Week 9, Thing 21 Podcasts

Podcasting is one of those technologies we have used a lot already. We have students making them for various assignments, including a recent poetry assignment. The students recited their poems into a Garageband podcast, and then we added photos taken of artwork they created to represent their poem. The teacher uploaded these to his website for parents to hear and see.

I hadn't realized that there are podcast directories--I will definitely look into those for podcasts that I can use in the library, or my teachers can use in the classroom.

I love the iTunes University, especially the University of South Florida, College of Education, where they have the Lit2Go podcasts of many books read aloud, and the Tech-Ease Classroom tech help. We have used the Tech-Ease podcasts with our fifth graders as they are short, single-topic tutorials on different technology skills that we teach.

Week 9, Thing 20 Teacher Tube and a few sites

I hit on a great video about Internet searching right off the bat! It is done as though it were American Idol with the three competitors being Google, Uncle George, and the Librarian...quite cute and makes a point I think even my fifth graders would get! I tried to embed the link here, but kept getting an error, so I provided a link instead!:

TeacherTube video: American Idle: Information Resources

What I really liked about this clip is the use of humor to make a very real point about the importance of using valid, verifiable resources, and the value of librarians in helping the public do just that. I look forward to searching for other clips, and perhaps making a few, that teach a small point or skill about libraries--especially geared toward the elementary level. There are several videos I've seen in the past that I would like to provide links to from my library website, such as the "Did You Know" classic about how the Web 2.0 phenomenon, and the changing demographics are radically altering our world.

Week 8, Thing 19.1 Alaska's Digital Pipeline

I went immediately to the LitSite Alaska Workbooks, and then followed the purple link to "Alaska Kids" and found some GREAT activities for our fourth graders who do a study on the various regions of the state. I am going to add the direct link to this site to my school web page so our teachers can access it easily, and then somehow work it into their curriculum. Much on this Alaska Kids site is under development, with a Coming in 2010 image on the pages, but if the rest of it is as good as what is up so far, I'm excited!

When I went to the Alaska State Museum Site, I was immediately put-off by the very legaleze looking form that popped up and I had to agree to terms and then enter the site. The next page was a simple search box for me to type a subject in. No explanation anywhere along the way or any sense of welcome to the site. When I searched "gold rush" I got a list of artifacts, many with photos and basic facts about the item. Good for what it is, and for adult researchers, but not a site I would use with kids.

On the other hand, the Alaskan Digital Archives are quite impressive, and I foresee many uses there for my elementary kiddos. I am thinking again of our fourth graders and their Alaskan unit. Perhaps finding a photo or artifact in this site, and then creating some kind of a tech presentation about their item/person/fact to share with the other fourth graders.
Very exciting possiblities! Can't wait to share it with my fourth grade teachers!

Week 8, Thing #19: LibraryThing

Okay, so I had to really work at liking this site. First glance was "Oh my, so I have to go upstairs to the library, start listing manually all the books on my shelves and then what?" Seemed like a time waster. But once I dutifully loaded about six or seven books I've enjoyed, and then got in and started playing around with the different features the site offers, I am now admitting it has potential. Lots of potential. The reviews, the ratings, the links to events around specific authors and books, the suggestions of other similar books...wow. Okay, so my next question is how does one post ones's library collection--say the over 10,000 v0lumes in my school library? I'm sure there is an easy way to upload all our records so they show up on there, but how? I looked around and couldn't find it.
I created a widget link to my collection, but am not sure what to do with it. That's as far as I've gotten, and then I needed to go shovel snow. Back to the real world. I sometimes think there is too much virtual reality going on in my life these days, and I have to draw the line somewhere! I would like to know an easier way of uploading all the library's books, so people using this site to search for books would find items we have available! Anyone have advice on that?

Week 8, Thng #18: Zoho 1st impressions

Note: the following was created in Zoho Docs and "shared" with this Blog by simply typing in my username and password! amazingly simple! I then went to my Blog, selected the pencil for editing and added this info and the "week 8, Thing 18" in the header.

