Thoughts on the Journey

Today at America Reads started off strange before ending in an amazing place. I want to write about it as I'm still processing it. At this point the majority of the books have been cataloged, which I find amazing. There are books I missed and late donations and odd balls but the collection is ready.

The next step is going into the records and adding ways for the tutors to search them with particular terms to do with teaching literacy. I don't know these terms terribly well since I've never done work with literacy. For the last few weeks, I was helping by trying to add these terms to some specific phonics' books. Today I found out that actually I didn't need to do that and went in and took the work out I did, which went quickly. I had a moment of going well I feel stupid, but it didn't last long. I've set up the system well enough that the tutors can actually enter the key terms and will keep doing that.

At this point, I'm not sure if they'll be able to pay me for the summer but if not, I'll be able to finish what I started. I'm going to go in and add images for some books and fill in a few blanks. Then the big thing I'll be working on is creating instruction material; screencasts, a few handouts and showing my boss out to do the cataloging. Its going to keep me busy and be satisfying work. I might end up doing inventory too but that's more up in the air. Sometimes when I'm down in the basement, I've worried that my role has been forgotten. Today was a reminder that people know the work I've done and its to a point where soon I can leave and things will continue.

Also I've downloaded Firefox 4 and like it so far. I'm having to reorient myself but I like it. The semester is nearing an end and I keep checking things off, which is a wonderful feeling.

And I made beautiful banana nut muffins!

I feel like I'm running in place with my programming homework since I have the basic part of it set up and it seems to work, but then I try to do other things and it doesn't work. Also I tried to go and put it up on a personal webpage which we're meant to use so the professor can see it. That wasn't helpful. Also the book and all the things I'm looking at to try and make sense of what I need to do don't help. Its like the perfect example of what we're talking about in my other class, not taking into account prior knowledge or lack of prior knowledge since staring at the code doesn't tell me how to do it.

At least one assignment finished easily and I'm pretty proud of it, I made a screencast about the styem we're using at America Reads. That assignment went so much faster than I expected, which is nice. If you're interested in terms of what it looks like, you can watch it here and it was made using a program called Jing. Now I'm going to read my seminar stuff and keep poking at the PHP. Worst case scenario, I turn in my code and explain, this is what I tried to do but none of it seemed to work. Oh and my Comcast cable bill went up and I didn't have a chance to go grocery shopping.

In terms of the poll, it looks like the preference is for me to post Art shots first with landscape, cute animals next. Now for social science reading and trying to not let the code make me too annoyed. I hate feeling like I somehow don't know how to read a book or site to figure out what I need.