What an interesting and frustrating day! I ran a city block away in 20 below windchill to get earphones for this morning's chat, logged on a little early, and then was very frustrated with the whole process. First of all, I logged on to the chat without having first watched the on-line presentation. Duh! Oh, and I didn't need earphones for a chat! Then the connection had problems with people getting kicked on and off. It was humorous after a while. It was also hard to follow the trains of thought when there were many participants. In our group of six, it's not too bad, but it wasn't easy this morning. After 20 minutes, I had to give up and go back to work. If the process had gone smoother, and I had been able to decipher the different threads I may have lasted longer. At my second job tonight, I tried to log in to Opal but after getting there, wasn't sure where to go. (There were a few of us in the auditorium!) It would be very handy to have direct links to the opal chatroom readily available. I was 20 minutes late but finally got in. I read the article Steve recommended about the new generation gap on the net and believe me, I'm feeling it this evening! I did come through this day with some very basic basic questions that I post in case someone else in our group has the same questions:

So tonight I tried to post a blog about how uncomfortable I am about blogging and somewhere between the preview and submit, the blog was lost in space, twice.  I'll give up, now and just hit submit to see if that works.  Perhaps I should write my blogs on a word processor first and just paste it in so it's not lost?  Kindof takes the spontanaity out of it, doesn't it? (Geez, one of my complaints about blogs in the two lost blogs was that so many people use them for whining, and here I am whining!!!) 

Hi!

I'm the librarian at Mahnomen Public Schools and The White Earth Tribal and Community College in a Mahnomen, Minnesota. I am the k-12 librarian during the day and I am the part -time librarian at the college for four evenings a week. The two jobs are very different and I enjoy them both, so I'll continue in both roles as long as possible.

By taking this course, I hope to have a better understanding of social technology. I am very interested in learning how to use RSS feeds; both the procedure and effective ways they can be used in educational settings. I'd like to develop the ability to construct wikis and blogs, but first, I have to be convinced they are worth while. Who has time to blog? Heck, I can't even write in a journal consistantly! Seriously, I haven't found a blog that I have returned to after my initial reading, even if I thought it was wonderful. Pod casts? Lots of the students would use them, I think. I’m hoping to come out of this with a long list of usable ideas and applications that my staff members at both schools will find irresistible.