Zoho 1st impressions:

• I like that I can switch from feature to feature within the Zoho suite and how they are all linked.
• I LOVE that you can work off-line and then it syncs when you get back on-line
• I LOVE the presentation tool, and that you can show your desktop to your on-line presentation participants! This can be very useful for doing tech demonstrations for people who are in various locations.
• I really like the features of the presentation tool, and that you can import a presentation you've created in PPT (would like to try using Apple's Keynote and see if it works as well)
• Tried out the spellcheck and am impressed with it
• LOVE that I can go back and save previous versions
• Am intrigued by the idea of using this in a classroom setting, or in a staff meeting situation, where collaborative note-taking can make for very rich, complete notes and allow for speculation, questions, observations, especially from those who are less comfortable with overt verbal contributions.
• Can't believe it is all free! How revolutionary!
  
• Plan to email the link to it to all my colleagues at school!
  

Week 7, Item #17 Add an entry to Sandbox Wiki

I don't think this is a "sandbox" anymore! I was blown away by the wealth of practical, interesting and inspiring ideas people posted as a result of this class. So, I bookmarked it on my Delicious page, and hope it stays up and continues to grow! As I posted in the last entry, I would like to create a wiki for our school staff to use, sort of a "collective mind" of our staff, where we can have discussions, add links, suggest resources, work on collaborative curriculum ideas, and not have to be all together in the library to do so!

I went in and added a couple of suggestions to the Raven About Web 2.0 wiki...I think if I do create a wiki for the Petersburg School District Staff, I would have to bribe our teachers/administrators to contribute, perhaps by offering a plate of brownies in a weekly drawing for all who contributed that week! Crazy how something that simple might work. I have looked at so many sites on line that were started as something like that, but just sat there, stagnant. We have a Google Docs site we tried to get going a year or so ago, as a collaborative tool that sprang from a great inservice we had, but nothing has been added since the second day of the inservice. It is just the nature of the crazy schedule of teaching!

Week 7 Thing #16 Wikis

I feel like I just hit the jackpot when I clicked on the third Wiki in the course list...(do we capitalize "wiki?")...anyway the Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki
is an amazing resource and I got lost in it for a looong time.

For my kiddos, I can see many uses for a wiki in the library. We are going to have a special collaboration with our public library this winter, originally planned as an extension of the "Guys Read" program, but we are expanding it to target all "reluctant readers" male or female. I think it would be wonderful to establish our own little wiki with the students and the adults coming in to read to go on and add comments, reviews, favorite book lists, etc. In addition, we are also doing a "Petersburg Reads" this year for our centennial celebration, and have chosen The Cheechakos, by our own Wayne Short, as a book we will try to get everyone in town to read--it's a book that will have wide popular appeal in this fishing town--not so much a literary masterpiece, as an easily accessible and local read. I can see a wiki having a role somewhere in that as well.

The CSLA2007 wiki, made specifically for the conference, is a brilliant idea for keeping people connected and organized at a large event in a paperless fashion. I love that they included all the links for services and offerings of the town as well. The wiki for the staff at the Albany library looks promising, and I have thought of trying to establish one for our school district staff, but it is something I just haven't gotten to yet...we need a more critical mass of staff to be proficient and interested in the web 2.0 world enough to make it more than just one or two people's online ramblings. I can see having a place to collaboratively work on developing curriculum, to post resources available in different locations for whatever subject teachers are addressing, to list on-line resources others might find useful, etc. At this point, I have just used my library webpage and lots of informative emails, but the wiki would enable everyone else to add their resources and ideas as well. I must say this example has me excited to try this idea again--I think the time is very soon for this to happen!

The school wiki from Westwood High School made me want to work in a high school again--I could see creating some really great things with kids in a Web 2.0 class--sort of like this class designed for/by current students...I think they would be the ones teaching the class--It could even be presented as such--a guide for the adults in their lives! Hmmmm. Only problem would be how many of the tools and sites are blocked/disallowed within our district.

Lots of exciting options here, and I think our staff is ready for this at the school.

Week 6, Thing 15, Perspectives on Web 2.0: Future of LIbraries

1. I'm reading the article by Chip Nilges at http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002 and am feeling alternately thrilled at the new prospects and form of what a library can be, and exhausted at the thought of having to virtually re-invent my job/career in light of that!

For my elementary library, it could be a very liberating thing to turn my reference budget almost entirely over to reading for pleasure and literacy enhancement--there is so much current information available on-line that I have hesitated to replace many of the standard book-form reference materials. Truthfully, the standard reference volumes just sit on the shelf, and our users' instincts are to go to the Web...truthfully, MY instinct is now to go to the Web! I think our job has changed from helping a student wade through the mighty print tomes, to teaching them to search intelligently on the Web, locate valid, authoritative resources, and use them with proprietary ethics. It is a bit harder for our younger kids, as most of the reference content found easily online is written at a rather high reading level.

