I'm so bad about not procrastinating. Today I managed to spend lots of time on Ravelry, Facebook, and cooking when I really should have been working on my presentation. Well now it's all done and pretty and on time so as long as that happened, it's all good.
Not all that time on Ravelry was wasted however! I managed to find (and buy!) a set of used Knit Picks Options nickel plated interchangeable needles with lots of extras that I've been secretly coveting for some time now. They're going to be in the mail tomorrow so that means happy sweater time for me soon!
As far as what I've actually accomplished as far as knitting goes since my last post...well I've began working on that hat for Michelle, it's looking very pretty and I finally got the Italian Tubular Cast-On to look nice, and work has begun on my future mother-in-law's scarf. I looove the yarn that I'm using for it too. It's Elann's Peruvian Baby Silk, an alpaca and silk blend (mostly alpaca), and it's definitely the thinnest yarn I've ever used-fingering weight. It's sooo soft, I can't stop petting it! My only qualm with it is that there seems to be some alpaca hairs that didn't want to get twisted into the yarn with the rest of them. I figure I'll just knit the thing up anyway and maybe pull out a couple of them when the thing's done. As long as it doesn't shed all over her clothes I think it'll be ok.
Pictures to come soon! I promise I won't be so horrible about posting them as I usually am! In fact maybe I'll take some pictures now...
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
I'm taking this blog in a new direction
Well, now that my class is long over, I think I'm going to use this blog to write about my knitting/whatever else comes to mind. Mostly knitting though.
It's been a very productive summer of knitting. I finished:
Dancing Crane Stole
$5 in Paris
DNA Cable Scarf (the color's closer to the first picture, the second picture is to show the cable to some extent)
A crocheted cloche
An entrelac scarf
Luna Lovegood Scarf
My first skein of yarn
Projects that are 90% done:
Itsybitsy Bag (needs blocking and seaming)
Those fingerless gloves I put on the side awhile ago
My second skein of yarn
This week I started:
Hermione <3's Ron hat
Flutter Scarf
Yes I'm obsessed. And it seems that I'm obsessed with gear from the Harry Potter movies. Well I'm attributing that to the fact that movies tend to have all the good fashion.
All I need now are interchangeable circular needles and a new top whorl drop spindle because I don't think I can stomach another skein on the CD one I have right now.
More pictures to come. Unless of course this is getting gifted and that person has my blog code. Then pictures after they receive said gift.
It's been a very productive summer of knitting. I finished:
Dancing Crane Stole
$5 in Paris
DNA Cable Scarf (the color's closer to the first picture, the second picture is to show the cable to some extent)
A crocheted cloche
An entrelac scarf
Luna Lovegood Scarf
My first skein of yarn
Projects that are 90% done:
Itsybitsy Bag (needs blocking and seaming)
Those fingerless gloves I put on the side awhile ago
My second skein of yarn
This week I started:
Hermione <3's Ron hat
Flutter Scarf
Yes I'm obsessed. And it seems that I'm obsessed with gear from the Harry Potter movies. Well I'm attributing that to the fact that movies tend to have all the good fashion.
All I need now are interchangeable circular needles and a new top whorl drop spindle because I don't think I can stomach another skein on the CD one I have right now.
More pictures to come. Unless of course this is getting gifted and that person has my blog code. Then pictures after they receive said gift.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Final Reflection!
The essence of this course's value is that it basically forces us into the cutting edge of librarianship today. We learn how to use tools that many of us are unfamiliar with (and possibly have never even heard of before!) and more importantly we learn the value of these tools in today's classroom. We also learn how to use them responsibly so that we can try to avoid issues with copyright infringement. These are some of the most important things we can learn during our whole time at grad school, because without these skills school librarians may soon be viewed as irrelevant (and if that happens, the students will be the ones hurt the most).
Before the course I considered myself fairly well versed in web tools. This course definitely brought my knowledge to a whole new level. My comfort level with new web 2.0 tools has sky rocketed and I cannot wait to play around with several of the tools again! (Note to self, try Glogster out as soon as possible.) I also had no idea that web copyrights even existed, so this course may have actually averted a copyright crisis! I will always try to check for the license first and if something's in question I will email the person/company who controlls the information (provided that I can find an email address or another way to contact them, naturally). I really enjoyed the hands-on nature of the course, it really helped solidify the use of many of these tools. I only wish I had a more positive experience with the web presentation (right now I'm pretty frustrated with them in general). I'll have to explore some of the more postively received presenter tools on my own time so that this frustration doesn't stick for too long.
