deal. So I enjoyed using myrateplan.com and wisebread.com. I took another look through Craig's List. I purchased an iPod through it a year or so ago and found the service to be great - and it's always good to take another look.

I get frustrated easily by the sites that tell you how you can save so much money, like the "frugal dad" site. I guess I've always been a penny pincher, so I don't do many of the things that the "average person" does, I guess. It's always bothered me when I read an article about saving money and they give suggestions like "skip buying your morning speciality coffee" (never have done that), cancel your magazine subscriptions (don't get any now), eat at home, rather than eating out (we don't eat out very often now), and that type of thing. I've just always been a very frugal person and I've been fortunate to have a husband who feels the same way.

The gardening sites are fun - but I must admit I'm not much of a gardener, so I probably won't get into that any more than before. I'm also not big into garage sales - so although I checked them out, I didn't find too much of any interest to me.

I do have a couple of recommendations: 

1. Many of the local radio stations give special deals to their listeners. For example, Spirit 92.9 in St. Cloud has a local "Shop n' Save" website: https://www.rabmarketing.com/auction/main.cfm?mid=68 where you can purchase $10 gift cards for $6. If you know you're going out to dinner at one of these locations, you can save money right off the bat by purchasing one of these.

2. I also like the clubs that Famous Dave's, Cold Stone, Luciano's Pizza and several others have that send you emails with special savings or even free deals on your birthday or other holidays. Since I go to these places anyway (and they're kinda pricey at full price) it really helps to have a coupon along.

3. Before shopping sales at various locations around town I will often visit their websites to check out the deals. Sometimes I can find something I love at Kohl's or Herbergers - but will notice that the price is cheaper online.

4. When shopping for computers through Dell - check out the website and newspaper sales. Do your homework. Then actually call them to do the ordering. They will quote you a price. You can compare that to what you see online and often will become eligible for special savings. The last computer I bought I received an upgrade to a higher amount of RAM just because I asked about it.

My only other suggestion is to just not buy it. 

Thing 43

At last! A thing I can say I've been "using for ages"! We have one tv on the main floor of our house...and my house is filled with a man and a boy who (apparently) can't live without sports. So, needless to say, there is a game on just about 24 hours a day. 

Early on this created some conflict, but I learned to adapt and cheer for the Twins (Vikings, Gophers, Timberwolves, Wild, etc. etc.) Then, ta dah! the invention of online television - and my opportunity to actually get to watch a tv show and not have to watch a million advertisements either! I love the idea of just a few 30 second ads. It is definitely a great way to watch tv!

Now my husband and I have started watching some of our favorite shows online as opposed to live, simply because they're shorter, we can watch when we want, and we don't have to follow any timeline but our own. I do have to admit that we have TiVo (or actually we have Dish Network's version - DiVo) so we rarely watch our favorite shows when they're live. But the point is, we get to rule the television viewing instead of the television ruling us. I wouldn't have it any other way.

My daughter moved into a new apartment this school year and opted to not even get cable tv. She doesn't own a tv at all; just watches her favorite shows on her own schedule through her computer. Has she found the solution to be a perfect one? Not entirely. She said she used to enjoy sitting around with a group of people watching tv - and without one, it's pretty hard to do that. However, she enjoys what she can watch on her own, and I think a tv is on her wish list. I don't even know if she'll spring for the cable!

Thing 42

Internet radio: who would've thought??

I tried out pandora to begin with, thinking I wouldn't like it and that it wouldn't play the kind of music I wanted to hear. Wow - was I ever wrong! It was fast, great-sounding, and I could continue to work while i listened. I tried putting in some obscure music genres and artists - but it was able to find most of them, or make some pretty good guesses about something close to it. It was great fun!

Last.FM seemed to be a little clunkier to use - and it seemed more like the songs were for sale. It did, however, find some great music for me very quickly, and again, the quality was excellent.

I used these at home where I have high speed Internet access and it usually moves pretty quickly. I didn't see any lags at all in either Pandora or Last. Grooveshark seemed to take a lot longer to load.

