Through CassLovely's Eyes

My daughter started a blog after seeing mine. Today she added a very creative slide show set to music. I think it is beautiful. Check it out here.

World Clock

World Clock is a very interesting site. It tracks way more than time -- temperature, the world population, traffic accidents, diseases, the U.S. prison population, the number of cars made, and more.

Assistive Technology

My daughter is a Special Educator at Gorman School in Dayton, Ohio. Her students all have multiple disabilities/handicaps. She is very familiar with the ways technology can help special needs students adapt and learn. Here are some sites she recommends for those helping patrons/students with special needs.

Ohio Coalition for the Education of Children with Disabilities
Rehabtool
Teacher Tap
Assistive Technology list

Inspired

I have been talking with my daughter Cassi about this whole Learning 2.0 experience and creating my blog. She in turn bookmarked my blog and checked it regularly to see what was new. Now, inspired by me, she has created her own blog. You can see it here.

Doing It My Way

Well, I find it hard to believe that we are finally done. I am not ready for this experiment to be over. There are so many more things to learn. It has taught me to be more aware of all the hundreds of thousands of "things" that are out there waiting to be discovered. I hope to continue to find new things to explore and continue to add to my blog. Many of those things can and will help OU users to accomplish needed tasks, either personally or academically. I hope I can be here to help them.

Social Networking and me

I signed up for both FaceBook and MySpace and added a few details about myself. On Facebook I added some new friends and became friends with some coworkers. I discovered FaceBook sites for some people I would never have expected to find. One, an OU administrator and head of a major OU student program. Imagine that!

Too Old for Facebook?
There are several articles in this week's Business Week about social networking. Seems lots of folks are analyzing what is happening.

Facebook Grows Up
Newsweek also has an article about Facebook and it's young creator See that article here.

Special Needs Students and IT

After much searching, I found several podcasts that I thought both interesting and relevant. My daughter teaches in a school exclusively for students with special needs. Most if not all of these students will never live independently, read, write or talk. This does not mean that they can never learn anything or experience the real world. IT can help these special students achieve all they can. The titles are: Overview of Learning Disabilities, Learning Disabilities: From Theory to Application and Learning Disabilities and the Power of Assistive Technology.

YouTube video

I, like several others, had difficulty finding videos I thought interesting on YouTube. Perhaps it was the sheer multitude of choices in so many categories, but I finally found one I thought interesting for me and my chocolate making hobby. I liked seeing good chocolate being tempered and molded, and I liked the fact that the star of this video did not hesitate to throw the molded chocolate back if there was a quality control issue. The video is called Chocolate: A Minister's Daughter.

La Vie en Rose

I have been thinking of going to the Athena to see "La Vie en Rose" about the life of the legendary singer from France, Edith Piaf. I have heard that the actress who plays the lead is deserving an award nomination. Thinking of the movie reminded me of a photograph of a rose taken by my husband Thom Luce and I wondered how it would look as a movie poster using an application supplied by BigHugeLabs.com. So, here it is.

And the winner is...

I chose Squidoo, which is a site for people to create web pages about a subject they feel passionate about. By pulling a lot of information together, they create a "Lens" for their particular subject. I chose Squidoo category Food & Cooking - Chocolate: The Gourmet Guide. It has a lot of links I have never seen before and will be a site I will want to visit often.

Web Based Apps

Nancy Story and I will be working on a major project to manage Southeast Asia serials more efficiently. We will be going through the collection, from A-Z determining the status, making decisions on binding, or canceling. To most efficiently accomplish this task, we will be using a shared Google spreadsheet.

I also experimented with Zoho Creator, which is a database application. I will be using a template for keeping track of DVDs owned by us. Since we often loan DVDs to our daughter and she often loans some to us, we will share the database to try to keep track of who owns what and where it is.

My Rollyo

I put together some of my favorite bread baking sites so that I could easily trouble shoot any recipes I am trying to perfect. Some of the sites I search often have suggestions for ways to improve on a recipe, or help me figure out why my ciabatta does not have the "holey" texture I keep striving for.

Web 2.0 Learning 2.0

I read the 5 articles posted by OCLC and had to agree about the different attitude that is prevalent now about providing patrons with the information they need. Not that many years ago, the attitude was "What's the matter with that guy? Is he too lazy to copy his own article. The library is not that far a walk." Now we strive to make it as easy as possible for the patron to get what he needs in the most convenient way. Our job is not to create obstacles to information retrieval. I read an article about "library policies" which said to examine carefully every time you tell a patron "No". Is there a good reason?

Helpful LibraryThing

I really like the aspects of LibraryThing. I entered a series of mystery books that I really like and then used both tags and "Helpful Suggestions" to find other series I might find interesting. I did not try the "Bad Suggestions" link, I find enough of those on my own.

