Library books

Back to the Wiki exercise...I did find a library book in the Education Department. I remember using this book as a work-study student to help learn the galleries (and I was work-study 2003-2005). It was a great resource to learn about the everyday life of a Civil War solider. I thought that this book just had a random call number on it and it came from some other library until I did a search for this book in the VHS system and saw it listed. Whoops!

Catching Up

Outreach kept me very busy in November and I traveled to many different parts of the state, but now that it is December, things are beginning to slow down...which means I will not have any crazy stories for awhile to share. Before I forget, during a recent Powhatan box program, I did have a kindergartner explain to me what it is like to have diarrhea and vomit at the same time, he even included sound effects. This will be a long post since I am catching up on a few weeks of 23 things. 

Week 9: Podcasts

     I receive emails every so often about podcasts on the Gilder Lehrman website. I enjoyed listening to the Harriet Tubman and the John Brown podcasts that they had available online. I knew (but didn't really know) that VHS had banner lectures available online, so I took a look at what was available and listened to Theodore C. DeLaney discuss school desegregation. My husband is the media designer at Richmond's First Baptist Church and is responsible for uploading their podcasts and media files available to listen to online and/or download so I already have been informed on the difference between podcasts and audio files and how they work. This was a fun assignment and a good excuse to listen to some lectures!

Week 8: Google Documents

Google Documents sounds like a great idea. I wish this had been around (or I had known about it) when I was in school, it seems like it would be great for group projects where everyone has busy schedules or you are in that group with the one person who never shows up to meetings. It seems like it would be a very useful tool for editing documents with other people. I think this may have been something that Geoff and I could have used while working on our People and Moments in Time magazine. 

Week 7: Wikis

     Great idea. I think Geoff and I should make an Education page. The VHS Style and Usage guide is awesome! And, I feel like I need to look for any library books that may be in the Education office...

Week 6: Social Networking

     Alright, because of this exercise I finally broke down and made a Facebook page. I have avoided Facebook/MySpace until now because even though they are fantastic networking tools, I could care less what my non-friends from high school/college are doing. Since VHS has a new Facebook page, I started a Facebook page. I only got as far as adding a photo and have not added any friends yet, that will be my next step. And, I may even make a MySpace page too...

     

Late for techno class

So today on Outreach, I had a pretty rowdy bunch of students. I also had a student try to argue with me for about five minutes about how he read a book and it said the Powhatan Indians killed other Powhatans to eat for food and I was wrong when I said the Powhatan were predominantly peaceful. According to him, the most important animal to the Eastern Woodland Indians was the human. Due to our large size and little hair, it was better to make clothing out of human skin than deer skin because it would have required less work for the women...where do they get this stuff from??? I wrote my thesis on Pre-Columbian decapitation and I am pretty sure Powhatan cannibalism would have come up in something that I read. After I made it back to the hotel, I did some research about Powhatan cannibalism and most sites just referred to the Jamestown starving time incident and other cultures sacrificing individuals. I am pretty sure this is how this particular student envisons life in a Powhatan village...

Anyhow, on to the assignment for week 5.
The concept behind Delicious.com is great, but it is not for me. I rarely bookmark anything, and when I do I usually forget about my bookmarks. I possibly would have used the site for wedding planning though since I did bookmark a kazillion pages and tried to organize them into folders. Tagging would have been good for that since a photo with pink flowers could have gone into the color scheme folder, the centerpiece folder, the possible flowers to use folder, the different type of vases to use for flowers folder, etc. I have no need though to access my bookmarks from another computer though.

I thought that Technorati.com was going to be playing some old-school Detroit techno music when I went to the site. I doubt that I will use this site, it was fun to browse though, I did enjoy looking through the photo section, but I do not see myself using it on a regular basis. Again, this site is a neat idea.

Fun week

After talking for almost six hours straight, this weeks exercise has been a nice way to unwind after a crazy outreach day. Since I have a nasty cold and I am in a hotel again for the night, I checked out all the sites. My favorite was The Generator Blog, that could provide hours of senseless entertainment. My mother will randomly send me photos she creates on PiZap and Photo Notes, which were both mentioned on The Generator Blog site (I love how my mother does this stuff before I do, here is one of her early creations). I also enjoyed looking at the Web 2.0 award winners and was glad to see some winners mentioned that I used (Pandora, Kayak, Etsy where I bought some stuff for my wedding, Zillow).
I do not think that I would ever use Jott.com or rememberthemilk.com. I already have a post-it note widget on my mac at home which is enough for me.

I am out to go find some soup and get more kleenex...

Flip-Man Funk (my old school dj name according to the Generator Blog)

Where has Jennifer been!?!

This is another fun filled week of traveling for me. This week I am at Poplar Tree Elementary in Chantilly on Wednesday, Hybla Valley Elementary in Alexandria on Thursday, Beechtree Elementary in Falls Church on Friday, Ashburn Library on Saturday, then I leave northern Virginia and head down to Sweet Briar to do a program on Monday. This group of schools has most of my favorite schools that I visit because the teachers and the students really appreciate the programs. I think this is the end of my programs for November and I cannot wait to get back to Richmond. It took me an hour and a half to go 8 miles this afternoon. I don't have any crazy comment stories from children this week...yet. I did have a student tell me that I am prettier than their teacher though. 4 more days until I am back in town!

Flickr at VAM

Just saw that there will be a session about Flickr as part of the Technology Tutorials at the 2009 VAM conference this year...pretty cool.

GPS

GPS has been a wonderful tool to have while traveling on Outreach. I love having GPS, it makes life on the road so much easier, but GPS, really, what were you thinking when I was driving back to Richmond from Lynchburg and you told me to get off of the main highway and go down a 2 lane road and then to turn down a no lane road that eventually turned into a gravel road? What were you thinking when you told me to drive through the Appomatox Buckingham State Forest instead of staying on the main road? Did you malfunction or did you just think it was funny?