Week 1 – Thing 3 Blogging

I am adding to the blog that I had started earlier when working with Beth.  THAT is why I am starting over with week 1.

Beth and I were “instructors” this week, a new experience for two neophytes to this Web 2.0 stuff.  One of the most fascinating aspects of these last 90 minutes has been to see the wide variety of computer expertise our participants seem to have.  I find this interesting from the perspective of getting a sense of the kind of person who is taking this class.  No one is afraid to try things and all seem to have a sense of how to get around web sites, how to link addresses, and how to troubleshoot when things don’t flow smoothly (e.g. needing to download a new version of WordPress).  I especially like the atmosphere of helpfulness in the room!

Week 8 Redo – Thing 15 Technorati

Beth and I had missed exploring Technorati during Week 8, so we have made a visit to that site now.  The whole concept — of having a search engine for blogs — is wonderful and mind-boggling.  I am not someone who regularly reads any blogs (what activity will I drop to make time for that?), but if I do get into such a habit, Technorati is the place I will come to get started.  I found the two columns interesting, one for blogs and one for news/mainstream media.  It is a good way to compare the two (so bravo to whomever set it up that way).  I also found the Today in Photos section a fascinating glimpse into the day.

We educated ourselves about the concept of “authority” and tried (not quite successfully) to understand the idea of a “ping.”  An overall impression is that visiting a site like this is a bit like learning a new language, where you come to a saturation point of feeling like there are too many new words (concepts) that still need to be learned to understand the overall working of the site.

Coming back to the question that dominates my learning of 23 Things, I ask myself, “How can I use Technorati in my library, particularly in collaboration with my Elementary teachers?”  I do not have a clear answer springing to mind, but nonetheless, I want to become better aquainted with this site to see how it can be a “tool” in my repetoire.  Ack, that means I need to go back to bookmark and add this one to my de.lic.ious site . . .  Bye for now!

Week 9 redo – Thing 18 Getting Deeper into Wikis

Beth and I have been exploring the three wikis recommended for this 9th week (we had done Thing 17 during our “real” Wk 9 and have come back here now that we have time to dig deeper).  Of the three, we found WetPaint to be the most inviting (Beth actually signed up, while I am a bit hesitant, knowing I already have an account with WikiSpaces from some workshop I attended a year ago).  The biggest mystery at the moment is how to use the edit function after clicking on “EasyEdit.”  The toolbar for editing showed up, but everything else on the page became inaccessible.  This will be the first part to spend some time learning how to use.  At the PBWiki site, we both added our URL addresses to the Favorite Blogs page and were happy to see that clicking on those links took us to the right places (small victories like that help propel us on)!
There are other aspects of the 23 Things that we missed completing over these 11 weeks.  Beth and I hope to continue to attack these things individually and together in an ongoing effort to become more and more Web 2.0 capable (the words “never ending” come to mind right away).

Week 10 – Google Docs

This blog entry is a bit of an experiment.  I am creating this document as a new Google document and I hope to “publish” it in my blog.  I’m not going to type too much here as I don’t yet know if I will be successful in this process.  One thing Beth and I did before getting to this starting place was to look at a number of the templates for Google docs.  With each type (e.g. document, spreadsheet, form), we tried to envision how the different templates could be applied to a library setting.  On this first run-through, we did not find any particular template we were excited about using, but we will try to remember that such tools exist, for possible future exploitation.

Okay, now it’s time to try to put this writing into my blog . . .  See you there.

I am writing this part after having copied and pasted from my Google Docs since it DID NOT WORK to publish from that location.  On the other hand, it DID work for Beth and I think we were doing the same thing.

Week 9 – Wikis

Beth and I have just spent 90 minutes viewing dozens of wikis. Besides feeling a bit overwhelmed, I am excited at the prospect of using a wiki for family communication. How can I use it for my library though? I think my visit to Nancy Pearl’s wiki gave me the best view of how a librarian can use a wiki in a public way. My next move would be to choose a “wiki engine” to get started. I really appreciated the wiki matrix site for the chance to compare three wikis (pbwiki, wetpaint and wikispaces) side-by-side. In the end, I found myself leaning toward wetpaint as the tool I would like to start with. In the end though, creating a wiki will be a time consuming activity and I need to seriously analyze whether this is the tool that can best help me communicate with my teachers and students.

