Learning, growing, and changing

The “Hail to the Victors” blog entry has been deleted for the mere fact that it was annoying in some browsers and quite possibly to Ohio State fans:) Hee hee. Apparently it played automatically in Safari and I ‘m not a big fan of movies/audio starting automatically, unless it is on Myspace. To be honest, I’m not entirely fond of Safari either. I LOVE Firefox. It even makes my blog looks better. The Frecs & Specs Logo at the right hand corner of my blog is suppose to be the same color as the rest of the blog, but in Safari and Explorer (at least my version at work) it looks like a separate blue box. So I have to figure out how to fix that.

Not much to report about myself people. I’m turning into a lame-o. All I do is go to school and work. In between those two things I’m most likely just eating, sleeping, reading, blogging, doing homework, showering, driving, or uploading pictures to Flickr. Of course, not always in that order. But yes, always that boring.

I’m really not going to complain though. I love my life right now. Even if I don’t have time to read as many books for pleasure or visit my family and friends as often as I would like. I am learning. I am growing. I am changing. I can feel it everyday. When I started working as an intern 8 months ago, I used to think my co-workers were speaking a foreign language. The only thing I could do was tune their strange words out . It was like I was all of a sudden in a country called “Techy.” However, like any foreign country, if one is there long enough they begin to pick up on words and learn the lingo just by being emersed in the culture. I’m truly amazed at how much I have learned in such a short period of time. I wish I had thought about chronicling my intern experience on a separate blog. But snippets of my experience will have to do here on Frecs & Specs. You won’t mind right?

As you all recall I was quite nervous about teaching my first blogging class. I was so nervous I could barely sleep the night before. Since then, I have taught three blogging classes and one Microsoft Word class. I have become more and more confident with each passing class and I am constantly evaluating what I can do different and better the next time around. I never thought I would feel this comfortable with speaking in front of people. I should say “Teaching” people since speaking is something altogether different. Regardless, I just feel good doing it now. It’s truly a great feeling to know you are teaching someone something new and they WANT to learn it. It’s so gratifying. Often I forget how exciting computers and technology really are because I have used them for so long. Whenever I see an 80 year old get excited about manuevering the internet or e-mailing it reminds me of that child-like excitement I have not had in a while. It really gives me a refreshing perspective, something I truly need every now and again. So yeah, I’m learning a lot and I am growing a lot. I can’t even imagine where I’l be when the internship ends in a year and a half. What I do know is I’ll have become more confident in my abilities and in myself and for that alone….I am grateful.

I should also tell you that I will be teaching more of the classes as the months go on. I’ve sort of just been getting comfortable with it gradually, but come January I will begin teaching Excel and Powerpoint classes as well. Then, in the spring or summer I am hoping to introduce a photo hosting class and something else. Not sure yet what they will encompass, but I have time to figure it out.

In the meantime, I am just living day to day, week to week, taking in as much as I can before it all comes to what will seem like an abrubt end. I will then have to use what skills I have aquired and find a real job. One which will not include the word “intern” in the job description.

Scary.

That wasn’t too painful

Okay, bear with me….just one more posting about teaching my first class and I’ll get back to talking about how messy my house is, etc.

I just got home from work and the class went extraordinarily well. In fact, I had the class leave comments on my blog (created specifically for the class) as a way of teaching them how to do it, and the feedback they left me was great. Some patrons even left playful and humorous comments making their fellow classmates and I laugh. It was very encouraging to see such excitement in the room. It made me feel good too… like I had finally conquered my fear of speaking in front of people. I’m sure it will always come and go, but now I see it is not as bad as my head makes it out to be.

After the class ended there were a few people who asked me if I had any copies of my Powerpoint slides available (which of course was the one thing I did NOT think of). A couple of them had Flashdrives for me to put it on, another decided she will come by the Library tomorrow to pick it up. So that was a nice solution for the moment. The only thing I was a little bummed about was the fact that I forgot to mention I had an article available for those who might be interested in seniors and blogging. I indeed had a couple senior citizens in the class who may or may not have been interested in reading it, but I just wish I had mentioned it. Ahh well..there’s always next time right?!

So that’s it folks! I just wanted to update you briefly.

