Teaching kits

Had a busy last couple of days at work. Trying to get some Teaching Resource Kits off the ground, and it isn't as easy as one would think. The idea behind the kits is to support topics that are taught by schools in the area. I put together a good list of themes to design the kits around by talking to teachers from local schools. Each kit is supposed to have activities, props, books and AV items to fit around the topic. To make it easier for staff to check, the kits will be limited to 3 of eveything - 3 activities, 3 books, 3 props etc. This is where the difficulty comes in! Try finding only 3 activities and keeping it so that the activities are quite dissimilar. Try finding 3 props, again that are not similar, which will end up consisting of ONLY 3 pieces! For the Farm kit, wouldn't it be great to have kids assemble a farm, complete with fencing? How is that done with three pieces??? Perhaps a large wooden floor puzzle? Nope, they come in more than 3 pieces :) To add to this, I tried buying from an online educational toy supplier. Buying online is timeconsuming, especially when one is just browsing in various areas to see what is available - imagine how much more timeconsuming it is when THE CART DOES NOT SAVE!!!! I must have lost that cart at least 5 times. Phone calls to the supplier did not help at all - would you believe they had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned the word 'cart' and 'online'? Frustration plus! I ended up cutting and pasting my cart into a Word document to save the codes but the cart still wouldn't save long enough to enter them all in. I ended up faxing the order instead. I am glad I persevered, because the props are exceptional - now I just need to put them where they belong! Hey, I am getting there....

Meme : 8

Well I haven't been tagged, but I have a bit of an obsession about memes at the moment, so here are my random 8 things - thanks to CW for suggesting we just do it anyway!

1. I love shoes, any really, but high heels and classy stilettos really get me in.
2. I drive a white 4WD Musso.
3. I got engaged in April.
4. I love photos and love to scrapbook.
5. Can't stand tomatoes. YUK
6. I own a Craft Robo
7. I loved movies stars from the '40s, '50s and '60s as a teenager (esp Marilyn Monroe and James Dean)
8. I am listening to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on my iPod shuffle -roll on July 21 and the release of HP and the Deathly Hallows!

I tag Boneygirl

Back on track

So much has been happening of late, it is easy to think that time has passed and nothing has been achieved.

Sitting and reflecting on things made me realise that quite a lot has happened.

• The iPod pilot is finally up and running, after weeks of research for clarification on copyright and licencing issues;


• I found out about adding widgets to blogs;


• I was involved in interviews to shortlist from a list of Professional Conference Organisers for ALIA's 4th New Librarians Symposium (NLS4) - decision still in the process of being finalised, so stay tuned!


• There has been a fair bit of discussion happening between the NLS4 committee regarding our websites - the one in progress (not the one linked to above) is looking superb, thanks to Jill, our Website Coordinator. Big learning curve on what is possible when developing a website!


• Figures - oh my god the figures! Who would have thought that delegate fees, trade booths, percentages, management fees and square metres (yes square metres!) would need to be scrutinised as closely they have been. Number crunching is happening more naturally now, but still glad the NLS4 team has such a great treasurer in Kevin;


• Worked on getting the July holiday program ready - printed copies finally out and I must say it is looking good!

When you consider I had two weeks leave in the middle of this, then i guess it is a fair bit!!!

Update - this post has been a few days in the making, Since I last wrote, the Team for NLS4 has made its decision for a PCO and selected ICMS, a professional conference organiser with over 30years experience. It was not an easy process, but we got there in the end - thanks to the team who were so supportive during such a mad time.

So tweet me

I finally couldn't stand it any more - I had to find out what 'Twitter' was. Sent a friend an email asking what the heck Twitter WAS and got a quick link back. By the time she replied with more information, I had checked out her link, made no sense of it so had to join to find out for myself.

So what is Twitter? It's another social networking service that lets users of the site to send text messages to their friends in several ways - via SMS, IM or the Twitter website. The best way I can think to explain it is that it is like web based sms...and can be quite addictive...

You don't 'text' from Twitter, as you do from a mobile, you 'tweet'...

Back after 25 minutes of 'friending' some people that I recognise in Blogland. KathrynG wrote an interesting post on it on her blog - good read.

So have I sparked some more interest in Twitter for you? Hope so - friend me and tweet away!

Playing around

I thought I would have a little play around with my blog and add a widget or two. I don't really want to overload the blog with widgets everywhere, but I thought the To Do list was cool. Lots more widgets like that at LabPixies.

Being a true cataloguer, I tried to have correct labels on my postings so they could be searched, but I didn't like the way they looked visually. I put them in a label cloud, thanks to Phydeaux's instructions for that. The largest labels in the clouds are the ones that appear the most throughout the blog. Phydeaux also give instructions on how to organise blog archives into a calender - looks pretty neat!

Note scrapbooking is first on my to do list!

Innovation and initiative.

This posting has been a work in progress for many days. It can take me a while to put an entry on my blog, but it doesn't usually take me days to complete a post.

I have to admit I have been on leave and work was crazy when I got back, with lots to catch up on, meetings to attend and planning for a new library. It's been a bit harder than usual keeping up with my feeds because I seem to be getting caught up in 'being on the edge' and thinking of cutting edge stuff in programming and services, never mind all the technology that keeps coming our way and staying up to date with innovations in library practice.

Reflecting on all this has made me stop and take stock of everything - someone (a very knowledgable someone) told me to take this time as a 'pit stop', to gather my thoughts and see where to go from here. Rather than looking at keeping up with what has been happening in blogland as being essential to everything, I turned it around to look on it as something I wanted to do, rather than something I had to do. It worked and my feeds have come down :) Surprised me no end to find this post from Michelle, where she also talks of taking stock and also of the painful process it can be waiting for your colleagues to catch up with you - too true.

Like Michelle, I want to regain my optimism, and in my case, enthusiasm, for my profession. A bit more encouraging for me now knowing there are others who a having similar struggles. Here's to successful outcomes!