Conclusion

I like the photos folks added to their blogs, so I'll add this last one to mine. The dogless musher.

• What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
• How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

My favorite was Lesson 5, playtime. I enjoyed seeing all the image generators and putting my rabbit on a cereal box. Also the pencil sketch generator was neat, and the sound translators.
This is followed by the Youtube lesson, but there was less discovery there and just more fun. That's important too. Which also pointed out to me out how easy it is to learn something when it's fun. With my lifelong learning goals, I have to realize that the fun stuff along the way counts too, not for me to get caught up in just pushing for the end goal. I don't know how many times we all watched "March of the Emperors" on Youtube after that lesson.

• Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
• What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I truly appreciated learning, and earning CE credits from home. The amount of money saved in gas and time in driving I can really use elsewhere. In the future I'm hoping our staff uses these communication tools with our own projects and minimize physical staff meetings. With our far flung branches it would have to save time and money for everybody. I also liked the way you paced the lessons, one a week, with extra time at the end. That worked well for me.

• If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again choose to participate?

I would definitely enjoy learning more with programs like this in the future. Thanks for all the work you put into letting me learn from this one!

Wikis

It was fun to get to know this tool better. Also, how appropriate, for my blog theme, that it is a Hawaiian word. Personally it seems to me that wikis will be so helpful in sharing information about what works and what doesn't work in children's programming. We all do similar Summer Reading Programs for example, and here's a way to infuse good ideas without driving all over for conferences or meetings.

I found the Bull Run Library Wiki interesting and especially liked the link to the definition of a librarian. http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Librarian The description of librarian clothing was eerily accurate. I was thinking of getting some knee pads for work, but here I thought our carpeting was just exceptionally rough. Now I see it's a universal problem.

Communication is good. Wikis help. Thanks for giving me the chance to explore them.

Tagging

I can see how tagging a site would help you stay organized, help others to find a site they might like, and also help the site itself with increased traffic. On one of the blogs I go to regularly, I've seen her thank someone for their tag. Now I know what she was talking about. I'm guessing that delicious tells the site when they've been tagged.
This would definitely help with research. For home schooling, for example, there are tons of wonderful websites with free games. I quickly accumulated so many that they became useless. Just going by the little bit of bookmark name is not enough. With tagging I can organize by "multiplication" or "writing_organizers" or "vocabulary." Then I can see what others have tagged as "vocabulary."
I also love the fact that all of this work organizing is not limited to one computer, but can be accessed anywhere you can remember your username and password.

You Tube

Well, this was very fun. It's great to see how creative folks are. I have a favorite video here with the proper Hawaiian theme for this work blog. Plus I always liked the song Hotel California...

podcasts

This was time consuming for me. I had saved some names that I wanted to look up for this lesson, but it looks like they all want money to listen to their podcasts, or I couldn't find them. Julian Darley had a great speech the other day, Post Carbon World, on NPR, but I couldn't find it again. Todd Strasser, who'll be at MLA, has a song that was on Car Talk on NPR, but I couldn't listen to it either from his website or from NPR. I guess I learned I better write down the date, time, and program when I want to hear something again. The names alone don't seem to work.
I finally signed up "6o second science" on my bloglines account.

librarything

Image generators

This was a fun exercise. The generator I used was Cereal Box generator and I used a pet's photo. I liked the R2D2 translator generator too.

Favorite Flickr photos

This photo is from camilla1967's flickr collection. I enjoy her pictures of families, kids, cats, and flowers too.
















This photo is from Knitting Iris. She has a great blog and I love her photos on flickr.

Bloglines

I like the idea of having my favorites in one place that I could access from any computer. Now I only pretty much use one computer, but you know, for the next time I'm on Molokai and it's 21 miles to the nearest computer it could be handy? In the meantime I think mostly what I'll like about it is that it tells me at a glance if something new has been added to a site. That saves some clicking.

Assignment 2 1/2

In the Habits tutorial, it said to be careful what you call yourself because that's what you'll become. I might be confusing myself here because I don't think I'd really like to be a musher on Molokai, but I could alternate. Seasonally. Easily. There's the nicest state library there...

"Viewing problems as challenges" has got to be the hardest thing on the list for me. I have the end in mind and guess I need to shorten the distance sometimes. I don't want to make my goal the next speed bump, though, either. I'll have to work on that one.

"Teach/mentor others" is a strong habit for me right now. I have a Girl Scout troop and for all that they are supposed to be running themselves, it's really me offering them choices and a cheerleading section. My family also homeschools so not only am I working out lesson plans, but I have an extensive learning toolbox for a 5th grader. I find myself using it a lot...

I'm looking forward to this class and I love the commute!