Real Life Practice

I have figured out what a good outline for 3-5 year olds; Two’s and Babies with Books should be. I tested it this week because I had to Substitute for our Babies with Books and Tales for Toddler storytime this week. The writing of the outlines took me a long time because it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. But once I did it, I was happy and relieved to see that this worked out after all. Now I have to figure out a way to display my findings.

A Change

When looking over my proposal to Sherry back in May and trying to refine the outlines to show how they are similar, I discovered that I really need to use the resource of the excellent traveling storytime boxes that FCPL has for the branches. These boxes would enable the subs to use a themed, age appropriate resource at their fingertips. I revised my original plan and will instead use them in my project because I have gained the knowledge of them over the past few months since I submitted my project idea and gained experience planning and performing storytimes.

Project Homework

Over the past weeks I have been refreshing my memory as to the developmental skills of the different age groups by re-reading reference books: Literate Beginnings : Programs for Babies and Toddlers by Debby Ann Jeffery. As well as Lap Sit Services for the Very Young II : A How-To-Do-It Manual by Linda L. Ernst. In these books there was a lot of information to be found, not only refreshing me on the age appropriate activities but also a bit of psychology and practical advice for the different developmental stages of children. Studying this has allowed me to think about the task of putting the outlines into similar structures without overloading a small child or not having enough to do for the older age group. Today I am still thinking and trying to put this all together.

The Project Begins

This week I have decided to seriously think about my project as I am the sort of person who likes to work a head because you never know what's around the corner! I also like to not lag behind. So far I have posted my idea and looked at previous projects. I have also gotten the go ahead with my branch manager, well as the children's srvices supervisor at the main branch as well as the supervisor who is in charge of training new substitutes. They have all been positive and I am hopeful that I can begin this process. I have also read and printed out the module. I took a lot of time to break it down in a word document and take small bites out of it. This way I think it will be more manageable.

23 Things Summary

I am glad that we were asked to participate in 23 Things. I learned a lot and also got to play around with websites that I would not have ordinarily been introduced to. I saw tools that could possibly make life at our branch easier (and I hope to keep exploring these thoughts). I also enjoyed discovering some fun sites that I hope to look at again. I will use many of the items I learned about for my daily activities. I view this experience positively and hope to use most of what I've learned professionally.

You Tube

I explored YouTube with my children way before it was one of the 23 Things to do. I have to admit, and I am not proud of this~ but I found it immensely entertaining. I love when they showed me Pearl(which was actually on the webiste "Funny Or Die"); A David Blane knock-off and I also found myself ashamed of our reaction to the "Grape Lady Falls". (Which I asked my children to research how that poor woman is doing since her unfortunate fall!....She's supposed to be fine by the way, only a few broken ribs and punctured lung!)

I read once that YouTube has really given the network TV a run for their money and changed the way we think about and demand our TV viewing. YouTube has allowed us to see what we want when we want it. Quite the contrary to what we were used to in the past. I think that this is a good thing.

As for the subject matter on YouTube: It may be funny or sad but I think it is true to life in 2007. It is filled with what we call living our lives. It is entertainment about ourselves, produced by us for the most part and the way we live now a days.

Web 2.0 Awards List

I have been looking at some of the Web 2.0 Awards Lists and found two interesting ones to comment on. (There were many choices to explore here!).

Craigslist:http://www.craigslist.org/about/factsheet.html I had heard of it before and had the opportunity to explore it. It is an urban community that had free classified ads and forums displayed on a very austere homepage. However when searching through the nuts and bolts, I discovered that although it has a .org domain, it is a for profit website. It gets more than 8 billion page views per month. It was founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark for San Francisco area. It was fun to look around but I prefer to keep e-Bay's organization as my weird purchasing place of choice.

The other site is One Sentence. True stories told in one sentence. (http://www.onesentence.org/) The site is about telling your story, briefly. Any story will do: "Insignificant stories, everyday stories, or turning - point - in -your-life stories, boiled down to their bare essentials." I really enjoyed reading these one sentance stories and thought it would be sometihgn I'd like to try someday.