One segment of that article discussed OCLC's changes, one of which discusses having non-cataloging professionals--ordinary users! post content to their resources. "...over the next year we are planning to offer a variety of “social” services to allow non-cataloging library professionals, library patrons and others to contribute to and use WorldCat. Services under consideration include tagging, list creation and sharing, citation management, personal cataloging, and the like." I think this is a brilliant move, and I can actually almost foresee an end to the sanctity of the Dewey Decimal System...or is that crazy? When I begin to teach how to search for books on our SIRSI online catalog, I am always frustrated by the limited search terms and how difficult it is to explain to students why some words (usually kid-type words) aren't search terms, so they need to think of synonyms. I am not saying that key-words/synonyms fluency is not valid learning, but just how nice it would be if the online catalog were more user-friendly...interactive, where kids could tag and add their own keywords to favorite series and such so they could find them more easily. My head is spinning from the possibilities!

2. Web 2.0 to me is a revolutionary way of looking at the world. It's almost like a parallel universe where time, distance and space are irrelevant...especially distance and space. It can become all-consuming if a person is not careful, as constant, real-time technology makes personal, private, downtime from being "connected" a more and more rare phenomenon. I personally don't want to be "connected" all the time, and I see so many ad's portray this as a desirable state of being. On the up side I can access any information I need, at any time, with just a few techie devices, a little know-how, and a fee to some communications company. I love that I don't have to leave my house and go to the library and hope they have the journals I need. (Ridiculous! Petersburg Public Library, great as it is, would never have had the materials I need to accomplish a class like this! I would have had to go to Juneau or Seattle to accomplish academic learning!) Instead, I can respond to the questions in these classes sitting by my wood stove, feet up on the sofa, gazing out the windows at the mountains while I formulate my thoughts. The challenge for all of us, and especially for librarians, is to keep it all organized, and to help our patrons learn to separate the wheat from the chaff, to be literate, conscientious, ethical, balanced users. What concerns me is the very human nature to only reach out and accept that which goes along with ones own viewpoint, and with whatever is the easiest to find. Where is the authority, the balance, the verity of information in a user-selected, user-moderated, user-created online world?

Week 6, Thing 14 Technorati and Tags

Hmmm. My first hour has been frustrating. I went to Technorati and searched for school library learning 2.0, and found no entries for both "blog" and "posts" searches. When I remove the 2.0 portion of it, I find quite a few entries: 562 posts, and 45 blogs. While I find this interesting, I have a hard time getting excited about it, since I can't even find time to read a book these days, let alone a gazillion blogs about what other people are reading/thinking/doing/dreaming, etc. There is just so much out there, and my time is so constricted by school, home & work. I just want to relax for a few hours with a book. I will now go in and try to get my blog posted and searchable, as mine did not come up even when I typed in the actual name of the blog! I'm trying not to take that personally:)

Most of the links on the page for this portion of the class are no longer valid. Looks like there was some kind of major shake-up at Technorati, and the pages have been eliminated. I can see how searching for blogs for various topics of interest to my teachers for units they are teaching would be useful, as the many library blogs to which I have subscribed are very enlightening.

Week 6, Thing 13 continued

Oh, now that was too easy. I now have my Delicious bookmarks appear as an added line on my Firefox browser on this computer. I will do the same on my school computer, and for Safari on both as well. This is great to be taking a tool I liked to start with, and turn it into something truly useful and integrated into may daily work.

Week 6 Thing 13 Delicious...and it is!

I have a pretty well-established Delicious account from past conferences, and would like to explore it more deeply during this session. I find I still keep bookmarking on my personal computer, and forget to add to delicious. So, my goals are to add to my network on Delicious (I already added the SLJLibraryLearning2's bookmarks) and to add whatever tools I need to my browsers to make bookmarking to delicious a simple affair.

I already see the value in sharing bookmarks among professionals in the library field (or within any field), but I'm trying to think outside the box and imagine how I would use this with my k-5 critters...

I'm going to post this and see about including a Delicious Network Badge on this page...

Problem solved already!