I thought I had found something new and wonderful that I could share with my kids - but when I asked my daughter what she knew about them she said "I've been doing that for ages" so I guess I'm still behind! She uses a site called Slacker.

Thing 41

This was a perfect time for me to find out about these great services because I've been feeling frustrated trying to keep updating so many different websites - and having to log in to each one, type out my update and then maneuver to the next website. 

I'm trying out Lifestream in the hopes that I can make it work with two accounts. I'm using it on my personal accounts to update my sites, and that's working just fine. I've found that I have a need to update a bunch of accounts as well for the ISTE SIGMS - so I think this will be a great way to update all of those as well. It will be especially nice for those because the information I post will generally be the same for all of them. On my personal accounts I have different viewer: family, friends, co-workers, and professional people. I don't always want to post the same information to those groups. Consequently with this one I'm finding that updating each one individually is a better way to go. 

I would like to see a similar application where I could put different posts into each website through one URL. I see some drawbacks to doing that, however, and even to the way I'm using Lifestream. When I update my websites this way I don't get to enjoy reading the updates that others have posted - and that is one of the main reasons I use these sites. 

Thing 40

Okay - what could be more fun than the Wheel of Food? This is one that is perfect for the indecisive family - and mine fits the bill every time! Now when someone asks "where should we go for dinner?" we'll be able to actually come to a decision. What a fun little app!

Visual Headlines: I can imagine that today's visual headlines (April 27) will be all about the swine flu! It was a pretty fancy interface, but moved very slowly. I wasn't impressed - although I think it had lots of possibilities. It just had too many little quirks to make me think I would ever recommend it. 

The "walkability" score of my neighborhood was incredibly low. I guess we don't have the things around here that score high. Kinda disappointing, because I think we have a beautiful walk.

I also tried out Google's history timeline, which I think fits in with these very well. It's a great way to get an overview of what was taking place during each decade, at least according to Time Magazine!

Thing 39

I think the digital storytelling and escrapbooking is fantastic!

I was familiar with voiceThread, and had shared it with the CMLE audience just last week. I think this is a website that is an incredible tool for schools. There are so many ways that this could be used - from sharing projects, to book reports, to understanding concepts and getting multigenerational comments from people. There is just so  much that can be done!

I also enjoyed looking at Scrapblog, Framento and Scrapo. To me these seem like they would be more useful for home use - but they would be fun at school as well. I am always encouraging teachers to post pictures of their activities in order to send them out to families. The bonus is that grandparents who live thousands of miles away can also view them - but most are so secure and nonthreatening for students. 

These are excellent tools - and I look forward to sharing more of them with my teaching staff. I thought VoiceThread would make an excellent conference breakout session, and a great "Techie Tuesday" item for my staff. I think the others would be great for teachers to learn, but would also be fun to share with parents in a community education program.

Thing 38

I found the applications i learned in this lesson to be incredibly useful and helpful for schools!

The first one I really spent time with and shared with all the media specialists in my district was wink - the way of compressing powerpoint slideshows. They can get so unwieldy - so this was very helpful.

Then I spent a lot of time looking at jing - and I was really excited about the possibilities with that one! I intend to create a lot of tutorials for my staff using it - because so many of them really want and need to be walked through all of the screen shots, and it is so easy to  do that by creating it in jing. What fun!

Skitch was also a blast to work with. I thought these were great - and I can really see a lot of applications for school use. I found them to be very easy to use and a person could put some very professional-looking tutorials together very quickly. Thanks!

Thing 37

Wow! It's been a while since I've gotten any work done on my "things". I played around with the fun digital storytelling tools a few weeks ago and then didn't get back to them to write about them. 

I love Animoto. I think I enjoy it so much because it is so intuitive and so very simple.  It's just so amazing how quickly you can put together something that looks so professional. I can't wait to share it at school!

I enjoyed playing with all of the great photo programs again. I'm not always sure how students could use these at school, because we are so limited on the number of cameras we have - but I have always thought it would be fun to have students create their own "year-end" video selecting the pictures they'd like to use from our folder of yearbook photos. I've never felt I could do this because of the strain on the network. I need to look into this and find out how network intensive it is. If it's not bad this would be a wonderful year-end project!