I definitely plan on keeping a blog...although for now it'll probably focus on my knitting projects. Once I'm working in a library I'll probably start a separate blog discussing topics relating to that. I know I'm going to use Google Sites again, I'm already constantly updating the one I made for my LIS 511. On that same vein, I plan on using Wix and Glogster again because I love the idea of customizing your website in such an interesting way, they'll help make my library and project sites much more engaging. I also loved all the Google Search tools and other Google tools (such as Documents) and I will definitely be using them in the classroom often. I'm going to show a bunch of them to my mother (also a school librarian) so she can implement them in her high school.
I haven't really gotten into the whole social bookmarking thing, I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it up. I have a feeling that it's mostly because we were introduced to so many new things that I just didn't have enough time to play around with it. Right now it just seems pretty cluttered. Maybe I'm just using too many tags for one website. Also I'm not sure how much I'll use the Nings or how many other blogs I'm going to read, but I'm sure I'll get most of the main entries from them because I already use twitter and many of the librarians who use them use twitter to announce their posts.
Before the course I considered myself fairly well versed in web tools. This course definitely brought my knowledge to a whole new level. My comfort level with new web 2.0 tools has sky rocketed and I cannot wait to play around with several of the tools again! (Note to self, try Glogster out as soon as possible.) I also had no idea that web copyrights even existed, so this course may have actually averted a copyright crisis! I will always try to check for the license first and if something's in question I will email the person/company who controlls the information (provided that I can find an email address or another way to contact them, naturally). I really enjoyed the hands-on nature of the course, it really helped solidify the use of many of these tools. I only wish I had a more positive experience with the web presentation (right now I'm pretty frustrated with them in general). I'll have to explore some of the more postively received presenter tools on my own time so that this frustration doesn't stick for too long.
I definitely plan on keeping a blog...although for now it'll probably focus on my knitting projects. Once I'm working in a library I'll probably start a separate blog discussing topics relating to that. I know I'm going to use Google Sites again, I'm already constantly updating the one I made for my LIS 511. On that same vein, I plan on using Wix and Glogster again because I love the idea of customizing your website in such an interesting way, they'll help make my library and project sites much more engaging. I also loved all the Google Search tools and other Google tools (such as Documents) and I will definitely be using them in the classroom often. I'm going to show a bunch of them to my mother (also a school librarian) so she can implement them in her high school.
I haven't really gotten into the whole social bookmarking thing, I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it up. I have a feeling that it's mostly because we were introduced to so many new things that I just didn't have enough time to play around with it. Right now it just seems pretty cluttered. Maybe I'm just using too many tags for one website. Also I'm not sure how much I'll use the Nings or how many other blogs I'm going to read, but I'm sure I'll get most of the main entries from them because I already use twitter and many of the librarians who use them use twitter to announce their posts.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
7/20/10 Final Day of Class
Yesterday we covered organizing information online, digital citizenship, Google Sites (my favorite website design site), other search tools, widgets, website evaluation, and safety and netiquette.
First off I have to say that I LOVE LiveBinder. It's beyond simple to use and I can already think of 1000 uses for it. I was planning on making wikis for information to help learn a foreign language, but now I'm making LiveBinders. I already made one for German which you can view here. I'm already planning on making one for French and Spanish...I figure if I have all three of them I'm pretty much covered for the languages taught in most high schools (except for the occasional Italian, Latin, and Japanese...which I can always make later).
I learned more about Google Sites, which was great because I learned how to organize my pages easily rather than the strange way I did in the site I made for LIS 511. I'll definitely be using it again.
We barely got into the search engines but I'll play around with them later. Clusty in particular looks good.
The widget thing looks neat but kind of confusing, I'll have to look into it later.
The digital citizenship portion had some really good information in it, especially the stuff about copyrighting was extremely interesting and pertinent. It's all still a grey area but I'm going to make sure I look for the creative commons license.
I had already learned about some of the web evaluation websites but some of the links will definitely prove helpful in the future.