Okay, upon a little more exploration, I found the Identities option within VoiceThread--It is perfect for teachers, as within your account, you can create an unlimited number of "identities" and upload a different picture for each one. You can even use a class photo, and zoom in on each particular student to have their image cropped and made into their avatar. To teach them a bit about online safety, I might start out the year by having them create an art piece that represents them in some way, scan or photograph and upload those, and use those as avatars for these various on-line technologies, so if their creations are posted widely, their faces don't actually appear. I think it is important to remember and teach good online safety as we move into these technologies. I am very eager to get together with some teachers and create something with this!

Voice Thread

Wow. I had learned about Voice Thread in a workshop at ASTE in Anchorage, had played with it a bit, but never followed through and posted or known what to do with it next. I just created a little piece and then explored with embedding it--I put it up both on my Facebook page and here on the blog. I can see doing great things with this and students at school. One of the demo's I watched had a map of the world and students/people logging in to say where they are from. I could see having fifth graders doing their Explorer "reports" and having them use a map upload and then tracing the path of their explorer on it as they narrate events along the way, for just one little example. They could use this for their landforms unit and post a photo of their island, narrate the various landforms and again, draw on them to demonstrate.

I only wonder about the need for email accounts, once again. This is an issue for our students, as they don't have them issued through school, and our school blocks Yahoomail, and others, during the school day. These little safety/security issues create little roadblocks along the way as we push the envelope with new technologies. There's always a workaround if you try hard enough though! Now, I'll check at school to see if VoiceThread is blocked during our day as well...hadn't thought of that!

Week 5 Thing #11: Explore Award Winning Web 2.0 Sites

Oh my! I chose from the award winners list and went to the Lulu site for books and they can help you publish your very own book. The do take a cut of the profits, but the whole process is right there. I watched the tutorial on how it all works, and it is amazingly simple. That is one thing I have noticed about much of this Web 2.0 "stuff" is how amazingly simple it is once you get in and play with it. The hard part is keeping on top of it, and finding the time to explore them all.

I wonder about self-publishing, however, and envision legions of wanna-be writers publishing and promoting their books (you can directly market from this site as well, via Amazon and such!) and I do worry about the quality of literature. There is a reason for editors and editing, though I do think the system we have now is so focused on only publishing that which has potential block-buster appeal, that this is a nice solution for those who might be more in a niche market.

I saw that GoogleDocs was the #1 winner for online collaboration tools, and this is one we use as a staff at the school already. I also used this one in planning a road trip with a fellow teacher last year. It is a great tool!

I also use Delicious as well, and love that one. I haven't done much with sharing my bookmarks, but I like being able to access my bookmarks from any computer. Another great tool.

I then explored Docstoc.com and searched under education-teachers-highest rated and found all kinds of useful things my teachers will be excited about--it is a place where other educators have uploaded their lessons, lesson plans, organizational tools, etc. and it has some really good stuff--some garbage, too! It has a sign-up for earning money in some way, though the downloading of peoples' offerings is free--the earning comes in with advertising or something. That would be interesting to explore, to see how you could earn money by posting your lesson plans and ideas. One item I found in particular is a math Jeopardy powerpoint. I know our kids love those, and I plan to pass that on to our fifth grade teachers.

Week 5 Thing #10 blog: Playing with photo apps

I found an application called Blog Header (http://bighugelabs.com/blogheader.php)that turns a photo into a Wordpress blog header, so I took a photo into it and created it--I put it into this site as my profile picture, thinking it would fill the header on my blog, but that is somewhere else. So, then I explored the making motivational pictures (I chose to make mine within Facebook so I could upload it right to my Facebook page: Big Huge Motivational Poster Maker) and had fun with that...I'll insert one I made here. How cool! This would be a REALLY fun app to use with our fifth graders during our technology exploratory...though I wonder if it will be a blocked site.

addendum

Okay, I take it back...I went back to the search I did on blog digger came up with this amazing site where two people review and post podcasts (very well done!!!) on a plethora of children's books--you can look through their list of authors, or you can click on any topic in their list of topics...The site is called Just One More Book...Check it out!

Oh Dear...I just subscribed, got their last RSS feed and they are on hiatus as the woman is battling breast cancer...oh just too much.

More Week 4? Thing 9-Useful Library Blog...

