Flickr was fun!

Flickr was fun! But as with any new application, the initial learning is the hard part. I love taking pictures and sharing pictures at home and at school. Many of the children in my school seldom have the opportunity to see themselves in a snapshot. We try to take advantage of every opportunity to capture smiling faces to promote happiness and joy in our school. In addition to our website, we have two digital frames, one in the main office and one in the library. We load all sorts of snaps. Our students love to see themselves and each other. This has proven to be an excellent PR tool for visitors to our school as well. I see apps for Flickr in many ways. Just today the art teacher shared with me his need for photos as part of a grant. The trading cards may be just the ticket for this assignment. He is a go-getter, so if he doesn't ALREADY know about this app, I'm sure he will embrace it and have it rolling in his classroom soon! Students will love making trading cards of their favorite nominees to post and share.

So many ideas! So little time! Gotta keep that "get to do" attitude as opposed to the "have to do" attitude. If we only had another unencumbered 12 hours or so....or do I really want to wish for that? :-)

To Bravely go....

Second step....RSS feeds. To Bravely go where others have gone before...but on my own. I ventured into RSS feeds without the direction of the 2.0 training but indirectly through the help of several 2.0 gurus. Shannon Dean Wham's blog, Books, Bytes, & Grocery Store Feet is too good to miss by depending on my memory to check his blog regularly. The answer was the RSS. I realized the need and possibility because of Cathy Nelson through her reference to Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog. He made it easy for me by having the directions at the bottom of his kudos to Shannon's humor. So, I took the plunge and spent all afternoon tinkering around. So much for the dust bunnies and dirty clothes that were supposed to receive my Saturday attention!

One thing I can't quite figure out. Do all the blog entries remain? Do they evaporate like old e-mail? Can you delete what you don't need and keep other stuff? I saw the folder option but couldn't quite make heads or tails of managing old posts.

Venturing out into the world of 2.0

I am taking that bold step into the world of web 2.0. If my mission statement says that I aim to create life long readers and learners, then it only goes that I must be a life long learner, too. ( Life long reader--no question!) I must be able to access information to share with them in the form that they prefer best--online. So here we go, venturing into blogging. I cannot wait to have students that will blog with me about the books they are reading. That is my goal for this year. To establish a place where students and teachers can share and discuss the wonderful discoveries made as they become life-long readers. Together we will become life-long learners!