Thing 36: Generate Some Fun!!

 Ah generators! What a blast! (And what an enormous consumer of time!!

I loved using the generators - but find so many of them to be just plain old "fun" and not of much real use. However, here are my favorites:

PDF convertors - I install one of these on every computer in my school and teach teachers how to use them. It helps for sending documents home to parents so they can actually read them.

Graphs and other template-type generators - I'm sharing these with teachers through my "delicious" links, individually, and through short staff development opportunities during staff meetings. They are great, easy to use and fun.

Wordle - The art teacher and I are going to use this as a fun "last week of school" project. In media the students will generate their list of words - their favorite school things from the year (teachers, friends, subjects, etc.). They will pick a favorite layout and print it. Then they'll take it to art and decorate the page with their own illustrations and border.

ToonDoo - I love sharing the funny things kids say - and I continue to look for ways to share them. I need to develop a "media specialist/teacher" character (me) and some kid characters and re-create the funny things I hear every day at school. If nothing else, I could send these out through email to share them with the staff - or post them in the lounge. Our schools are so full of humor, and we need to share it!

I love the name generators! I can never think up a good name, especially for blogs and other usernames. I actually stole one from my sister (purpleloon) and she's not happy about that at all! So I thought these were fun and I'm hoping to get a name I can use for myself out of one of them. 

Thing 35: Books 2.0

It was great to look through all of these book-related websites - some for the first time, and others as a revisit. I have loved using Visual Bookshelf in Facebook, and have been using it for a long time. It has been especially fun to share book titles with my friends and relatives: to see what they're reading, to share our love of specific books and authors, and to introduce them to my reading choices. I have connected with so many people about books, in particular one of my young cousins, and realized we have read many of the same titles. We continue to share our booklists with eachother, and now when we get together for family gatherings, we have so much in common. 

I love using Storyline Online with students in school, but I sincerely wish they would add to this collection. I recently subscribed to Tumblebooks (www.tumblebooks.com) and have found it to be fantastic! My students love it, but so do my teachers. It seems to provide some of the "audio book" needs that they have - and is especially nice for those students who need to follow along while the text is read aloud. Very nice site!

I am intrigued and excited about Bookcrossing! I can't wait to talk to my sister-in-law and her husband, who own a great coffee shop in Park Rapids, about setting Bella Caffe up as a bookcrossing location! I think it would be amazing - so I'll be working on that one. I thought this was a great idea that could really take off!

Then...the book group resources! Awesome! I can't wait to get my book group signed up and begin utilizing these. I was especially excited about LitLovers, which has a great clean interface, and BookSprouts. I liked using the Target bookclub site as well.

One of my passions is finding book and author-related websites for all of the books I use with my K-4 students. I try to keep my own website up to date with these great sites, and add more as often as I can find them. I think Scholastic is trying to do a nice job with their "The Stacks" for kids. It is a great resource with lots of fun interactive activities for students.

Thing 34: Ask the Internet

Since the beginning of Internet time, people have been believing whatever they read. Where will it end?

It is amazing to see the huge number of question and answer sites out there. I have used several of them with students - and consider them to be good reliable sources. I regularly have students use Factmonster.com, for one. 

When do I use online answer sites? When I want to look smart. Really. I do this most often during sporting events on tv. The usual scenario goes something like this:

We're watching the game. An athlete makes a great play and someone in the room (my father-in-law, husband, son) asks "What college did he go to?" They make a few guesses while I turn around to the pc and type in the athlete's name. Bingo. I give the answer to the group and they swoon in amazement. 

These are the easy questions. Generally these types of questions fit into the trivia category. The other time I find myself using sites like these is to help my son with his homework. I am amazed at the resources students have in their own homes, due to the Internet. However, I am also amazed at the lack of instruction and direction students are given in using these resources. I have rolled my eyes many times when my son either doesn't even try the best resource that was suggested by his instructor, or when he attempts to use it but doesn't use it correctly and can't find an answer. 