Wow. I checked out the Edublog "Award=winning Blogs" link posted on the classroom website and found the winner of 2008 best library blog, and just one page in that, at quick glance had me sending a link to it to all my 4th and 5th grade teachers. It was a list of all the Web20 tools students should be getting to know and use. Amazing wealth of resources on this one site alone. I could spend HOURS exploring in there...and probably will come the weekend. I added her RSS feed to my Google page. Only thing is, I keep adding so many, it will quickly become a management/time issue! I'll have to go in and cull out the ones I notice I'm not using that often.

I tried out the blogdigger and searched for "school library" and "school library elementary" and found nothing interesting in either search. I'll try the others in another post, as I have reached my limit in eye strain for the day!

Week4? Thing 9 Classroom 2.0

So, I signed up for Classroom 2.0 social network for teachers, and added their Twitter feed to my Google page...sounds like a foreign language. What I like about it is I can get whatever random twitter topics they are addressing right on my Google homepage, and it spurs me to re-visit the website--today I went to look at the twitter feed on using iPod touches in the classroom, and from there went to the main website, followed a link for using iCal collaboratively via Google calendar, and now plan to figure out a way to meld the two calender apps so I can have my teachers manage their own laptop cart reservations without having to email me, then I reserve for them, upload the calendar, then email them back that it is done. I would LOVE to have them all able to log in, reserve a cart themselves, and bypass my intervention entirely! Tonight it is too late to try setting it all up...need a fresh, coffee inspired morning to go there, but I'm excited to know it is possible.

More on RSS ideas

So, I'm busy adding RSS feeds to my Google Reader page, and also adding them to my Google home page, not sure of which is actually going to be more useful. In thinking about how to apply them in the library, I'm thinking of my school library webpage. I wonder how it would be used instead of, or in addition to direct links to author webpages...but then, those are generally static sites, and I think the RSS's strength is in keeping folks connected to info sources that are constantly changing. I'm just not seeing clearly how this could benefit my students, though I suppose it could benefit my teachers if I sent them educational RSS feed links to help them keep updated.

What are others doing? I think next time I check in, I will go look at past participants in this Web 2.0 class to see what they came up with!

Wohoo!

Okay, after looking over everyone else's blogs, I was determined to go in and change my personal photo to my Avatar--couldn't figure it out before. It took me five minutes to do, once I set out to do it. I should remember that working in the early morning is for me the key to clear-headed thinking!

Week 4, Thing #8 RSS Feeds

Well, it turns out I had already established an RSS feed page in Google. Those darn ASTE conferences! We go from room to room in a blitzkreig (sp?) of techno learning, creating accounts for all kinds new-fangle gizmos and thingamajigs, and then when I get home, I can't remember any of it! :)

I have everything from gardening to sewing to yoga in addition to technology, photography and library feeds on there. So many, in fact, it is a bit overwhelming! I think my goal needs to be to streamline it all enough so I can and will actually use it!

I'm wondering if I should have a separate one for personal life and one for my school life--more focused on library, technology, teaching and such. I think that more and more we are merging our professional and personal lives with these technologies, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. If I create an RSS feed blog, and then have a mix of professional and personal feeds coming to it, then turn around and share it with my colleagues or students...where do we cross the line of professional behavior? Hmmm just a thought--same thing with having students/former students/parents of students requesting to be my "friend" on Facebook.

What I like about this RSS reader is that everything comes to one place--things I had forgotten about in the past were sitting there waiting for me when I logged in to my Google Reader page. What I don't like is I have added way too many feeds, and I don't have enough hours in the day to read them all, and my nature is one that likes to be thorough and finish things, so I feel like I'm not "finished" if I don't read all the feeds! Argh!

I really liked the cleaner, simpler look of the Bloglines feed. Maybe I should sign up for that one and make it my "professional" feed and make the Google reader my personal one. I would like to know how others manage the quantity issue and the personal/professional issue!

And another thing!

We will be having a parent info night about Cyber-Safety and ethics. I'm in charge of pulling it together, and we signed up with the iSafe curriculum. However, I have been reading some articles that pointed out that some of these packaged curricula gather data about students and use it for marketing purposes. So I will watch out for that and won't be contributing any real data about our students!

I know that during our parent evening the question of filtering and monitoring software for home use will come up, and I have no knowledge of what's available and what to suggest to use. Does anyone have ideas and/or experience with these?

