I've made avatars before. Here's one I made last summer with Joyce Valenza. We used http://www.tektek.org/dream/ to make this one. I used this site with high school students, and they had a blast creating avatars. I think avatars work really well with students because they get to be creative and apply their personalities. I like the yahoo avatars also especially the addition of the backgrounds.
I appreciate your instructions on how to save and post the yahoo avatar. I might not have seen the small link on the right side of the page without your help. Thanks.
And I've officially registered! Do I get a prize for starting early? (tee hee)
OK, it's not week 2, it's still the first night I've worked on this, but I'm having fun. My avatar, Aunt Books is now posted!
May 23: School's Out! Well, mostly. I'll still have to go in next week to finish up and to work on some curriculum tubs.
Tonight I read through the beginning material and watched the video from PLCMC. By the way, I grew up in Gastonia, NC right next door to Charlotte (the big city to us). I love the Charlotte library and frequent it as often as I can when I visit. I even have a PLCMC library card. I used it quite often when I was working on my MLS and was traveling to NC regularly.
I agree with you that we need to be up-to-date with online tools because our patrons -- mine are young adults-- are using them. I also think school libraries have another important charge which is to provide digital equity (I hate that term, but can't think of a better one) to all our patrons. For many of my students, the library is the only place they can go to get online and I want to be equipped to help them with their online needs and questions.
I found Lee Rainie's hallmarks to be very interesting. I particularly want to think more about the idea of an "online commons." I've downloaded the power point, but haven't watched it yet.
I also started this blog. There were a few moments of frustration when I couldn't seem to access my google account, but it turns out I was using the wrong user name.
Anyway, here's my blog: Aunt Books.
June 2
Week 1/ Thing 2 Continued. . .
Evidently, I didn't read all the instructions on that first night. It was the last day of school, so my brain was pretty fried. Anyhoo, thanks to Audrey, I went back and looked at Thing 2 and see that I need to talk about the 7 1/2 habits. I did my entire master's degree online so I think I have the life-long learning habits mostly covered. I'm one of those people who would be a perennial college student if I had the time and money. The most difficult habit for me is to keep the goal in mind. I get so excited about new ideas, new challenges, new tools to try that I sometimes veer off on tangents & forget to get back to where I started. This often leads to exciting paths, but also creates those many piles on my desk and icons on my computer desktop.
The easiest for me is to accept responsibility for my own learning. Like I said before, I enjoy the learning process. Maybe that's one reason I like being a librarian. I learn new things everyday by helping students and teachers.
