Thing #7, more of, I think: Exploring Technology

Below is another one of the 23 Things: exploring other blogs on web 2.0

http://pantherlibraryproject.blogspot.com/

Well, I clearly didn't borrow this very well. Someone gave me a comment and I went to read his blog and saw this wonderful YouTube. But did something wrong in the borrowing it.

Thing #7: My VoiceThread booktalks (under construction: just begun)

Thing #3 (continued) I think: Playing with Flickr!

Relax! (today is public holiday)
Originally uploaded by мѕс (@ flickr-break )

I'll add this (on the right) to my growing collection. I could climb in there quite easily. It's called: "Relax! (today is a public holiday)" . It arrived here because I clicked on it and and then clicked on Blog This, but I notice that it made it here without a proper citation. I thought clicking on Blog This meant that it would bring the citation information over with it. Hmmm. Now I guess I have to go back and find this one as well, but at least I know the title, that should speed up the search.

Sure enough, using the title helped enormously. The photographer is msc(@flickr-break). Strange: I can see that information quite clearly under the photo when I'm in edit mode, but not when I look at my blog that goes live.

Meanwhile, I've contacted two photographers through Flickr! email, so that's something else I've learned during this practice session.

For some reason my header came back on properly. I wonder how that happened?

Ha, I found and cited my last photo! And of all things it was called: Untitled.

I've learned my lesson, the lesson I teach my students and my colleagues: cite your sources immediately so you don't have to go back and find them again!

Meanwhile, I've read The Seems: Glitch in Sleep, Edward's Eyes and I'm in the middle of Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party.

Thing #3: Playing with Flickr!

Nags Head Nirvana
Originally uploaded by BOBXNC

Ha,Finally, I found another photo! Nags Head Nirvana by BOBXNC.

But I don't really like the photos showing up here in the middle of my Blog. I liked them better just on the side. I guess there's no way to move them once they're in the middle?

Excuse me for a bit while I go read in this hammock which is just calling to me......

Thing #3: Playing with Flickr!

Idyll for a Hot Summer Day
Originally uploaded by MontanaRaven

Finally, I found another of the photos I'd selected: Idyll for a Hot Summer Day. Originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

hammock

hammock
Originally uploaded by tapioca22

This is NOT one of my original hammock photos, but I've spent more time trying to find my original photos so I could cite them than I have done anything else.

I showed my blog to one of my favorite teachers who is very tech saavy. He asked me why it says, "Not cited" on the photos of hammocks and I told him I forgot to cite the photos and haven't yet been able to find them again. Shocked, he said, "You mean to tell me that you've been making me make my 6th graders cite everything now and you didn't?" Caught! I'm leaving them up until I find them and as a cautionary tale.

Now Gosh darn it. I just typed in an entry. Where is it? And why is my header looking all strange? When I go to the Template it looks fine, but not when I go to View Blog.

Thing # 3 (I think) continued

I haven't been working on my Blog for several weeks now. But that doesn't mean I haven't been learning. I set my Blog aside when I tried to find the citation information for my hammock photos. I tried going back to find them again, but it was too time consuming. I know I should take them off if I'm not going to cite them, but it's so time consuming to relocate the necessary information. Good teachable moment to myself to cite on the spot from now on.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to teach myself how to put my booktalks on to my library's home page using voicethread.com. As usual, with me anyway, it's a real time consuming experience. I showed the site to someone else at my school who is tech saavy and she got it right away, and I'm still struggling with it. Mind you, it was the typical thing that always happens to me: the photo that I wanted to download for some reason wouldn't, so my sample never looked like the model. It didn't occur to me that something was wrong with the photo I was trying to download. I kept thinking it was me doing something wrong. When, after hours, I gave up on my photo and tried another, it started working. It's the story of my life: the tech people who help me are always saying, "Gee, I don't know why that's happening. I've never seen it do THAT before." Anyway, the point of this is that I never would have even attempted booktalks on voice thread if I hadn't started with this Web 2.0. Having you gently begin me gave me courage to explore a little on my own. Here's my underconstruction voicethread: http://voicethread.com/#u31870.b37054.i194263. I'm not sure if it will open because I had to type it in and not copy and past it. It wouldn't copy and paste and I couldn't remember how to get to the place where it says want to embed this.

Anyway, I'm going to be playing with my voice thread now for a while (not right now, but in the coming weeks, so I might not get back to Flick and Web2.0 for a while.

Week 3, Thing #5 Flickr!

Well, I can find photos on Flickr! and I can put them on my desktop and then move them to my blog, but I can't figure out how to move them from the Internet directly to my blog.

And what's the copyright regarding these photos of hammocks?

On the 2.0 instructions, it says look for the words "blog this" above the photo of which the link was provided. I couldn't see any words that said "blog this".

Gosh darn it. I've just spent 40 minutes looking for the photos I put on my blog to credit them and can't find them any more! Lots of hammock photos that I missed, but I can't find the one's I selected. I guess I'll take them off and put others on that I can credit. But not right now. I'm done for now.

