Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

Awesome! This was shared many times in the recent past, and I am considering sharing it with some kids–sort of as a starting point for conversation. I heard some other educators have shared it with their kids too, so I figure, why not?

Today I had kids for the first time–shocking I know. The library has had a slow start, and I’ve been pulled for all sorts of other things (my favorite being MAP Testing.) But I do understand we all work together, and I’m a member of the team trying to do my part.

As a way to introduce myself to eighth graders today, I showcased my interests: my blog, my aggregators–bloglines, my iTunes (just a screenshot) and pictures of the family. But they were intensely interested in my ipod! I pulled it out, hooked it up to speakers, and gave them a random sampling of some of my music selections. Many were stunned at my choices, since I have some really oldies as well as new material there. I played some Queen, Styx, Journey, Boston, Jimmy Buffett, Sugarland, Rascal Flatts, Nicole C. Mullen, Michael W. Smith, and a few opening in lines to some of my podcasts I subscribe to (like Bit by Bit, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, and a soap opera–Guiding Light.) I even shared a snippet from some of the audiobooks on my ipod, including The World is Flat and A Whole New Mind–which by the way I have still been unable to play off the iPod. (It will begin, but suddenly ends for no reason!!) It was funny to see the reactions of the kids. They were really surprised to know that I put books on my iPod.
I used this as a door to the discussion of Web 2.o tools, and how the Internet has changed to a give and take world, and how they can give as much back as they take. We talked about YouTube (and I made it clear they did not have permission to post me in YouTube!!) That got a laugh. And then we talked about the tools they have right in their pockets to add content, but then I disappointed them when they realized many of these tools (like flickr, many blogs, and YouTube) are blocked at school.

It was only a beginning, but I hope with this group I piqued some interest. I didn’t have that long to go over this, so they only got a taste, but my hope is that they will see me as one who is “up” on most things, and one they can turn to in asking questions. I do believe I impressed some, b/c at the end of school today, some passing eighth graders called me by name to say goodbye. Before today, I haven’t known a single student in the whole building to call me by name. That’s a start in changing the perception of the library for this school.

Oh, SYP I guess. Bad news today too. My fixed assett disposal forms (all 12 of them) will have to be rewritten so that the equipment that I’m ridding the school of is easy to identify. I was told today if the folks who come pick it up can’t identify it and match it to the sheet, it will not go. : ( But a fellow LMS at St. James Middle–Paula C. gave me a method to the madness of color coding using colored dots and NUMBERS so that when they look at a sheet, they look for items that have that colored dot. That will make the process easier. And all we have to do is re-arrange the line of stuff and put dots on the items, and perhaps NOT have to rewrite those sheets. For those that know about my eye surgery, I am also worried that I miscopied numbers–model numbers and serial numbers are microscopic, even w/ glasses!

So my next visit–I’m thinking about playing “Pay Attention” to start a conversation. Wish me luck.