One of my favorite stories was the high school student who spent an hour in the library on the Internet trying to find research for her topic. She finally threw her arms up in the air and spouted to the media specialist (whom she hadn't asked for help) "There just isn't anything on the Internet about alcohol abuse!"

I do believe that one of the primary roles of a library media specialist today is to teach students (and everyone!) how to access and use the tools that are available to them both inside the walls of the school and through the Internet. I don't think this will take anything away from a good media specialist - but will only add more to the program!

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

Okay - I'm not sure that it's fair. I'm on spring break this week...and I'm writing about travel. I think I should be traveling!

For years I have used Expedia, Orbitz, and all the other online tools to book airline reservations and hotels. I've had some successes ($40.00 5-star hotel rooms on Priceline) and some failures (paid way too much for airline tickets to AZ) but overall I was feeling like I knew a lot about online Travel.

I was wrong! I knew nothing. I had often noticed the "fun stuff" off to the sides of the travel sites, but I always considered them to be advertising and I felt I should stick to my job of finding tickets. If only I had ventured off the beaten path into Travel 2.0!!

The articles in the "More Things" wiki gave me the knowledge I needed to explore further. And did I ever explore!

Travel Blogs: I loved "Lost Girls". I'll probably never get to any of those exotic locations, but it was so much fun to read about all the travels overseas. The amount of international travel a person could explore was incredible -and made me longing to use my passport again. It's been too long! I also really enjoyed "Notes from the Road" - although I read the blog postings from a little closer to home. The posts about the Spam museum in Harmony, Minnesota were a lot of fun to read, and very insightful as well. I also enjoyed Travelocity's blog "The Window Seat" although I found it to be a lot of advertising.

Then it was on to the review sites - and these were great too! I loved Sheraton's Share Your Story site and Boo.com. These lead me into the Travel Journal sites. These were incredible. I'm always at awe over those people who create incredible scrapbooks of their trips - but an online journal? What a creative and exciting idea! I definitely have to travel more. I enjoyed viewing all of them - but thought "My life of travel" seemed to be the cleanest and easiest to use.

Several elementary classes require their students to plan a trip. I was looking at each of these sites to see if they would be appropriate for elementary children. It would seem that they could easily assit with this project. However, so many of these sites are so filled with advertisements - and the ads are very adult. So I'm not sure they would be useful for kids.

That caused me to consider how easy it would be to set up a classroom wiki using these concepts. Then students could do their research, create their links, do their journaling online - and create their own classroom travel journal. It would be very exciting - and I would think you could continue it and create a wonderful kids travel site that would be the perfect online tool for families. It could include all of the things the best sites had: tips, pricing, ideas for fun, ways to get around, reviews, etc. - and all of it geared toward families with children.

I think that would be highly successful...and perhaps something the Pine Meadow Media Center could take on?

Thing 32

It never ceases to amaze me - all that Google has created! I didn't want to stop playing with Google maps as I enjoyed looking at the Park Rapids area where we used to live, our home town of Sartell, and so many of the places I've enjoyed visiting. I can see how wonderful it would be to use this site prior to a vacation or visit - or to assist in planning a trip.

Here's my Google mapping of the Park Rapids area: 

View Larger Map
It is so cool to see all of the places we love to visit. The lake shown here is Potato Lake - where we lived for about 25 years.

The map options are so much fun to work with! Now I think I'll try using Google to find the perfect house to buy...or maybe a cabin in the north woods?

A person could spend literally HOURS on these maps! I enjoyed racing (well, I lost every time) through some incredible cities, looking at the missing children maps, viewing tons of other maps, and then I happened upon the bible map. I can't wait to share this with my friends and family! It was incredible to see the actual locations and how far different regions are from eachother. Once again, amazing!!

Thing 31 Twitter, cont.

Although I have am following a bunch of people on Twitter, am updating my status almost daily and actually have people following me, I still don't really get it. It seems like an extra step - a bother - and I'm finding that I have to force myself to go to it and see what those I'm following are discussing.