My Del.icio.us

I set up an account with Del.icio.us and put an active tab on my browser, but have not been back to look at it or add any links since I set it up, so it appears that it is not something I will use on a regular basis, although I have not been using my computer at home much in the past couple of weeks, so maybe in the fall when things settle down?

OU Libraries Learn Wiki, et al.

I registered my blog as a favorite and added a movie as a favorite as well. I enjoyed the Books wiki. I also helped my son-in-law use Wikipedia to answer the question "What is the longest running TV show"? He guessed "Law and Order" and was wrong by a mile. The oldest running one was "Meet the Press", followed by almost every soap opera imaginable.

Technorati Profile

I set up an account and added links for some of my favorite web sites. Recipe sites that I use regularly and also sites for Ohio events that my husband and I might be interested in attending. I also check for cooking classes offered at several locales that are updated regularly and I can check easily from any computer I happen to be near.

Bitty Butterfly

I used an image generator to create a mosaic of a butterfly perched on a flower. I first tried using a photo of the Christ Statue in Rio, but it was too monochromatic, so it did not work.

My RSS Feeds

I thought this was interesting. I subscribed to NYT Book Reviews and there has not been a new feed in the last week. But there are a lot of bread and recipe sites that I like to check, so this will be a good experiment. I also subscribed to several particpants blogs.

Wolfe Garden and Alden

There is a beautiful garden in front of Alden Library. The low stone wall that surrounds the garden is in the shape of the Sate of Ohio. There is a large metal sculpture created by David L. Hostettler. The library is lucky to have another of his works, donated to us by the artist.

Technology Changes Microfilm Usage

Over the last ten years, I have watched as usage of microfilm has changed on the 1st floor of Alden. When I began work down here, summers were especially busy with folks doing genealogical research. Ohio University Life-Long Learning offered summer courses in researching family history. These days, almost all of that information is available on-line and full text. There are websites that provide historical newspapers, birth and death records and other related information. The State of Ohio has centralized many of these records here. The Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints provides the largest family research database free of charge. Census records are also available on line. So, now folks are creating their family tree in the comfort of their homes or home libraries, as it is easier, faster and cheaper.

Framed Art Photo

Using a 3rd party site, you can add a frame to any photograph, to showcase and highlight it. I love the "frosted frame" option at Framer.

Warholized in Chicago

Thom and I went to Chicago in late May. While sightseeing, he took my photograph in Millennium Park. The background was a field of salvia in differing shade of violet and purple.

Apprentice Chocolatier

It is a time honored tradition to train an apprentice to help create original art or even original chocolates. This is my grandadaughter Shannon, helping me make hand dipped chocolates. She had fun, and so did I.

3rd Party Flikr Mashups

I decided to use one of my husband's beautiful floral photograhs to make a trading card. Intersting how flexible the software is.

More Chocolate experiments

Recently, I created 3 types of hand dipped candies. The first was a lemongrass infused ganache, the second a chocolate ganache with Grand Marnnier, and the third sea salt caramels, all dipped in Valhrona 62% chocolate. I experimented with using chocolate transfers to add a decorative
touch.


Edie's Sweeties

June 26
Our good friend Terry Geddes suggested that my Chocolates needed a name. His suggestion was original. What do you think?

Chocolate Blogs and Lemon Wikis

I had a great time working and planning for the kickoff of Learning 2.0. I thought most people understood what we were trying to do and that it could be both fun and educational.
And I hoped that attendees would find our chocolate blogs and lemon wikis delicious as well.

7.5 Habits

Habit 3:
I have a tendency to view problems as PROBLEMS and get frustrated by that. On the other hand, one of the best ways I learn is by fighting through to make whatever assignment work the way it is supposed to. I have however, known people who get more angry than frustrated, leading to the electronic version of road rage, i.e. computer rage.

Habit 7 1/2:
This is the easiest as I am having great fun learning all these new and exciting tools.

New Variations

Once I began making the filled cupcakes, I decided to see how many variations I could come up with. I made a dark chocolate cupcake with chocolate mousse and topped it with whipped chocolate ganache. I also tried a Key Lime Mousse with lemon cake. Light and delicious!

Creating Mousse Filled Cupcakes

May 1, 2007

For a friend's birthday, I decided to make a Boston Creme Cupcake. I used a simple yellow cakemix for the cupcakes and after they were baked and cooled, I used a melon baller to remove the center of the cupcake which I then filled with a vanilla pastry cream. Then, I made a simple whipped chocolate ganache, using chocolate, cream and butter. I then iced the cupcakes and refrigerated them until serving. Then I thought that there were many ways to vary this simple idea. The next thing I tried was a strawberry mousse filled cupcake topped with a chocolate covered strawberry. Delightful!