Thing 3: PLNs, or "Twitter Makes Me Dizzy"

So, I took a class years ago while earning my MLS and the professor was dynamic and ahead of the times with regards to technology.  She had us all sign up for Twitter accounts, and told us who to follow, and I was impressed by the information available on my feed just by following twenty or so leaders in education.  I never made it a habit to check Twitter, so when the semester ended I really never logged in.  Fast forward a few years- I logged in and was overwhelmed within two minutes!  I know that I need to learn how to use Twitter, and use it more regularly, and I've been telling myself this for quite some time.  In fact, I said it to my husband just last week after attending a Makerspaces meeting with other LI librarians.  It was "meant to be" that I spent some time reading the Twitter resources provided in Thing 3 tonight.  I breathed a little easier after I explored the hashtags suggested by Jennifer LeGarde's "Love Story..".  I was actually even more impressed with that professor I had, because her suggestions about who to follow in 2009 still held true.  I watched the videos about Tweetdeck, and was a bit overwhelmed by the look of the screen, but I think I will give it a shot so I can focus on specific hashtags related to my work.  I'm also going to work on my profile a bit, because I'm not sure a profile pic of my dog is appropriate, even though she is rather adorable.  I'm planning on completing a "20 day challenge" to get myself into the habit of logging in daily.  I'm very active on Facebook, which is of course, more aesthetically pleasing and user friendly, but the content is STALE and repetitive.  It's been time to move on for a while, so I'm glad that I can do that confidently, with some tools to help.

Thing Two: Photo Fun

I searched Pixabay, and my first search came up empty. I initially searched for "Ruby Bridges", which resulted in no results. I broadened my search to "Civil Rights" and I received more results. I chose this one, because it was bright and the message was clear. I like the idea that Pixabay results in images that are royalty free and licensed for reuse. My students tend to gravitate toward Google for image searches, so I have taught them how to set search parameters to narrow results to include images that are licenses for reuse. However, I get nervous about inappropriate images appearing in search results. I think I'll start to introduce Pixabay- especially since we have PSA project coming up and we'll need images for that.