A final thought

I am so greatful to the ALSC Technology Committee for giving me a "kick in the pants" to try some of these 21 things and for opening my eyes to possibilities. I try to be open to change and to at least be aware of new things. I am so busy though, and I usually don't put time aside to play. This class has given me a "legitimate" reason to play. I will have to begin putting some of the new things I read about in journals on my RTM account and continue to schedule time to play!

I don't have time to play games, but...

My kids play online games all the time. The biggest problem I have with the games, besides not having time to play, is how some of the games try to lure kids into a monthly subscription. Club Penguin is a good example of this. You can only do so much with the free version. My nine year old has subscribed to Club Penguin several times for a month. She always gets bored of it after a few days. Then it is always a trial finding out how to cancel the subscription so I don't have to keep paying $6 a month for a game she isn't using. Six months later, she rediscovers it and wants to subscribe again.

This being said, I love all of the free opportunities online for kids to practice reading and math in the guise of playing a game. I love all of the opportunities for kids to develop thinking and creative problem solving skills through gaming. I love the opportunities for learning to work cooperatively through games. This past summer, we began circulating ds games and hosted some share play days where we supplied the games and kids bought their ds. All of the games we supplied were single card-multiplayer games. It was a blast. We also had Scratch classes for kids in fourth grade and up to give them the opportunity to create their own computer games and share them with other kids online. And just think, when I was in library school in 1991, there was this cool new thing called the internet...

Remember to Remember The Milk...

I like the idea of RTM for keeping track of things at work. I am often multitasking and moving from thing to thing at lightning speed. I often verbally passing out tasks and expect my staff to think as quickly as I do. Inevitably mistakes are made. Like today when I am stuck on the YS Reference Desk on a beautiful Saturday because I forgot to make a schedule change for a staff member going out of town. Now, the only problem I see is remembering to put things in RTM. I do not have a smart phone or a blackberry, etc. If I am forgetting to write things down, I can't see myself putting them on RTM. Still, as a busy YS manager, mother of two with a new dog, it's worth a try.

Google Docs, Zoho, etc.

I had been aware of Google Docs and had even recommended it to young people, but I didn't really realize it's potential until after seeing the clip you referenced. Then, you blew my mind away with adding Zoho and the other options. I love Zoho! I am going to begin to use it at home. We have had lots of trouble with students using our Microsoft office suite on our computers and then losing documents because they ran out of computer time and didn't save their document to a thumb drive. I love that they can save everything online and convert the document to the format that they need to access at school. I will also be sharing the idea of using zoho and google docs with our local school librarians. I feel like have stepped out of Plato's "cave."