The netiquette and safety parts were great because there have been so many issues with cyberbulling, texting, sexting, etc.. for awhile now. Many of the tools she gave us I will definitely use when I'm teaching my classes about internet safety. I particularly liked the Brain Pop and the link that had what all the abbreviations stand for...half the time I don't know either!
First off I have to say that I LOVE LiveBinder. It's beyond simple to use and I can already think of 1000 uses for it. I was planning on making wikis for information to help learn a foreign language, but now I'm making LiveBinders. I already made one for German which you can view here. I'm already planning on making one for French and Spanish...I figure if I have all three of them I'm pretty much covered for the languages taught in most high schools (except for the occasional Italian, Latin, and Japanese...which I can always make later).
I learned more about Google Sites, which was great because I learned how to organize my pages easily rather than the strange way I did in the site I made for LIS 511. I'll definitely be using it again.
We barely got into the search engines but I'll play around with them later. Clusty in particular looks good.
The widget thing looks neat but kind of confusing, I'll have to look into it later.
The digital citizenship portion had some really good information in it, especially the stuff about copyrighting was extremely interesting and pertinent. It's all still a grey area but I'm going to make sure I look for the creative commons license.
I had already learned about some of the web evaluation websites but some of the links will definitely prove helpful in the future.
The netiquette and safety parts were great because there have been so many issues with cyberbulling, texting, sexting, etc.. for awhile now. Many of the tools she gave us I will definitely use when I'm teaching my classes about internet safety. I particularly liked the Brain Pop and the link that had what all the abbreviations stand for...half the time I don't know either!
7/19/10 What we did in class this past Monday.
Outside of the day we learned all about the crazy Google functions, this was my favorite day of the class. We covered digital storytelling, animation and cartooning, and glogster/wix.
I especially liked the digital storytelling. Voicethread and Photostory are fantastic resources with a million uses. One of the teachers I observed used Photostory with her elementary students, grades 3-5, with a poets and poetry unit. The kids seemed to love it just as much as I did!
We didn't do much with the animation although we saw several videos that showed you the results you can get from animating your own segment. I'm actually in charge of animating our group's final project so I'll get to explore those sites more on my own.
Unfortunately, Glogster was on the fritz when we tried to use it on the 19th and the 20th so I'll have to try that out myself another time. We did use Wix, which was awesome. I loved the themes and the options and it was very easy to use, and looked really professional when I completed it. I'll definitely use Wix again...although if I'm working with younger kids I may use Glogster because it seems to be better for a younger audience. You can see my Wix at my wiki.
So overall, a pretty awesome day and I learned a lot!
I especially liked the digital storytelling. Voicethread and Photostory are fantastic resources with a million uses. One of the teachers I observed used Photostory with her elementary students, grades 3-5, with a poets and poetry unit. The kids seemed to love it just as much as I did!
We didn't do much with the animation although we saw several videos that showed you the results you can get from animating your own segment. I'm actually in charge of animating our group's final project so I'll get to explore those sites more on my own.
Unfortunately, Glogster was on the fritz when we tried to use it on the 19th and the 20th so I'll have to try that out myself another time. We did use Wix, which was awesome. I loved the themes and the options and it was very easy to use, and looked really professional when I completed it. I'll definitely use Wix again...although if I'm working with younger kids I may use Glogster because it seems to be better for a younger audience. You can see my Wix at my wiki.
So overall, a pretty awesome day and I learned a lot!
7/16/10 What we did in class on that day
So I completely forgot to blog after class the last several classes so I'm writing down my thoughts on what we learned now.
Today we learned about image generators and web presentation tools. I really liked playing around with the image generators, especially the motivational posters creators. I've always enjoyed the sarcastic ones so I created a sarcastic one about a recent trend that I find highly entertaining. We also made a wordle and a ALA READ poster, which was pretty cool, but I didn't really like the themes in the READ poster so if I made one eventually, I might try to just play around in photoshop...provided my school had it.
Learning about the different presentation tools was interesting...but actually creating one was definitely not. Anne and I got 280slides.com and it was an absolutely horrible presentation tool. The software never really worked properly, it kept freezing whenever I tried to add images (which is what our presentation's central focus was). We eventually gave up and tried SlideFlickr.com which was equally useless, as you could only post it on facebook, twitter, myspace, or the like. When I tried posting it on twitter it did not work at all and again we gave up after trying everything we could think of. If you're interested in reading more about our horrible experience, I wrote a blow-by-blow in my wiki for the class over here. I might need to add you to the wiki so you can view it though, I think I set it on private. My ALA READ poster, motivational poster, and wordle are over there too.