And now to answer some of our exercise questions: What do I like the most about wikis? I like the links to gems that I might not come across otherwise — links to sites about books, for example that I would not have pulled up by Google. What do I dislike the most about wikis? I do not like the number of “dead ends” I came across, of pages that were not yet designed or created yet. Granted, I could add to such pages, as that is the nature of a wiki, but for my first go-through, this was a bit disconcerting.

Week 8 – First Experience with delicious.com

Given our mobility within a given day and our access to technology — moving from a home computer, to a work computer, to even a computer at a public library or network cafe — this social bookmarking site is RIGHT ON! Having registered and joined delicious I already appreciate its usefulness for me personally. My challenge now is to discern how such a site can be helpful to the elementary teachers I work with. I am beginning to think that I will want to register with delicious.com AGAIN as Maadi Ann and bookmark only sites that would be useful in my WORKing world (as an Elementary Librarian). My teachers do not need to see ALL the sites I just imported from my computer (e.g. the bus schedule I use to get from Logan Airport to my parents’ place in Hanover, NH) . . .

I have just spent the last hour exploring delicious.com and some of the sites that it sent me to. On the one hand, I do not find the site especially user-friendly, but then maybe I need to click on the “help” button more often. On the other hand, I am hopeful that continued use of delicious.com will serve to give me insights into how it works. I also need to surf the Internet as I do normally and, instead of adding to my computer’s bookmarks, I need to add to delicious instead. Then later I will see how the social aspect of delicious can work to my advantage (as right now, it’s all pretty overwhelming). More to come.

Week 7 – Playing with Generators

Beth and I are visiting a wide variety of generators and getting blown away by the variety and creativity we find. I went to one called “Map Maker” and identified the countries I have lived in/visited in Africa. The directions said to copy the code to my blog. It appears below . . . but I’m not sure how to have it appear in this blog. I’m doubtful that once I “save” and “publish” this page that it will appear as the map I expect. That is what I will try, though . . .

<div><b>Ann’s African Travels</b><br><img src=”http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=t&chs=440×220&chco=ffffff,3399ff,3399ff&chf=bg,s,eaf7fe&chtm=africa&chld=BFCIEGGMGHSNTG&chd=s:0000000″ alt=”Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com”><br><a href=”http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/map.php” style=”font-size: 75%”>Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com</a></div>

Week 5 – Social Networking

Beth and I have just taken a tour of four different social pages (as listed at the end of Thing #10). We made sure to try MySpace, FaceBook and Ning. As novices, we don’t feel strongly about any of the three types of pages (although creatively, it’s cool that MySpace let’s you custom design your page). We were trying to look at the pages from the point of view of how a library can use this Library 2.0 tool. Our initial impression is that these pages seem a bit chaotic and not especially conducive for providing information that a library patron may look for when seeking information about that particular library. We wonder how these social pages differ from a wiki library site or from a library’s web site that gives space for people to make comments (blog-style). Yes, these social pages are a way to group people by interests and activities, but we did not see any library examples that made us say, “Yes, I’d like to emulate that!” In the name of providing services to our users, a social page is not high on the list of means to doing this (web sites or wikis come to mind first). As one whose three young adult children are avid FaceBook users, I will need to see how their use of this tool enhances their ability to communicate with others.

Week 4 – Entering the Relm of RSS Feeds

Again Beth is at my side as we learned today about RSS Feeds. We had both already signed up with Google Reader (at previous attempts to learn about this tool). Today we got more serious about subscribing to sites whose contents we want to track. We hit some roadblocks along the way (e.g., where I was able to subscribe to a site with a click on one of the orange icons, Beth seemed to need to copy and paste the URLs into her reader). In the end, we both have more than five sources (some personal and some library) from which we will be “reading” new items from now on.

One reason I’m happy to try RSS Feeds is because, as much as I may have intended to check in on certain blogs in the past, NOW I hope having new postings at my fingertips will induce me to read things I would have missed previously. I need to put some thought into how I can use this resource in my own library. I’ll comment on that when I have something solid to contribute.

Used Flickr and Retrievr to change the look of my header

Today Beth and I are doing #6 Thing that had us visit Flickr and some of the “fun” things to use at this site.  We looked at montagr first.  While I found this interesting (fascinating actually), I do not have any ideas of how I could use this tool in my library. Then we went to retrievr and played with the sketch pad to bring up cool images. It was from here that I found an image from which I grabbed a small part to then upload a new background for my Weblog’s header. This new header reflects my love of the color blue!  Beth chose a picture of a pyramid (from her collection of visits to nearby pyramids) and used that as the background for her blog header.  We both want to learn more about how to manage the images we choose so that they appear as we intend in the end product.