Thing 7

I have been using e-mail since I started grad school in the media program. I started that program back in 1992 and I used a computer for all my school work and a little bit for looking up information in a library but I did not know much about the internet or e-mail and especially the use that was set up for home. Since then I don't know how I would do without either one. We use the internet all the time at home and school to look up information, communicate, shop, and play games. Over the years the use of these tools have gotten easier and more user friendly. I am the yearbook coordinator at our school and the first two years I did the yearbook it was all cut and paste. The past two years the entire yearbook is done online. Yahoo got to be my favorite browser so I set up my e-mail and everything through that early on. I now use google a lot more but appreciate the connectivity google and yahoo share with each other. I have gotten to the point at work that I prefer to be contacted by e-mail versus the telephone. I frequently get solicitation calls while in the middle of class so I often won't answer my phone when I am teaching because it takes away from my lessons and I don't always remember to respond to my phone messages as quickly as I should. When using e-mail I can often switch from my circulation screen while I am waiting for the next patron and quickly read and respond to an e-mail. (It is also easier not to be as wordy with an e-mail as when you talk.) I also like the idea with e-mail that I can group my co-workers into groups so that only one grade level would get a message that I sent.
IM My opinions on IM is that it is a great tool to talk like two people would talk face to face. I have done some IM with the people who are connected via yahoo messenger and plan to set up something with the chinese teacher who stayed with me last fall. I like the fact that I can log into my e-mail with yahoo and that if I have someone else in my mailbox that is also using yahoo for their mail that I get notified when they are logged in so that I can sent them a message and we can chat. I have a wii which supposedly is able to go online and contact another person however I can't seem to get it to go out into cyberspace. One thing that happens when I IM is that I spell out everything because I don't have a dictionary for all the abbrviations and by the time I would look them up the other person would get tired of waiting for me to figure out what they are saying. IM is a whole new language. Our school does not allow for IM so I see a need to know what it is and the basics of using it, because my patrons know about it, however I don't think I will be using it with my patrons.
One of my former students who is a daughter of one of my co-workers finally taught me how to send a message last summer. I have owned a cell phone for 9 years and never learned how to send a message. I am very slow but I can do it, where as I know many of my students can send a long message in less time than a teacher can even notice they have their phone in their hand. I have used text message at times to reach my brother because he can't take calls while he is working. We try to encourage our students to leave their cell phone at home, (I am in a k-6 building and we feel there is no reason for them to have their phones in school more from a loosing them stand point and we offer a free phone for students to use in the main lobby,) so I frequently don't bring my phone to school either. I can see that the short messaging would work for a librarian to let a patron know their materials are in or to send an answer to a research question. I know that there are services/software that will allow for sending these short messages so that they can be sent and received without a cell phone as well. I will continue this thing post later.