That's about it for 7/16!
Today we learned about image generators and web presentation tools. I really liked playing around with the image generators, especially the motivational posters creators. I've always enjoyed the sarcastic ones so I created a sarcastic one about a recent trend that I find highly entertaining. We also made a wordle and a ALA READ poster, which was pretty cool, but I didn't really like the themes in the READ poster so if I made one eventually, I might try to just play around in photoshop...provided my school had it.
Learning about the different presentation tools was interesting...but actually creating one was definitely not. Anne and I got 280slides.com and it was an absolutely horrible presentation tool. The software never really worked properly, it kept freezing whenever I tried to add images (which is what our presentation's central focus was). We eventually gave up and tried SlideFlickr.com which was equally useless, as you could only post it on facebook, twitter, myspace, or the like. When I tried posting it on twitter it did not work at all and again we gave up after trying everything we could think of. If you're interested in reading more about our horrible experience, I wrote a blow-by-blow in my wiki for the class over here. I might need to add you to the wiki so you can view it though, I think I set it on private. My ALA READ poster, motivational poster, and wordle are over there too.
That's about it for 7/16!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
7/15/10 Class Blog
So today we learned about many of the Google Apps, PLN, Twitter, RSS, Simple Bookmarking (Delicious), and Nings and Wikis that would be useful for us entering into the school media program.
Many of the Google Apps we learned about I already used often (such as some of the search options and language tools, Books, Earth, Docs, and Sites) but I had never thought to use them in ways like this. The Google Lit Trips was especially interesting. When I was a kid I always enjoyed learning about the areas that the setting of the book was based on. I thought the example in class of Around the World in 80 Days is a particularly interesting example because so many different areas are visited throughout the course of the book, so for every new place a teacher could have a mini unit about that area. I also liked the new search functions she showed us, they will definitely change how I search for information in the future and I may have to check out Google News. I never used it before and it looks like a great way to keep up to date on what's going on in the world.
I had never used Delicious before either but I understood the general concept. It's a really interesting site and I'll definitely have to check it out for personal use. It'll be a lot easier to organize the websites I use and find new ones with it.
Twitter I am pretty familiar with, I had to join for a German class about a year ago (I also had to join a Ning for class) however we didn't really use either very much. Ning was mainly for uploading and watching videos and we tried to get Germans to tweet back to us in German...I tried at least 3 different people but no one ever responded. Oh well.
I thought using Skype in the classroom was really cool, getting authors and other interesting teachers to talk to the classroom for a period sounds exciting and I know the kids would love it too. That is definitely something I would try to use in my classroom.
I had also never tried a RSS before but now that I have it, I'll definitely check it out!
That's about it so far!
Many of the Google Apps we learned about I already used often (such as some of the search options and language tools, Books, Earth, Docs, and Sites) but I had never thought to use them in ways like this. The Google Lit Trips was especially interesting. When I was a kid I always enjoyed learning about the areas that the setting of the book was based on. I thought the example in class of Around the World in 80 Days is a particularly interesting example because so many different areas are visited throughout the course of the book, so for every new place a teacher could have a mini unit about that area. I also liked the new search functions she showed us, they will definitely change how I search for information in the future and I may have to check out Google News. I never used it before and it looks like a great way to keep up to date on what's going on in the world.
I had never used Delicious before either but I understood the general concept. It's a really interesting site and I'll definitely have to check it out for personal use. It'll be a lot easier to organize the websites I use and find new ones with it.
Twitter I am pretty familiar with, I had to join for a German class about a year ago (I also had to join a Ning for class) however we didn't really use either very much. Ning was mainly for uploading and watching videos and we tried to get Germans to tweet back to us in German...I tried at least 3 different people but no one ever responded. Oh well.
I thought using Skype in the classroom was really cool, getting authors and other interesting teachers to talk to the classroom for a period sounds exciting and I know the kids would love it too. That is definitely something I would try to use in my classroom.
I had also never tried a RSS before but now that I have it, I'll definitely check it out!
That's about it so far!
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