If anyone is still reading my blog at this point
Umm hello?!..Is anyone even out there?

*echo* there…..there..there….

Me, Teaching?!

All weekend I have been trying to prepare for a class that I will be teaching tomorrow. As the actual day and time for the class inches closer, the more I am beginning to feel comfortable. Who would have thought that little old nervous me would feel so giddy about teaching a class?! Yesterday I was a ball of nervousness, trying to do some last minute reading and note taking as I prepared a short Powerpoint and rehearsed my lines. Sometimes I even moaned out loud to Specs in an almost “kill me now” kind of way. However, today I’ve been nothing but relaxed and calm. I put together a bunch of handouts, one of them being a list of books that the patrons might find helpful to further educate themselves on the subject matter (some at our library some they would have to MeLCat). One of my biggest fears is that I will run out of information for my class before the two hours is up. Realistically, I know two hours will fly by and I will be scrambling to fit in everything I NEED to fit in. I just really want to leave my students with a sense of understanding and an eagerness to learn more.

The class I am teaching….is Blogging.

I know my blog is nothing special, so some of you may be wondering how I will teach “blogging” to other people. First let me tell you that I get pretty embarrased about my blog from time to time. I do the very things I despise in blogs. I talk about feeling overweight and how I should work out or talk about how stressed I am that I am sooooo busy, but I never actually take the time to sit down and actually focus on any one thing. As you can tell from my slew of random tags, my blog is more often all over the place. Not that there is anything wrong with blogs like mine. I just mean I am not focused on any one topic specifically. I am not a mommy blogger, a tech blogger, a gardening blogger, or a crafts blogger. I just write whatever I feel like writing and leave it at that. Whether it’s an observation I made or whether I wanted to share something I found interesting. It’s just another way for me to keep family and friends in mind by sharing tidbits of my life with them. Additionally, like the techies who started blogs back in the late 90’s, sometimes I am just archiving links that I may want to revisit in the future. That is really it believe it or not. I am not looking for any kind of notoriety, just an outlet. I think there are a lot of people who think similarly and that is why I wanted to teach this class. I plan on teaching the class what a blog is, why they might want to blog, etc, etc. I will also take them step-by-step through Blogger.com to set up their own blog account. Never will I tell my class that their blog needs to be one thing or another. It can be whatever their imagination allows. The only thing it will cost them…..is time. If they have that, then they are set.

I counted the number of sold tickets and the class is already almost full. 12 tickets have been sold out of 14 seats available. One of them is, get this……my mom. Yes, my mom wants to learn all about blogging. Which is great! I mean my mom is a prime example of who I think should jump on the blogging bandwagon. She has been keeping a handwritten journal for as long as I can remember, and while I don’t expect she will write online in the same way she writes in her journal (like anyone really does), she will find her comfort zone and voice.

After looking at some of the sold tickets and the handwriting, it occurred to me that there is a pretty good possibility that I will have some older folks..I’m talking 70 and 80’s. There are quite a few senior citizens who take full advantage of what our Library has to offer. Many go to class after class, regardless of whether or not they are ready for it. I’m often blown away by their patience and eagerness to learn about computers and technology. Afterall, do any of you remember a time when you didn’t know how to use a mouse or how to get on the internet? Exactly my point. So after I realized some will be in my class, I knew immediately that I needed to rearrange the focus of my class. I never really thought about older folks blogging because well…there just aren’t that many that I know of. I wanted to find out and so I did some research. What I found was this article from 9 months ago about Senior Citizens and blogging. Which then led me to the Ageless Project, a project that keeps track of the age of bloggers. I haven’t had the opportunity to look through it at great length, but I thought it was such an ingenious project. Of course one has to submit their information for it to be included, but as you can see….there are not a lot of senior citizens blogging. Which is why I’m so impressed when I see seniors taking a proactive interest in learning about some of these new technologies. I printed the above article out for my class. I am hoping that it demonstrates there is no age requirement for blogging and yes, there are even older people doing it too!

Anyway, I should get back to my preparations. I never said that I had it ALL figured out, just that I am feeling a little more excited and confident in teaching my first class. Hopefully my mother won’t have to peel me up off the floor after I pass out from last minute nervousness.

Pray for me folks!