Week 3, thing #7 Blog about anything tech related

This is more a social commentary related to tech, I think! I have phone envy. Everyone around me has or is getting an iPhone, and I really feel I need one--indeed am professionally obligated to own one! But...it's the cost! How can I justify purchasing a new phone when the one I have is less than two years old and works just fine? While I'm at it, my camera is falling apart (literally!) and is at least five years old, and my computer is a dinosaur....And so the social commentary to all this is: can I really afford to be a cutting-edge, tech-savvy teacher? On my income? As a single home-owner with two girls in college trying to keep up with the latest technology, I wonder about the huge digital divide between those who can and cannot afford it. Just a devil's advocate posting to help us remember that many of our library patrons come to us because they don't have a computer at home, they might not have the technology to take advantage of our library blogs, videos, feeds, on-line catalog and all from home. While ecologically I would like to only have virtual newsletters and use email for communicating, I still do send home paper promotional brochures, newsletters and handouts with those folks in mind who have limited technology access.

I have long wished I could have the school library open in the evenings for parents to bring their children in and just play with, explore, and use our equipment. It would take an extraordinary amount of volunteering to make this happen, however, and I suspect it would become an evening of playing on gamesites...or is that okay?!

Further exploration of Flickr Montage

Okay, I discovered you are supposed to be able to go in and add the specific ID # of the picture you have posted on Flickr. I tried it and it didn't find my pictures. Also tried searching for the tags I had placed on my photos, and it came up with something else. Hmmm. I will play with this more, as I think it has potential, and I will find out if Flickr is indeed blocked at school.

Week 3 Thing 6: Flickr Mashups!

Oh, how fun! I followed the link to the mosaic site, and immediately wished I had known about this when the entire school made mosaics two years ago with a visiting artist. Everything for two weeks was all about mosaics, and we completed six lovely mosaic panels as a whole-school effort that now hang in front of our building. This site would have been a very fun exploratory event to include during computer sessions with students!

The "color pickr" app would be fun to explore when students were studying color in art--I especially like that you can make it lighter or darker tones. I tried searching for some pictures I had posted on flickr, but my titles were too general. I wonder if you named a picture something very unusual and specific, then searched for that within the color pickr app, you could get your picture to come up? I think I'll try that.

I am not sure, but I do think flickr may be blocked at our school, unfortunately...just thought of that. This is a problem I found with many of the cool applications and tools I learned about at the last two ASTE conferences. I think we are in a fearful transition phase wherein we play it safe a block anything not completely controllable. I hope we eventually get to the place where we can just use the tools!

Week 3, Thing 5: Flickr spurs a new idea

I was finding these posts rather lifeless--just something to accomplish the goal of the course, and now I think I have a focus for how this technology could be used in the future. I would like to use a blog to document my upcoming roadtrip adventures down south. It just struck me how perfect this venue would be, with links to flickr, podcasts of sounds and sights along the way, a link to a Google map, perhaps, following the journey I take. I am excited at the prospect of having a real focus beyond the end of the Raven About Web 2.0 class. Until I have a valid use for one of the new technologies, I have no real interest in learning it--just too busy otherwise.

I first set up my flickr account two years ago at a technology conference in Anchorage, as part of a workshop, but never followed up and posted anything. I saw the potential, thought it was great, but just had no compelling reason to post anything. Now, I think I do!

Thing 2: Lifelong Learning Habits

The tutorial on lifelong learning was interesting. I believe my hardest habit for lifelong learning to have the end in mind. I have a very hard time envisioning the future of where I want to be, and so often bounce from interest to interest with little focus. Hence, the blog title "eclectic enthusiast"...not always a positive thing! I think I'm a bit of an adult ADD type personality!

I do try to view problems as challenges, and I recite that mantra to myself regularly when confronted with fixing all the various techie issues I deal with daily at work, but creating and loading the avatar about sent me through the roof a bit ago! I ended up posting it as an entry in my blog, as I just could not see how to post it otherwise!!! So, for that particular problem, I just chose a work-around that obviously isn't the best idea.

Thing 1

I read about the course on Sunday, and look forward to reinforcing some knowledge and gaining a lot more! I go to conferences and learn about so many great Web 2.0 tools and tricks, then get back to work and get too busy to really make use of what I've learned. I look forward to integrating more of these tools into my daily job and life!