Web 2.0 sites

Now that the Christmas whirl is over, I'll try to get lesson four of WebTrek completed.
Before Christmas I'd looked at a couple of sites, just hadn't gotten around to writing about them. Food was on my mind then, so I checked out Imcooked and found myself watching videos on baking sugar cookies (which inspired me to make some), cheesecake (I've got to try those blueberry cheesecake squares!), and molten lava cakes (what do you expect from a chocoholic?).

Quality of the videos varies as far as sound and lighting. So does the amount of explaination during the process. At times, just a few seconds, a few words more here or there would have been helpful. My only other grumble is that some of the videos don't give ingredient amounts--you have to go to another website to get that information. While I understand it from the cook's point of view--they want you to visit their website--the printed recipe should be right there to go with the visual. Otherwise, it's an enjoyable site, not only because of the recipes, but to see the variety of people--male, female, old and young, of various ethnic backgrounds--who simply enjoy food and cooking.

The other site that drew me was Picasa. I know we looked at that a bit earlier, but I wanted to know more so took the "Working with Digital Photos" session taught by Sally A. and Svetlana G.
one afternoon. We got to tinker around with some preloaded photos--cropping, coloring, adding text, removing blemishes and red eyes, straightening images that somehow got snapped off-kilter and highlighting with soft focus. Very cool stuff! This is a site that anyone who takes pictures can use. Does it take the place of Adobe Photoshop? No, but it can do a lot of neat things and won't cost hundreds of dollars, either. You can also create web albums so others can view your pictures.
This is a site I look forward to using, but I'm almost hesitant to upload my photos to Picasa because it may be too much fun playing with them!

A New Poetry Book

I enjoy children's poetry, and this week got my hands on one of the newer anthologies--The Bill Martin Jr. Big Book of Poetry. About two hundred poems, large format pages, and bold, bright illustrations from several renowned artists, including Lois Ehlert, Steven Kellogg, and Nancy Tafuri. What a treat!

So, for my Google Docs assignment, I've copied one of the poems, and will see if I can get it from there to here.

Poetry and Pups

Although I'm more of a cat person now, we had dachshunds when I was a kid. Here's a poem to honor those childhood "weiners."

BECAUSE OF PREVIOUS GLADNESS

There was a little dachshund once,

So long he had no notion,

The time it took from head to foot

To register emotion.

And so it was that when his face

Was filled with tears and sadness,

His little tail kept wagging on

Because of previous gladness.

--Anonymous

Shermie's very first blog!

And this is a whole new world! Not a totally comfortable one either. But, let's see how this goes--

7 1/2 rules for successful lifelong learning:

Easiest:

• Accept responsibility for your own learning--park my butt in the seat, put in the time. It's a given.
• Teach/mentor others--once I understand it myself, showing someone else just reinforces the original lessons.
• Play!--enough said.

Hardest:

• Use technology to your advantage--one of the reasons for doing this to begin with. I didn't grow up with computers, so anything I can learn has to be helpful.
• View problems as a challenge, not a crisis--very difficult when technology is involved. Am I going to erase something? Am I going to crash the system???
• Begin with an end in mind/set goals--sometimes it's more the "dive-in-headfirst-and-see-what-happens-later" technique. This time there are small goals: to learn what blogging is, and to be able to explain it to my mother when she starts navigating the new library software.

Shermie over and out--