Chris vs. Wordpress (Assignment 2 part two)

Now that the dust has settled I have time to reflect on the collective efforts of Team 8 and how attempted to help but was usually helped by my fellow team mates.

I entered this assignment with more than a pinch of trepidation. I've tangled with Wordpress before and all that I managed to do with any degree of success was mangle a page, waste a lot of time and give myself a headache.

This experience wasn't much better but I can say that I'm much more comfortable with it now.

Establishing my own page became quite a task but after two unsuccessful attempts to publish, I managed to create a bio page with a picture!

My next step was attempting to post a comment. While these seems easy enough, I was having some difficulty figuring out how to do this. There was much rejoicing after I finally figured out that I had to view the "Team 8" page to read and reply to comments.

My next conquest was adding a link to our "blogroll" and messing around with the widgets of our site. After much deliberation, I decided to leave our theme alone. It was clearly the best choice, made even more apparent when we discovered that several other groups used the same theme.

This experience has definitely forced me to revisit my initial misgivings regarding Wordpress and I have already started re-working the first page that I began and gave up on six months ago. Look for a link my new and improved site real soon.

The battle of the Wordpress (Assignment 2 part one)

This has been a knock down drag out battle but I definitely feel like I've accomplished something with Wordpress today.
Here's the list of the things that I learned today, in no particular order:

I discovered that I really dig the "Hello Dolly" plug-in and enjoy Wordpress even less when she is not activated.
I finally found and added to the links section of our site.
I attempted to use the "custom fields" feature.
Messing around with widgets can be fun and productive.

Yay!

Wikis

I'm still trying to wrap my feeble little brain around this wiki business, but I think I've found a wiki that will work for the media center at the high school that I (as of this afternoon) used to work at.

Population served: Approximately 800 high school students at a Title I school in Middle Georgia.

Library Type: Media Center

Budget: Nonexistent

Goal: To make the Media Center more useful and market its usefulness to students and faculty.

My choice: Clearspace.

Here's the specs on the wiki:

Much more than just an application wiki, Clearspace makes collaborating across teams, departments, even with customers easy, fast and a powerful way to refine ideas and remain productive. Clearspace is a single application that unifies lots of content types like wiki-documents, blog, discussions, instant messaging, rss, email integration, files (and a lot more) into spaces organized by topic vs being just another, bolted-on point solution. Even more, Clearspace provides easy workflow, file management and heavy-duty enterprise J2EE software with clustering, permissions, moderation, and is completely developer-source so you own full access to the code to easily integrate it into your current environment. Find out why Clearspace has quickly made Jive Software “the most important tech company you’ve never heard of.”

Based on the description from the website, this would be a great resource for cross curriculum planning among teachers as well as an excellent resource for students within the same class. Social Studies teachers that are covering Ancient Rome would be able to find and make a connection with World Literature teachers that are covering Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Students within the same class could be assigned group discussion topics and be personally responsible for posting on this discussions.

WIkipedia

I have a confession to make.

Now that I have learned more about wikipedia I feel the need to apologize for my previous transgressions regarding wikipedia. I'm still not convinced that it is the best thing ever but I love the idea of "collective intelligence" and establishing a free encyclopedia.

Wikipedia: I'm sorry for thinking you were all bad.

You're only half bad and I will learn to like you more.

Taking care of books

So the title of my blog may not make a whole heck of a lot of sense since I'm not "taking care of books" just yet. Besides all of that, the modern librarian should could and must do more than just take care of books but that is a discussion for another day.

As of right now, I'm just a simple school teacher with aspirations of one day working in a library. I'm not a total liar, I do "take care of books" in a sense because I am a High School English Teacher. Before I get into all of that I feel the need to explain the lame title of my blog.

First and foremost, I like tattoos and I have several. I say this not to brag or to convince people that I'm tough or cool because I'm neither. Here's the real story: A traditional and stereotypical "I'm a man" tattoo is a "TCB" or "Takin' Care of Business" tattoo. Not in reference to the Bachman-turner Overdrive song but in reference to the fact that bikers that sport this ink on their person tend to "take care" of their business with their fists or whatever weapon may be handy. I have made the decision that when I complete my MLIS degree I too will join the ranks of the "TCB" tough guys but mine will incorporate and stand for "Takin' Care of Books." So yeah. I have named my blog after a tattoo that I do not have...yet.

Welcome to the show and I hope to hear from you soon.