More on South Koreans and TP

Further enlightenment on the matter of how South Koreans dispose of used toilet paper (and evidence that someone actually read my blog and stayed awake to tell of it) : a colleague's mom is a native South Korean who, when quizzed in this regard by the colleague, was surprised to hear of this "custom" of discarding used tp in the garbage rather than flushing away.

Here is what the colleague says herself and reports from Mom:

"I read the little bit in your blog post this morning and had to call my mom immediately. Why, you ask? Because thanks to her, I'm half Korean. :P

Now, she came from an affluent family in South Korea, or so that I could gather... Anyways. I asked her about the toilet paper/garbage thing. She had never heard of it. (She did know of an older lady here in town that did that, but let's not go there...) I do seem to remember from her last trip to Korea, she was really excited about someone's bidet. I think it also had an air dryer or something in there as well... (Who needs toilet paper with that? ha ha!)

So, my assumption is that the whole "wipe and toss" thing might be a class (low vs upper) thing or the toilets in that particular area may not be up to standards... Maybe my mom didn't want to dirty my mind with nasty Korean customs... "

An intriguing sidelight appeared in the young American teacher's latest blog entry from SK when she described staying overnight in a bungalow on a South Korean beach. She said the bungalows were tiny, not especially comfortable for sleeping, but had really clean bathrooms--cleaner than those at US campgrounds--not difficult for me to believe, having had some unpleasant campout experiences which led me to draw my line in the sand over family campouts. Tried it 3 times, not good at it, not going there anymore.

Wrapping Up the Loose Thoughts

Glad I did this, if for no other reason than working through the lessons removed some of the fear of the unknown. Web 2.0 turned out not to be such a fearsome gargoyle after all; it's good to have a little background knowledge of and experience with what everyone is talking about and, apparently, doing. Didn't evolve into an expert by anyone's definition, but learned a bunch, didn't feel it was a waste of time, and found several tools that could be both useful and interesting.

For example, I find myself checking my bloglines account most days, following what colleagues are writing about the Lib. 2.0 experience and checking the latest entries from some RSS feeds like Free Technology for Teachers, Rotten Tomatoes (about recent movie releases), cute cat pictures and info, and, of course, library stuff. A colleague's stepdaughter just began the adventure of a lifetime, teaching school in South Korea, and I've added her blog to my account. Her first blog entry was fascinating and I look forward to more. Who knew South Koreans discard used toilet paper in wastebaskets, rather than flushing it away? Whoa!

A Delicious account could be the best thing since white bread for those of us who travel a lot and need a way to share the many websites we know would be helpful but can't begin to remember off the tops of our heads (and really don't care to save and organize in endless paper lists). I've tagged a bunch of those with the heading "toshare" so retrieval on the road should be quick and painless. Just got a cool new one last week from a colleague, saved it in Delicious and tagged it--easy-peasy, the first time I'd tried that since we learned about tagging.

Nov, about google docs. That's a keeper. Another PB&P Team 2 member and I were able to share online our opinions of the books we were reading, considering for the 2010/2011 nominees list, after I created a simple spreadsheet. That was cool and I can see umpteen other potential uses. The PB&P committee chairperson is wondering whether we could create and add to the SDSL website an interactive form of some kind where librarians and teachers could go in and make suggestions for books to review for the 2011/2012 list. Perhaps a google document would work? And next summer I'm hoping the third PB&P Team 2 member will set up a google account so she, too, can get her ratings added to the spreadsheet as we read our assigned books. I intend to learn more about google docs.

Not sure about FaceBook, but maybe I'm just not good enough at it yet to appreciate it. Will keep trying, but right now don't find myself compelled to keep up with monitoring it. My daughter has her account locked down pretty tightly; I should've asked for her advice right away. We live and we learn. Maybe I'll get used to it as time passes, but right now I feel inept with this one.

Twitter? I may be too old for that one, just couldn't get into it. But Flickr could become addictive, and I think I'll keep playing around with it. We're having a bunch of work done on the exterior of our house. I took a "before" picture; now it would be fun to share that and some "after" pictures with the children who live hundreds of miles away and rarely get home. Assuming, of course, that "after" actually happens during my lifetime.

All in all, this challenge wasn't so awfully challenging, was even fun much of the time.

