Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

My survey on K12 Filtering is done for now. I probably should re do it in September, when school is back in, and things have settled down (since many SC Schools go back mid-August). I don’t know if I will though, as I feel I got good a fair representation with the 55 responses. That [...]

Okay so Wordle has been the rage in the bloggosphere of late, and many are making tag clouds for their Delicious Accounts. I can’t because I hate to admit this, but my delicious account is a mess, one that I seriously need to take the time and clean up. Why? I have tags that only [...]

It is funny how summer really brings out the reflective me. My husband and I were having breakfast this morning, talking about qualifications for certain jobs in the education field. The conversation steered towards what makes me qualified for a library job. Now he has a different perspective as a school administrator who is significantly [...]

June 18, 2008 I am scheduled to give a half day a.m. workshop on Web 2.0 tools and I’ve been given some freedom and flexibility on what I do and how I do it.  I am planning to show a few short videos, get a Twitter hello w/ advice, and Skype in a few folks.  [...]

I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been really busy, and I’m on the final checkout sheet that teachers must have initialed before they can leave, so I sit here ready to go, and just waiting for the ones who still need a signature by the library/technology statements. Earlier this week a school library student [...]

Does anyone remember that annoying tune from Pink Floyd? Just in case you are not familiar with it, linking so you can refresh your memory. Enjoy, as it takes me alllll the way back to high school. That video though is not why I write tonight. My head is spinning with ideas for grants. I [...]

While I had hoped the class I virtually participated in for a backchannel discussion on the chapter on meaning would focus on meaningful learning, I guess that was a lofty hope. Only teachers can truly make that connection, I suppose. This was the last chapter of Karl Fisch’s school project where the students in English [...]

Recently Carolyn Foote was contacted by the School Library Journal Technology Editor about an article they are including in the March 2008 edition.  Here is what they wanted (and Carolyn asked me and Joyce Valenza to chime in.) We’d like to run something about the Educon program in the March issue. Could you give us [...]

Recently my school underwent a migration from Novell networking software to Microsoft networking software. It was pretty painless and I’m surprised at how easy we all made the transition. There have been a few snafus: Our keyboarding lab had the oldest computers in the building, and they are struggling to accept the new script. We [...]

Today on our SCASL-listserv, a fellow teacher-librarian asked about how schools are dealing with students who bring their own laptops to school. The posted question also inquired about how schools are using webcams, with the follow up statement “couldn’t they be used to help our homebound students.” Of course we had quite a few respond, [...]