More progress on the LMC!

Notice the huge skylight I don't know for sure, but my guess is that it is between 30 and 40 feet long! You may notice that there is no place for computers, but there will be! Notice the monitors on the circulation desk! We will have 8 computers on table just beyond the circ. desk. My media classroom with 30 computers, is adjacent to the LMC. I'll post those pictures next time!


A Smart Board will replace the white board. This area will have 8 round tables with chaird and a laptop on a cart for a classroom area. Through the windows is a large media workroom.

The view looking toward my office (look closely and you can see my cat-in-the-hat art), past the six free standing book cases that will house the fiction collection and along the 52 feet of shelving along the wall where part of the nonfiction collection will be.

Looking back toward the door where I stood to take the previous photo. Additions to this area will include a colorful area rug for students to lounge on while reading.

Standing in the same place as the previous photo. On the left side is another 52 feet of shelving that will hold nonfiction and reference. The four free standing bookcases on the left will hold the Everybody/Easy books. Each of the free standing bookcases are 9 feet long and double sided!


Another view of the wall bookcases and part of the circulation desk and four of the book trucks (there are several more in the media workroom!

Media Center in Progress

Ten, 9' long and 48in tall, book cases are being assembled this week!
As you can see there is loads of space...Even though I have ordered over 15,000 new books, I'm sure that I'll have room for many more!
I will have round tables in the foreground of the top picture for my classroom area.
I'll post more pictures as I have something to show!

My New Media Center

Next Thursday I will, officially, be the media specialist for Riverview Elementary School in Farmington, MN. We will have a student population of 675 students in grades k-5.

Riverview is a brand new elementary with a brand new media collection! I have ordered over 15,000 titles (so far) and have quite a few more to go! It has been a a few weeks of flooding myself with a fantastically, fun, frolicking, feast of fabulous books!

Last week we interviewed for my media assistant and offered the position to an affable and smiling woman who has worked as a special education paraprofessional in the district for many years. I think she will be perfect and am looking forward to working with her!

On interview day, I stopped into see the new media center and it is wonderful! It is huge and has an really large skylight that takes up most of the center of the ceiling! There will be 8 search computers in the media center, a classroom area with a Smart Board, a leisure reading area, and a media lab where I will teach many of my classes! There is also another media lab for classroom use!

As soon as I can, I'll post pictures of the transformation.

The trouble with Twitter

Dare I say it?

I am not a Twitter fan. I don't want everyone to know what I'm doing every minute of every day, and I don't want to know what everyone else is doing every minute of every day. This vid. expresses my Twitter thoughts pretty well.


Twouble with Twitter

Have you heard about Earth Hour?

The idea is that whole communities turn out all the lights for an hour across the world. I wonder just how much energy would be saved in that hour. I bet it is enormous!

8:30PM local time,
wherever you live on planet earth.
Saturday 28 March 2009
Earth Hour Home

I think where ever I am on Saturday evening,
I will join in this effort.
How about you?

Digital Pioneer - That's me!

Kathy Schrock posted this video on Facebook the other day and no their is a new Ning Group for Digital Pioneers. Are you a DP too?


Digital Pioneer: The Movie from Kathy Schrock on Vimeo.

Thing 25

Hmmm,
I guess I jumped the gun for thing 25 with the snowfall and blogcasting (see Gabcasting below). Oh well. The widget vidoes were well done and provided a good basic introduction to widgets. I had not been to Technorati before and enjoyed browsing there.

I have played quite a bit with widgets, but truthfully, I see most of them as a waste of time.
I have used the US map of places I've traveled and places my travel bug (with geocaching.com) has traveled. For this blog, the snow was fun, but I'm about done with it. I like having the Youtube videos based on my interests, but I don't care to advertise my music choices, countdown to anything, or play games via my blog, so am passing on most of the thousands (yes, really) og Blidgets, widgets, and gadgets.

I have used Animoto in a Powerpoint presentation and it worked well, but I'm not sure that it was worth the amount of time I put into it. It is doubtful that I will use it again because I am looking for things that do not add significantly to the time I put into a presentation.

I may add a comment box or a "Star" tool. I've looked at shout-out boxes, but the ones I seen are too big and gaudy. I guess I'll just keep looking.

Thing 24 - Refresh My Blog

Technically, this is a completely new blog because during the first 23 things, I was in a school building where Blogger is blocked. I tried to convert my old blog, at Blogmeister, to a classroom/miscellaneous classroom blog, but it didn't do what I wanted so, I moved here.

I did change/add a couple of things though...
Firstly, notice the snow? It is a cute gadget that I'll leave here for a month.
Secondly, I added Random books from my LibraryThing. Love my Librarything! I participate in the Early Reviewers Group and just got "The Cross: 38102 miles, 38 years, one mission" by Arthur Blessitt. It is a fascinating look at this devoted man and his lifelong mission to follow Jesus. If you want to read it when I'm done, let me know.

I also watched/read the 25 Basic Styles of Blogging slideshow which is similar to the Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes by Jakob Nielson article I read a couple of months ago. I have to say that my opinion has not changed. My blog doesn't fit into a category. I'm not writing it to influence people or get on anyone's list :)

ITunes, Audio Books and slow transfer time

I listen to audio books while I drive via my iPod. I love the sound quality and clean elegance of not having to switch CDs as I drive.
Currently, I have an 160G iPod with video and TV capability, but I seldom use those features - I wanted a large HD so that I could have a whole library of podcasts, books, and music at my finger tip. My ability to continue this practice was all but eliminated during the past month or so - until today!
Just before the holidays, I was reading "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die," published in 2005 by Cassel and saw the best Jazz album "ever." My husband loves jazz, so I searched until I found the album on CD and was thrilled when it came just before Christmas. Because it was a used album, I decided to play it once to be sure that it was in perfect condition. I popped it into my computer and waited for iTunes to open so that I could play it. That didn't happen; instead, the drive sputtered and music stuttered. The "best jazz album ever" sounded like a cat caught somewhere painful...
Surely, the music was not supposed to sound like that! So, I checked the CD, but it looked pristine. I called Dell and went through a long discussion to test my optical drive, it too seemed to be optimal. Then I got too busy with the holidays and family to think about it any more.
My "research assistant" also known as my husband, had time to do some research on the problem and discovered a solution, and I had time to test it out today.

According to ZDNet Blog, the problem is probably because of a driver in Apple's iTunes 8 update. I went through the article and checked everything it suggested, then popped in an album. It loaded in record time! Yeah!

More Things on a Stick!

Time flies, and it's time to get back on the stick!
For all of you, my three faithful readers, the original 23 Things on a Stick was a self-paced online web 2.0 learning program. I participated in and thoroughly enjoyed the first program, so I plan to begin working my way through to 47 this time!
I'll be posting the things, and reflecting on each thing as I finish with it, so stay tuned!

Even though I love reading and books...

These are some amazing alternatives from Offbeat Earth
I especially like this piece by Kaspan.

Boolean Searches

For quite a few years I have used Rockwell Schrock's Venn Diagram to teach Boolean operators and searching, but today I discovered Boolify, a new visual search tool that illustrates Boolean searching in an authentic way.
I think it will be a nice addition to the information specialist "bag of tricks."