Thing 18

I started to download Open Office, but when the progress box showed that the download was going to take over an hour and I was down to only 11 minutes of battery left, I abandoned that idea. That's one major disadvantage...although I noticed that one could request a cd for installation. I'm making an assumption here, but I'm going to guess that although the product is free, that part of the 'price' would include more requests for donations to support the work. I don't have a problem with paying for a product that I'm going to use...I'd rather just pay the $$$ than be repeatedly hit up for donations for something that is advertised as free. I experimented with Google Docs and I can see lots of potential for its use in my situation. It would be great to share items that have been created by other librarians in my district so that we are not each individually reinventing the wheel each time we need a spreadsheet, parent letter, schedule, etc. There has been some discussion, as well, about using Google Docs to rewrite our policy and procedure manual. I think that would be a great way to work on such a monumental task...many hands make the work light, wisdom of the masses and all that. I doubt that I'll be uploading everything from my files, but it's nice to know that I can do that as needed in order to share with colleagues, etc. I noticed on the items that I did upload that there doesn't seem to be the capability to include clip art and/or pictures, so there would need to be some additional tweaking done after the collaborative work was complete. All in all, I have to say that this is another great tool that I look forward to using and sharing with my colleagues when school resumes next month!

Thing 7

GRRRR! I just typed a long post for this thing and then got an error when I tried to post. That's what I get for not saving! Anyway, on to more pleasant subjects....Google tools. I loved setting up my iGoogle page. My husband was amused by my excitement over this because it's been around for quite a while, but I guess I had my head in the sand. As the mother of two active preschoolers (is that redundant???) I don't tend to spend any free time that I have on news or newspapers so I love having a couple of news boxes on my iGoogle page to keep me up-to-date on major happenings. I also love seeing the pictures of Places to See Before You Die...hopefully, I'll get to see a couple of them one day. I didn't spend alot of time on it, but I also enjoyed learning about Google Scholar. I plan to share it with my faculty, some of whom can't seem to understand that elementary school students are not generally capable of coming to the library on their own to use Google in order to research topics for their classrooms. You'd think they'd get tired of hearing my lecture about how the school district spends HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS on subscriptions to databases with reliable, current, unbiased information for them to use. LOL! I also took some time to introduce myself to Google docs, which I'd been hearing about, but hadn't actually tried. WOW! This could be a great tool for the library department, as well as our individual campus. We are always asked to work on the campus improvement plan...how much easier if it's posted in Google docs and everyone can view/edit from their own computer instead of providing paper copies to each team. Also, I thought it would be wonderful to have our contact information and / or emergency call list in Google docs, that way everyone can update their own information as needed. Isn't it amazing what we can do with a computer and an Internet connection these days?