Something Old, Something New (but nothing borrowed or blue, since this isn't a wedding)

In looking through the various media production tools proposed for Challenge 3, I saw Google Docs on the list, which I have used quite a bit for the past year or so. I find it especially useful for creating forms that automatically feed data into spreadsheets, both for instructional activities and library administration tasks. Here are a few examples:

• Floorplan, existing schedules, and reservation form for using space in the media center
  (while the page that this links to is not a Google Docs creation itself, most of the links lead to Google Docs products)
• "Suggestion Box" form for requesting items we don't own
• A student interest survey I use at the beginning of the year to generate sample topics for research activities throughout the school year
• One of the practice quizzes created for our Battle of the Books team last year
• The online ballot that eligible 3rd-5th graders used to vote for last year's NCCBA
  

Still, I figured the purpose of this project was to use something new and different, so I decided to go with Voki to create a nifty welcoming avatar or two. The first one I created was for this blog, but there seems to be some technical problem with plugging it in on the sidebar of this page, where I really wanted it. So here it is, just embedded in this post for now:



I did however successfully create and implement a second one, in the form of our school mascot, on Pearsontown's Destiny homepage. I'll be interested to see how many of the kids notice it when school starts in a couple of weeks.

Up to the Challenge

As I mentioned in my inaugural post yesterday, the impetus for creating this blog was to fulfill the first of five components in the "DPS Technology Challenge." For those potential readers who are not media coordinators in the Durham Public Schools system, this a sort of independent study version of professional development. Anyway, the second challenge was to start following other people's blogs with an aggregator, and/or establish a Twitter account.

I have been reading certain blogs for a few years now, by going to each of those sites directly. My favorite is Debbie Reese's "American Indians in Children's Literature" blog, which I highly recommend. I have to say that setting up eight blogs to feed into Google Reader is definitely more convenient than going to eight separate sites, and probably something I should have done long ago. In my defense however, most of the eight blogs I set up were those of other colleagues participating in the Challenge. Still, worth the time spent.

Since Google Reader was only an added convenience for the blog reading that I was already doing, I went ahead and set up a Twitter account also. I certainly do not anticipate tweeting much myself, but I do expect to get some useful and entertaining tweets from the 15 accounts I have initially chosen to follow. On the useful side, the professional associations, journals, and authors I added should be good for breaking news like immediate book award announcements and vital insider info on the books that my students and I love. On the entertaining side, I went ahead an added the sporting news feeds of my two alma maters, the Durham Bulls and the Carolina Hurricanes, as well as personal favorite authors & musicians. Since we are supposed to comment on each other's posts, I wonder if anyone reading this can guess which author(s) and musician(s) I am following on Twitter.

Enough for now. Next challenge tomorrow.

Welcome

Although I have been involved with internet applications since my graduate school days, when our student-led effort to create a gopher hole suddenly decided instead to embrace something even newer called a "world wide web site," I have not until recently felt the need to write my own blog. Sometimes however, it is necessary to demonstrate one's proficiency in order to maintain credibility. So the first several posts here will deal with other Web 2.0 tools brandished to fulfill the "DPS Technology Challenge," and thereafter I will undoubtedly find other uses for this forum on occasion. While I do not anticipate posting often, perhaps I will be surprised.