There seems to be such a distinct difference between those who are twittering about unimportant things and those who are twittering about educational issues. I like the educational questions and thoughts - and like the links too.

I enjoyed checking out some of the celebrities on Twitter -but as I looked through so many of the other options and "opportunities" they just seemed  more and more like a waste of my time. So...Twitter is one that I am going to set aside for now. Perhaps I will revisit it and find some great educational uses at some point, but, really , for now, I'm not interested.

Thing 29 - Google, continued

I presented our school's technology equipment to the PTO the other night. It was really fun to see their faces as I shared the wireless Airliner Slate (by SMART), a portable laptop and projection unit and a SMARTBoard. They were sold after only a few minutes...and I think most of them were ready to pull out the fundraising efforts and put a complete SMARTBoard setup in every classroom. They were impressed - and it was a blast!

At the end of the meeting I dazzled them with Google 411. No one had heard of it - and every one of them put the phone number in their cell phones. I demonstrated it with my cell phone's speaker on and just asked for Sartell's pizza places. Of course it found all of them, and began to list them with the phone numbers. They could certainly see the value in this service! What will Google think of next?

I think I'm ready to head on into Thing #31, but I didn't feel I had covered this one well enough - so there it is. (Oh - and I even tweeted Google 411 a few days ago. My big thrill was to see that I have 4 followers! Oh boy!)

Thing 30

I have been so big into Delicious over the past year or more that I didn't think I could do any more with it. But then I found popacular! It is so awesome! I just love being able to see the hottest links of the hour/day/week or month!! Now I've found my new passion, I guess!

Now I've been playing with Tagrolls, and I love that too! However, I just can't seem to get the cloud to paste in here. 

Wow! Not quite sure what I did, but once I inserted the html text into this post I crashed my browser. I guess I'll have to try this again. Perhaps I didn't want to show you how it looked with the tagroll in it! Sorry.

Twitter, continued -

For two days in a row I updated my Twitter status. If this continues I may even have to update my status on Facebook. Who woulda thunk it??? I always figure that no one cares what I'm doing, so why should I update my status. However - after reading the articles about twittering I realize that there are some great reasons to update my status, and some terrific ways to do it. 

Now I just feel bad that no one reads my blog, follows my twittering, or cares what my status is. 

iGoogle wins!! Thing 28

I'm still a bit overwhelmed by all of this stuff: and by not finding ONE spot where I can bring it all together. I've tried iGoogle - and I like the way I can have my calendar, my RSS feeds, and a lot of fun widgets there all at one time. However, I still feel like there's more that I can't access there...and I just find that I'm running all over the place to get it all together. I want a service to do a little more. I wish I could find one place where I could put every single thing I use - and I'm just not finding the one thing. Everything I find or use just adds more to what I'm already doing. 

I LOVE having my calendar on iGoogle - and opening it up and viewing it. However, I use Google on too many computers and I don't want my iGoogle homepage to show up when I'm in front of a class of students. 

After trying the  Netvibes and pageflakes I saw the benefit of iGoogle being that I had that powerful Google search engine. And even though I don't encourage students to use it, I do find that it is my search engine of choice. So having it with my customized homepage is a plus. 

I get tired of widgets that are just silly. I'm sure many of them have a use for people - but those that are just "games" drive me crazy. My son loves them! (He's 17, so he can) but I think they just take up space and time. I'm kinda short on both space and time...so I like the useful ones and I don't like the silly ones. A cartoon a day? I don't need it. I don't even need a sudoku a day. If I want to play I'll go out and find the one I like. A silly character just standing there smiling at me doesn't really make me smile. However - knowing the temperature, seeing a motivational quote, being able to view my calendar and getting a quick overview of the news and my RSS feeds does make me happy.

Anyway, iGoogle wins with me.

Thing 27: Twitter

I officially joined Twitter 7 months ago...and never dared do anything but follow a few people. I guess it's time to actually tweet!

You can follow me at twitter: just look for me by name, or look for purpleloon (which is also my Delicious account).

