I was just leaving a department store and, as usual, could not remember where I had parked. I had my shopping cradled in one arm and my car keys held above my head as I tried to locate my car by beeping for it with the same remote-control-thingee. A woman with a small child in a stroller came out of the store about that time and saw me standing like some confused and overweight Statue of Liberty. Seizing the opportunity, she pressed her own remote-car-unlocker, thus making the car in front of me (her car) beep. By watching the movement of my hand very closely, she was able to time her beeping to my pressing and string me along for several perplexed minutes, while I stared intently at this car, which was much nicer than mine, but which apparently wanted to go home with me. If she hadn’t finally burst out laughing, I might still be there.


I totally admire that lady.


(Okay, I know that story doesn't actually have anything to do with creating an Amazon wishlist, but it's a lot more interesting than the background story of how I came to create one. Let's just pretend that my Amazon story is that interesting and move on, shall we?)

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Anyway, for a variety of reasons, I found myself with a list of books that I'd really like for my classroom and with the holidays coming up, thought it might be a good idea to make the list available to parents and other benefactors who might be moved by the spirit of the Holidays to buy them.

Step 1 - I created a new Amazon account under my Teacher Name. I had originally used my own personal Amazon account, but my wife (the Patient-est Woman in the World) wasn't completely comfortable with that; it allowed people to see our son's wishlist and other personal information. 

As usual (okay, always), she was right, so I used one of my lesser-used email accounts to create a new account. It took about a minute to do that.


Step 2 - I created a wishlist in the new account. I did this by choosing a book I wanted, then clicking the "Add to My Wishlist" button. That brought up the "You don't have a wishlist; would you like to create one?" menu and I followed the directions there. That took another minute or so.

Step 3 - For my new profile picture, I uploaded a picture of Santa Claus. (I did a Google Images search for a more-or-less copyright free picture of Santa, downloaded it to my computer, then uploaded it to my new wishlist profile.) This took about 30 seconds.

Step 4 - I copied all the books for my classroom over from my original list to the new one. There is probably a more elegant way to do this, but I just copied the ISBN number from each of the books in the old list, plugged it into the search bar in the new account, then pressed the "Add to my Wishlist" button. This was the longest part of the process. It took me about five minutes.

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Step 5 - When the list was complete (for the moment), I clicked on the "Share With Friends" link, which brought up a URL (web address), supposedly to email to relatives, etc... I copied this.

Step 6 - I wrote a quick announcement on my classroom website explaining that at the risk of being tacky, if anyone had a crying need to buy more Holiday presents this season, anything on this link would be put to really good use in my classroom, then pasted in the URL I had copied from Amazon. I highlighted it, added a hyperlink to the list. This took another minute or two.

(The "Share With Friends" address is short enough that it would totally work to just write it out in a classroom newsletter or written announcement to go home with younger kids.)

Total time to do all this - less than half an hour.

Step 7 - Waiting for the swag to start rolling in. 

Step 7b- Or annoyed emails from parents already nagged to their limit.

I'll let you know.




Kelli Blood
12/6/2009 01:51:33 am

Love your blog! Love Old Jews Telling Jokes! Loved your presentation at Christa! I am sharing your blog with all of my colleagues. It will save so many headaches in the long run!

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