Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

Okay so it’s really Wednesday! We had a workday Monday, so today (Wednesday) really feels like Tuesday. Here is my contribution to helping everyone become more technologically savvy! Downloading photos from your digital camera is so easy now. All you need is your camera, your camera’s USB cord, and a few minutes. Here are some step by steps:

1. Find your cord.
2. Find the port it connects to on the camera, and plug it in.
3. Connect the USB end to your computer (there is a port in the very front–how simple.
4. Turn on your camera, and wait! (A computer wizard will launch and give you some options–one of them will be a camera and scanner wizard–that’s the one you want!)
5. You will be asked a series of questions–you can just click next, next, next if you aren’ real sure about what you are doing.
6. I recommend when you are at the location screen, you give the folder a recognizable name, like picnic photos, or fieldtrip photos…it will make it easier to locate them.
7. I would also uncheck pictures that you really don’t want.
8. Once the pictures have downloaded, a window (that folder opened) will show up on your screen, and you can look at your pictures! If you right click on one, you can choose “open with” and select “picture viewer.” This will allow you to scroll through your photos.
9. If you close it, to find them again, take this path: My computer –> My Documents –> My Pictures. You should then see the folder you created in the download process.

I went over this in the faculty meeting, showing each step using the computer, my camera, and our projector. If you want a “one-on- one,” I’ll be glad to come and give you some individualized instructions.

Last, if you have a card reader, you can remove the memory card from your computer and do the same steps (except instead of the cord, you just insert your memory card into the card reader.) The benefit of using the card reader is that it doesn’t use up you camera battery. The cord method eats up the power on your camera. Remember our yearbook is being done online this year, so I NEED digital pictures. I’ll be visiting your class to “copy” your pictures you ARE going to download.

One of my blogs has been NOTICED!! Of course I am a user of bloglines.com and so I know there are a couple of subscribers to a few of my blogs, but they wish to remain anonymous…BUT I got some free advertising at the conference (EdTech) from one of the sessions!
On Friday, October 6th, at the EdTech Conference in Myrtle Beach, SC, a fellow media specialist (Mary Haddon of Dutch Fork Middle School)presented a session to many educators from across our GREAT state on the topic of blogging. She has a blog for her school library too. Be sure to visit it. She mentioned our school library blog (this one - “@ the Northside Library“) and let everyone know that we had three diffrent authors visit and post comments. You see, I had contacted them and told them about blogging about their books, which are on this years SC Book Award Nominee list. To help visitors find those posts Mary referenced, I am including the links below. Happy visiting! Feel free to comment!
Lee Waits, author of Seaward Born
Betty Birney, author of The World According to Humphrey
Pam Munoz Ryan, author of Becoming Naomi Leon
It was indeed very exciting to get responses from the authors. Initially I got a response from Lee Waits, with no proactive initiative of my own. She must have been googling her books, and found our blog, and posted. I was SO EXCITED. Then I just decided to find contact information for all the authors of the books I’d blogged, and see if they would visit and respond. Imagine the excitement of the kids when I showed them that the actual authors of the very books they were reading were posting to our blog. The blog thing has been an exciting activity for me and my students this year, and I am still learning all about it right along with my students.

SC EdTech is over, and I’m now at home. I don’t think I’ve ever worried or stressed over a responsibility as much like what I did the last three days. I truly thought that once scanners were in sessions I might get to “drop in” to hear great content and speakers. NOT. I never had a minute. I did beg and got someone to cover the Information desk while I attended the keynote Thursday, and as I suspected it would be, it was GREAT. Of course, I follow David Warlick’s Blog (2 Cents Worth), and so was not disappointed with his presentation. I left Thursday afternoon absolutely FREAKING that a couple of the scanners were permanently lost. Craig, the guy from McRae, assured me he would wait for them, and encouraged me to go on for the day (to eat, to rest, to have fun.) So I did happily leave, and went to get some supper (take out from Cracker Barrel) and rest. This is how the trip to Myrtle Beach went.

