Thing 7 is taking a look at Professional Organizations.  Most of the Organizations that were listed on CPD 23 I don’t think I would be interested in because they are not specific enough for me.  I do want to check out School Library Association more closely.  I was at one time a member of the American Library Association but didn’t seem to get much out of it and ended up letting it laps.  One professional organization I am involved in is the South Carolina Association of School Librarians and have recently been asked to be on the technology committee.  I subscribe to their listserv and have been to the conference in March the past 5 years.  I have meet several wonderful librarians through this organization.  I hope to continue working with SCASL and maybe I will try to reactive my membership with ALA or become a member of SLA this year.

Okay, I am a few weeks behind in CPD 23.   Things 6 includes Online networks like Linkedin, Facebook,  LISNPN,   Librarians as Teachers network, and  CILIP communities.  Out of all of these, the only one I was familiar with was Facebook. I use facebook on a regular basis to keep in touch with friends and family around the country on a weekly or even daily basis.  I like that everyone of my “friends” on Facebook I actually know.  I did sign in and create an account for Linkedin but I am not sure how much I will actually use this. My husband has used it some for work but says he too does not use it often.  The other three online networks I checked out but that was about it. They seem so broad. I need to find an online network that covers elementary media specialists. Does anyone know of this type of network? Wish me luck in finding it!

  Reflection is a crucial part of the education system.  After every library lesson I am constantly tweaking or changing parts to make it better for the students. Needless to say the students I teach at the end of the week have a better sense of the lesson than those students that I teach at the beginning of the week.    Learning from your mistakes and making things better is part of life. One thing I have learned so far in CPD 23 is how little I actually know about the technology world although if you look at my picture above in my office, you might not think that.  Nothing like two computers, a cell phone and an ipad all at the same time.  This summer I am enjoying the fact that I get to try new technology tools and experiment with tools I have never used.  I will say it is time consuming and I am not sure how much time I will have once school starts back.  As I continue on my technology journey,  may I continue to have success in finding and understanding the new technology I come acrosss. Wish me luck!

Last week for the 23 things for professional development, we were asked to Google our name.  I knew there was another person with the same name because I had tried this once before. Apparently there is a make-up model with my same name.  Once I found information about myself, I was not surprised with what showed up, mostly information through my school and conferences I have spoken at.  It also brought up my personal blog.  I don’t know if anyone else has tried this but I was amazed at how many links wanted me to “sign-up” to find out  more about myself.  Who would pay to find out about a friend? 

When it comes to my personal brand, I do really like the name I chose for my blog and I have even had a couple comments on it.  Unfortunately, jvkaye is what I am know as on twitter and facebook.  If I would have started this earlier I would have used the Lucky Librarian because that is exactly what I am!

After reading “Thing 4″ for  23 Things for Professional Development I realized I already knew about two of the three mentioned tools. I already have a twitter account and have tried to tweet and keep up several times but always seem to get “lost”.  Even when  using Tweet Deck I seem to miss tweets.  I am not sure if there is a way to set  up tweets on a phone so they come automatically or not.    I have used twitter a few times but I am not sure I will ever use it as much as Facebook or other tools.

I do use RSS feeds and love how convenient they make reading and keeping up with the educational blogs I subscribe to.  I was amazed at how many different places you can send the feeds to including Yahoo, Google Reader, blogger and the list goes on and on.  I am not sure which place is the best but currently I have my feeds sent to my GoogleReader account kept on my igoogle page.  Igoogle has been so handy when keeping up with websites,googledocs, blog posts, facebook, and e-mail.

The last tool, pushnote, I am not familiar with and when I checked my list of google friends, no one subscribes to pushnote so I need some friends to add.  Anyone out there want to volunteer?  Wish me luck!

I recently received an i-pad for my birthday. I have had a Nook Color since last Christmas and use it all the time to read books ,  do basic internet searches and check facebook or e-mail.  I really wanted an i pad so my wonderful husband purchased one. The problem was where to start? I knew a couple basic apps to put on the ipad but I really wasn’t sure where to go to find out the BEST apps to get .  While doing research I found the site Bestappsite and it gave me a great starting point. It not only gives a list of the best apps, it also explains what they do and rates them.  If you are new to ipads, you will want to check this site out!

While I was looking over some blogs I subscribe to, I found a good site from iLibrarian htat talks about the 100 Essential Web 2.0 tools for Teachers. I was amazed at how few I knew about or used.  I try to consider myself pretty tech savvy but after looking at this list, I am not so sure. You would really take a look and see what tools you are familiar with! I wish you luck!

At the Upstate Technology Conference in Greenville, S.C. I went to a session on QR codes.  I have not used them before but I think I will try to use them some this year. The problem is I work in an elementary school library and my students do not have cell phones nor do we have any means to really read the QR codes. For those of you not familiar with QR codes, it is basically a square matrix bar code that you can scan using a cell phone, iphone, ipod, ipad or other scanner and it will take you directly to a link. It is kind of like the scanners at Wal-mart to check how much your items cost. To create a QR code you need a generator such as Kayway or  delivr. It takes just minutes to create the code then you save it as a PNG or copy the HTML code.  On a cell phone or ipod you can download a QR Reader such as Kayway Reader or Quick Mark. The above QR code is a link to my school website.  See if you can scan it and check out my site.  Good luck!

by: Julianne Kaye

Yesterday I spent several hours looking at different Library blogs.  While searching I had a question answered that I had been searching for.  How do I get started with Twitter and what is Tweetdeck.  If you want this answer check out Fran Bullington’s Blog “Informania”. On her blog she has a link to 8 videos by David Wees called “Eight Videos to Help Teachers Getting Started Using Twitter.” It basically shows you how to set up a twitter account and then what to do to get started with Tweetdeck.  Fran gives some great hashtags to follow for those of you, like me who are just getting started with using Twitter. Good Luck to you!

Today while I spent numerous hours on the computer and ipad I found this sit for professional development called 23 Things for Professional Development so I thought I would try it  out. I have been meaning to start blogging again but life gets in the way. I find myself in the summer spending countless hours pouring over blogs and trying to find out as much new information as I can. At times it seems that my brain is on overload from the amount of information that is out there as well as the numerous technology tools.  I hope this course can help me learn a few things I don’t know and keep me in check for things I may already know how to do. Wish me luck!