Wikimania

I'd used a wiki before, but not too successfully. I do think the Common Craft video makes it all look easier than it really is because I don't think editing, saving, etc., is that intuitive for a true newbie; I just think some prior knowledge is necessary for successful use. For example, Joan created a wiki for those of us on the School Library Study Group to use in adding our ideas for building a new school library survey report. My partner was totally unfamiliar so I said I'd try to put in the information she and I had come up with. I was confused looking at the info already there from other partnerships within the group, couldn't tell whose was whose, or where to put ours; so I think I added ours incorrectly. Perhaps I should've started a new page, and now I would probably be able to do that. I can see a wiki would be a powerful tool for a group if everyone knew how to proceed. I know of a school librarian who was having her library class students post library book reviews to a wiki, and they were having fun with that. Great idea. Looking around at the example wikis, I found the RC Flood wiki intriguing. I was living in the Northern Hills at that time so feel a personal connection to the disaster, as do so many, and that makes reading the survivors' stories really poignant. The manager of the store where I was working that summer lost his estranged wife and preschool-aged son and daughter. Their dog survived; I still remember Ray (my boss) talking about finding the dog buried up to her neck in mud in the basement where the house had stood. His wife's father, mother, brother, and sister-in-law also perished from the same house. Only the poodle lived. Those memories are still so vivid--hard to believe it's been nearly 40 years.

A Taste of Delicious

I created a Delicious account some time ago to permit access to some of my favorites from a computer I might be using outside the Citrix environment. Occasionally, when I'm on the road, I can't get Citrix to work from a motel, but I do have Internet access. I can never log on to a network at my mom's apartment in RC, although there are many wireless networks shown as available, none of which will allow me to log on without a password, which I don't have (and Mom doesn't know or can't remember). Or, once in a while on a site visit, the opportunity comes up to share a favorite web site with a librarian, teacher, or administrator. Having such a site saved in my Delicious account allows for easy access. These kinds of situations led me to set up a Delicious account a few months back. At first, of course, there weren't that many sites saved in that account, but now there are 30+, so I was interested to learn about the "tagging" capability and did go back and edit my saved sites to add at least 1 tag, sometimes 2, for each. At this point, I've used 3 different tag headings for those 30+ sites; those are all personally-chosen headings, just there to help me organize and gather quickly the sites with common headings. So, is Delicious as good as chocolate brownies with mint frosting? Nooooooo--nothing inedible could be that good--but, still, pretty good.

Facebook? Hmmmmm--

I think actually I set up two Facebook accounts: one within Citrix using my state email and the other using our home email account. Didn't have much luck being able to friend anyone using the state email account, but was able to become friends with Julie with our personal account. One evening I could see Jane's, Joan's, and Colleen's accounts and sent requests that they allow me to friend them. Haven't heard back from them yet. I also tried to friend my daughter who has her account set up so no one can friend her without being screened by her first. She said she'd check it and set up permission, but that hasn't happened yet. Perhaps she's just been busy with getting ready for her first week of school, first teaching job and all that comes with that. Or, could be she just doesn't want to friend her mom, hmmmmmm. I looked at Jasmine's and Wynne's myspace profiles and see that one can do some cool stuff with the profile. So far, my information is pretty basic, although I was able to upload a picture. The daughter is coming home this weekend; maybe we can carve out a few minutes to take a look at my profile and spiff it up a bit. As for using Facebook for work, I don't know. To me, it's kindof like playing on the computer, something I'm not that good at; I prefer online activities with a purpose. I'll keep the account open and fool around with it some for a while at least, though, on the off chance that someone out there in the bigger world with whom I haven't connected in a long time might find me and get in touch--could be fun. I'm not that great about "playing" on the computer outside work hours, though, after spending so much of my working hours on the computer. Getting into the print world at night is much more appealing to me than looking at the screen I've been watching pretty much all day. So, all in all, mixed feelings about Facebook. Gotta say it's easy, though; I'm not surprised it's so popular.

Google Docs Rocks

Oh, yes, oh, yes, a Web 2.0 tool that's really helpful. We've been using a Google Doc form to request travel through the SDSL office all year, and that has always worked nicely for us. But what got me excited yesterday was being able to upload into Google Gocs an Excel spreadsheet I'd previously created for keeping track of the Prairie Bud & Pasque books the other Team 2 members and I have been reading this summer. Within that spreadsheet was a column in which I'd been assigning a number rating, 1-5, to each book as I completed reading it, with 5 being the top rating. There is a column for each of the other team members in which I'd just been keeping track of books given to them for reading. I've not been recording rating numbers in their columns because, obviously, I don't know their opinions of those books yet. When I uploaded that spreadsheet to Google Docs, I was able to share it with the other team member who already had a Google account established; she has seen the spreadsheet and intends to enter her own rating numbers. The other team member, at this time, does not have a Google account, but perhaps she will open one so she can access the spreadsheet as well. Sharing the spreadsheet online should spare us much time and possibly some confusion as well. I've worked with SurveyMonkey somewhat in the past because that's the vehicle being used now for the Prairie Bud & Pasque annual voting in the spring--all voting done online now. So, a big thumbs-up for Google Docs.

Have sound with podcast--yaaay!

Yes! When today I clicked on the ABC News podcast I added to my bloglines account last week, this time there is sound. So it did work after all, and I heard about the three American hikers "lost" in Iran. What on earth are 3 young Americans doing going hiking in Iran? There are safer places for hiking.