• Tuesday night–supper at Zaxby’s and then work on printer and print outs of volunteer assignments.
• Wednesday–arrive at convention center, unpack laptop, printer, printouts, etc. Get a briefing from Don Cantrell on hospitality goody bags for my hosts (which I have to use volunteers to pack). Get a briefing from Amy Williams from McRae on giving out bags, badges, tickets for Thurs lunch, etc. Acclimate myself to the layout so I can knowledgeably answer questions. My volunteers and I ran around picking up tickets for the pre conference sessions to return and scan at the desk. There were many problems with this because some of the “free” preconference sessions had WAY too many participants. Many had no “ticket” but were already seated and involved. We found out later that many went even though they did not register because they thought the free ones did not require a registration. So of course the rest of the day they were at the info desk asking to get scanned for renewal credits to take back to their school district. That made things a little crazy too. Then there was an opening keynote at 3:45, and I had not asked anyone to volunteer for scanning at that one. I didn’t even know there was going to be a need. But many happily volunteered, so it wasn’t that bad.
• Thursday - I had maybe five of my scheduled volunteers not show up, so had to work earnestly to find people willing to help. I used the hospitality bags as a lure, which were “going” to be an extra conference bag (really nice one) filled with a conference t-shirt, and many vendor goodies like stress balls, pens, pads, novelty items, etc. So it was easy to wave that t-shirt and say if you help you’ll get one of these!! The needs were almost immediately met. Then midway through Wednesday, I was told that there had been a change, and there would not be t-shirts or conference bags available for our volunteers. All I had to give them was: a spongy handheld Stress Penguin, a safari decorated trinket box, and a funky little shark pin that would flash (from Ripley’s Aquarium). At least I could say thanks and give them their gifts, but many had been promised way before hand they additional bag and shirt. So to say they were not happy is an understatement. I don’t think I sat down all day. I went back to my hotel and changed clohes, drove out to Cracker Barrel and got a meal to go, and returned to my hotel to eat and work on my presentation for the next day. (I was presenting the same one I did at FETC 2006, but it needed some weaking and a little updating.) Well, it took me from 7:00PM until 11:00 PM to finish it, but I did watch my favorite TV shows while I worked–Grey’s Anatomy and ER–and I read and responded to emails and read my favorite blogs. But it was NICE to sit and do these things at my leisure instead of feeling like I was loosing my mind, which is how I felt at the conference. I also worked hard to organize the barcodes for scanning to prepare for the Friday sessions, ONLY o discover that Don had NEVER sent me the vendor sessions for the conference maitrix I had, and I realized with a sinking feeling that we would begin Friday’s activities by BEGGING ten people to scan for those sessions, since they were the first ones of the day! I had two copies of the scans–one to keep at the desk uncut for people who came up and claimed there was no scanner or that they missed the scanner, and one to cut up and prepare for the next round of sessions. I wrote on each one the time, location, and the expected volunteer. This made it easy to lay them out. I also paperclipped the ones that had the same scanners (i.e. Amanda LeBlanc was scanning for three straight sessions, so she was given the session scan for each and a scanner, and told she didn’t have to come back to our desk until the end of her third session.) That really streamlined things because I only had to worry about the few who were not back to back scanning for sessions.
• FRIDAY — I had many conference attendees who offered to help first thing Friday morning, so amazingly everything was covered. YEAH. Stephen Bajjally (the USC Professor who serves on the SCAET board) actually came and covered the areas where one of his student volunteers was a no show. I thought it very generous for him to do that, assuring him we would find someone else, but he insisted so I let him. My presentation was Friday during the last set of concurrents, and amazingly it went well too, even though I felt I hadn’t really prepared well…When I first went into my room to set up, I plugged in the room’s audio system cord to my lapop, and was pleased that I would have surround sound quality audio for my presentation, especially since it would be filled with audio and video clips…NO DICE. The next door presenter was not going to have it. You see the room was divided, and my audio was affecting her presentation. So I had to disconnect and pull out my speakers—thank goodness I had the foresight to bring them. I also doscovered TOO LATE TO FIX that my slide show begin with the FETC logo. I just explained that the logo was aon oversight, and that this was the same presentation as the one done at that conference. Oh well, I did not have surround sound quality, but I did get an applause at the end, and many were VERY pleased, and wanted more information. I left to return to my working station. I collected the last of the scanners, closed out the info booth, packed up and left. I did have to go back inside to find my glasses, and thankfully they were right where I left them. I almost just drove away, thinking I’d drop by a drug store and just buy new ones, since these I wear are cheap reading glasses. But I like them, they don’t look cheap, and so went back to get them. I also almost skipped going back because (confession time) I was afraid i’d be asked to do one more thing, and all i wanted to do was GO HOME. The trip home was uneventful, and i was home BEFORE anyone else in my house.

As I reflect now, I don’t want anyone to think I didn’t have anyone to go out with or have fun with. I turned all invitations down because I was JUST SO BUSY and TIRED. I was there to work, aferall. I did get a GREAT conference safari shirt, and I happily sported it to the Football game we as a family attended Friday night.

I didn’t really get to blog about the conference per se, but I do plan to blog about upcoming conferences I attend.

BUT I have to admit, this is STILL my favorite conference in SC. Don Cantrell and his staff do an AWESOME job organizing it. I’m just happy tp hand the reins over to Donna Teuber next year.