Thanks, Bibliofan, for all the help you're giving me. I appreciate it. It's fun to see that someone is watching my progress.

Week 3, #5 Explore Flickr!

Well, I got a photo from my desktop to my new Flickr! account. Then somehow ( I could never do it again!) I got it from my Flickr! account to this blog. But it turned out on the very bottom of my blog, as if it was the first thing I'd done. I wonder how I could put it on the side?

Well, what do you know: I got it to the side. This one is from my desktop. This is a photo of me on my way to Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunan Provice last summer. This is the front of a small outdoor roadside cafe where we stopped for a bite. Everyone at the table dipped chopsticks into the communal bowls and ate directly from there. Around the side the dishwashers were washing the dishes using a garden hose on the pavement. If you look closely on the left you can see their equipment: garden hose, metal mixing bowl doubling as a wash basin, cement ground to dry everything on. All very different from home. But that's why we travel, so we can see how other people live and do things. Tiger Leaping Gorge is meant to be dammed soon. The next day we rode bikes around the small farms, up one dirt path after another, following an old Naxi woman to her plot. Then up a 15,000 foot glacier, of which I can't remember the name, just now. Black Dragon Mountain?

I am currently reading Kephart's Undercover. It is exquisit. I know some 7th grade girls who will love it.

Last night I completely forgot to pick up my son in the city because I was so involved in trying to make Flickr! work.

Thing #4, I think. Flickr

Well, I should have left well enough alone. But all that pleasant time in safe harbor made me feel brave. I opened an account on Flickr and got a photo from my desktop onto my Flickr account (I think) and now my photo does appear when I click on the word 'flickr' above. (Actually, I took it off because I didn't like the loss of privacy that seemed to be occurring). Sure enough, there's my photo in the middle of the page next to My Photos. But I can't figure out how to get it from the Flickr page to my blog. The directions said to look for a "Blog This" button, but I can't find it. So here we are, another 3.5 hours later and I still can't get my photo from Flickr to my blog.

IMG_0075.JPG

Thing #3 Continued...

This is me hanging out at my safe harbor: browsing and borrowing things from my colleagues on other Web 2.0 blogs. Seems kind of awkward toggling between Web 2.0 and my colleague's sites and back to my blog. I wish a knew a more direct route. I can go one direction (to my dashboard) quite quickly, but have to go back to my bookmarked Web.2 to get back to my colleagues. A little time wasting. Duh! I just used the green back arrow and that made a swift transition! So many of those who have completed the 2.0 have such good things on their sites, especially if I keep clicking previous, previous, previous - then I get back to their beginnings. I especially love the beginnings of other people who said they had to redo this and redo that because it wasn't working.

Copyright friendly images:
http://www.sdst.org/shs/library/cfimages.html

Trading card maker:
http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php

LibraryThing:
http://www.librarything.com/
Username and password :
____nnah___bour
____school

Put a poll on your blog:
http://www.polldaddy.com/

Not sure how I'll use this:
http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/

OWElibrary2 is one of my favorite Web 2.0 blogs. Wonderful comments.

elmolibrary2 has a great graphic of a man running with books. Tried to put it on my brochure for Summer Reading, but it wasn't right, somehow.

Becca's Path is a good one to go back to, too.

Ha! Here's some very good news! This morning I was thinking to myself that I believe I have to learn to do Flikkr next. And I'm barely recovered from the frustration of creating several blogs and avatars and having to delete them and start over. I thought, "No, I think I'll just hang around - get this- in the safe harbor of my own blog for a while, before I venture forth again. Ha! Three days ago I would never have referred to my blog as a safe harbor! I lurked on other 2.0 blogs and found all kinds of things of interest. I think my next step is going to be to go back to other's blogs and enter onto my blog which one's I want to go back to for which 'Things".

Thing #3: The Avatar

OK. I went back and recreated my avatar. I wish there was a background of a hammock, but I suppose the object of this is not to create something that we're attached to, but to practice copying and pasting html to create an image.

Thing #1, Thing #2 and Thing #3:

I had comments about each one of these, but that Blog got lost and I've spent hours and hours and hours trying to create a new one, this one. Suffice it to say that My Goal is to stick with this, no matter how incredibly frustrating and time consuming it becomes. And I can't remember #2 and don't feel like leaving this space to go back and see what it was because I may never make it back to this space again. #3 was my avatar that I spent hours on and didn't like in the end anyway.

Thing #1, Thing #2 and Thing #3:


When my husband came home last night, he said, "Are you STILL on the computer?" and my son replied, "She's worse than a train wreck because in a train wreck, the crash happens and then its over and you can begin cleaning up. But she just keeps crashing and crashing and crashing. It's endless!" Quite frankly, I was kind of glad that he saw that because I'm always having such a hard time with technology and he's never 'believed' it before.