I follow Joyce Valenza, Doug Johnson, David Warlick, Scott MacLeod and a few of my other heroes. (Don't tell Doug I said he was my hero: it would just go to his head!)

Still on Thing 26

I wanted to add one more comment (not that anyone reads them but just because I can) about the Doodle4Google contest. I'm really excited about it. You can register here and learn all about it: www.doodle4google.com

I also have a comment about using these tools with teachers. I think they find Delicious to be one of the most useful because they save time. It is my feeling that most teachers are just way too busy to play around with these tools unless they have a real reason to. Our younger teachers spend a lot of time on Facebook. They like the way they can communicate with old friends from the past, and the ones from across the hall. I think there is enough of a social networking aspect, and a great organizational aspect to Delicious that makes it appealing to teachers.

I also think teachers like applications like VoiceThread. They can easily publish projects and share them with parents - and that is incredibly important to them. We just need to find ways to work with them to get this done. Good luck!

Thing 26 continued

Watch the video!

I love this one. 

Thing 26

Here we are!!

Thing 25

Playing with these widgets is definitely time-consuming! Add that to the fact that this PC-user (the past 4 years anyway) has FINALLY gotten a new iMac...and I am having such fun playing! Let's see - I've spent way too many hours arranging and rearranging the items on my blog...usually putting them back where they were in the beginning. I played (and that's true - I PLAYED) way too many silly games, and I got a little frustrated with myself because I kept registering for new sites that I'll probably never use again.

I did learn a good trick for keeping track of all those annoying passwords - which I hope will work out okay. I just put them in the notes portion of my Delicious account, and set them to be hidden. So - if I log in - I can see my password reminder for the site. I'm trying to record only my password reminder and not the actual password. We'll see how it works.

It is funny how I'm finding myself running across applications I tried a year or more ago and then forgot about. One such app is the website for Ask500people. I had forgotten that I really enjoyed this one! I think it can give a person a great quick answer when they have a "how do you feel about..." type of question. It truly is like asking a bunch of friends without having to leave your desk.

I also need to update my jott account - because I remember last year that I loved using it to record my blog posts. It records just enough info to be quick and concise - and does a pretty good job of spelling everything right. Plus - people can listen to my voice if they want to. Fun!! I'll post my next one that way perhaps - just so I get it updated.

Well, I guess I'd better update that one. Jott is no longer a free service. At $3.95 a month it's probably a great deal, but at this point I don't use it enough to continue it. So, I deleted my account. Man, that was harder than I thought. My kids were always jealous because Jott was number 1 on my speed dial. No more.

Widgets everywhere!! Thing 24

Oops! Not much to say! Just a quick comment about the black hole of widgets. Whoever made that comment had probably spent far too much time playing (just like me!) 

Now excuse me while I get back to my bedazzled widget....

Thing 24

Well, it's about time I caught up to speed. I first participated in the 23 Things through the California Library 2.0 program. Since I had completed the things, I didn't participate with all my friends at CMLE. Since it's been opened up to include a whole bunch of new things I decided I'd better participate this time! However, my old blog was way out of date. I created this one and decided to move on from here.

Even though I can find about a million reasons to blog, I just can't really ever find the time. Part of my problem is that I never know who my audience is. I think I'd like to create a blog for my students, my staff, my students' families, and for media specialists - but that would be just too many to keep up with! I guess that's why my blogs never go beyond short periods of time. 

Oh well - welcome to the new blog!

Celebrating!!

Is there anything more fun than a celebration? I love celebrations of every kind: holidays, birthdays, graduations, promotions. Have a celebration and I'm there! So rather than continuing with any of my other (half-hearted) blogs, I think it's time to celebrate the web 2.0 lessons learned and create a new blog - to be used to continue the celebration! At school when I learn something new, or I hear someone else say they've learned something new, I respond "Well - congratulations! You get to go home now!" That's what this blog will be all about: celebrating the things I've learned, whether I decide to continue their use or not.



Ready? Join me in the celebration! (And let's go home...we've learned something!)