Okay so all my great plans for being ready for my volunteer coordinating duties at EdTech Have been shot! I had folks bailing on me left and right today after I went to bed last night with pretty much every slot filled. Now I am not sure who will show up, and who won’t. I just have to trust that my Lord will see me though this. I am scheduled myself to give a presentation on Friday at this conference. So I had all my stuff to pack in 2 big boxes, and needed to make sure my school laptop was good to go. Remember it gave us some trouble at the faculty meeting last week? HORRORS! It would not boot up. Stephanie took it over to the d.o., and they reimaged it. Seems like that is the solution to ALL problems. I was asked if that was okay, and felt like I had no other choice. Well, now my videos will not play through the projector. So I was given a different laptop from school to use. It will play my videos, but it won’t get online that I know if yet. I’m still working on that though. So I’ll just have to carry this old laptop that will cruise the Internet and allow me to blog while I work tomorrow during the conference. We’ll see. I also brought a printer to print out schedules and such for the volunteers. We’ll see how that goes too. I’ll have to load that printer onto this laptop, and I just don’t know if I’ll be able to, or even have time.

Things I have to do:

• Load printer on my laptop
• Check volunteer roll for tomorrow
• Check my presentation (which is Friday, and WAY down on the priority list…)

Here is a list of what I brought with me:

• My home laptop
• a school laptop
• a small laser printer
• ream of paper
• two 2oogb external drives
• my ipod
• a projector
• speakers
• surge protector
• and some extra clothes for good measure

What I know right now I forgot!

• drop cord/extension cord

I’ll probably realize more things I left by accident as the days progress. But right now I am just focused on getting a driver to load the printer so I can print my heart’s desire tomorrow. I’ll post tomorrow sometime about the events and activities.

Oh one more thing. I saw a former colleague tonight at Zaxby’s, where I went to grab a bite before settling here in my hotel room. Lynn Goodwin from Nort Augusta High School was there doing the same thing. Great minds thinnk alike! It was nice to catch up with Lynn while we both waited on our orders, which were to go. Okay. I must go. I must unpack, layout stuff for tomorrow, and get this doggone printer hooked up and functioning!

Okay-tomorrow I embark on my trip to Myrtle Beach, SC to attend my umpteenth SC Edtech Conference. I am scheduled to work through most of the confernece as the SCASL liaison in charge of Volunteer Coordinating. I guess my official title is “SC Edtech Volunteer Coordinator” though I am thinking it is going to be more likely “crazy girl begging everyone to help.” But that remains to be seen. I had MANY fellow SCASL members offer to help today. SCASL is our state professional organization for school librarians, titled the South Carolina Association of School Librarians. They are a great group, and I so look forward to seeing many of them at this conference. I don’t know what I like more, networking with SCASL members and other conference attendees or attending sessions. Well, even though I’ll be working hard, and it’s doubtful I’ll get to attend any sessions completely, I still plan to slip in on all of David Warlick’s sessions, even if it is to just sneak a peak.

Don’t forget, my fellow colleagues, that I always carry my laptop, and will possibly be able to answer questions and help you resolve any issues even from afar. I’ll be gone, but I can be virtually present. : ) I’ll be home Saturday. It’s just a three hour drive.

Oh, one more thing. I attempted to tag this blog with some Technorati tags, though in all honesty, I have no idea if I did it successfully. All that’s over my head too, but you know my motto: Learn by doing. So I tried. We’ll see.

scedtech scedtech06

I want to begin a blog devoted to my passion in education, technology. I plan to use this blog to enrich other educator’s knowledge base with the little about technology that I know. As a school library media specialist, I frequently come across forms of technology that either pique my interest or downright baffle me. But I strive to learn what I can, and my goal is to get everyone in my school community at or near the same level of understanding I have. I am OVERJOYED when others surpass me, especially if I know I acted as a catalyst for there launch. I hope you will visit often, and post comments too. I have had MANY interests in the last few years, and here are just a few:

• Web development
• Library database management software
• Television broadcasting
• Digital imaging
• Digital video
• Digital audio
• Blogging
• Podcasting

As you can see, I have quite a spectrum of interests. I am not really great at any one thing, but I love to learn in these areas. And better, I love to have teachers and students learn too, but in an authentic and meaningful manner.

I will be attending THE educational conference from my state (S.C.) this week and I must say I love it more than any other annual conference I’ve ever attended in my state. The South Carolina Association of Educational Technology brings us annually our EdTech conference, and this year’s theme is “TechnoSafari.” Of course I’ll be there, and I’ll be working as the volunteer coordinator for the conference. What does that mean? It means that I’ll be limited in what sessions I can attend, because I’ll be busy ensuring that sessions have hosts, attendees and presenters get checked in, and everyone knows where everything is. But by golly I WILL attend the keynote address by David Warlick. I hope to post something from his address this week. So check back soon.