Thank you to Lucille, Reva, Jenny and Kae for the opportunity to learn about Web 2.0.
And there was no better way to wrap up this course than the "class act" at the Galt View Restaurant last evening.
The networking and socializing were great and the food was Del.icio.us!(I know ...terrible pun)
Thanks again and I look forward to more learning and discussion as we move forward.
Assignment 10 - Podcasts
Something for everyone...
Podcasts reminds me of the old Clint Eastwood classic, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". I will just focus on "the good" for this reflection, although there is alot of bad stuff in podcasts as well. I searched for something under "library" and something lusty appeared. User beware.
However, I enjoyed snooping in the blogs of a few other learners to find out what they liked about podcasts. JoAnne and Sarah envisioned podcasts for instructional purposes to help library patrons login, learn about downloading audio books, order materials online and providing instruction in the from of online courses. Nadine enjoys the music videos available. I join Matt, Sarah and Yvonne enjoying the bits of humour available in podcasts, ranging from Carol Burnett and Mr. Bean to Terry Tate (as office linebacker) and, my favourite, Tina Fey's impression of Sarah Palin.
A podcast helped me get started with some confidence in this course. Way back in September when I was getting my head around RSS, I found a simple podcast that provided a visual explanation that clarified Real Simple Syndications for me.
I have my two favourites listed to the left of this blog!
Thanks again to Regional Library decision makers and for Jennifer for her leadership in making this course available and enjoyable!
Podcasts reminds me of the old Clint Eastwood classic, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". I will just focus on "the good" for this reflection, although there is alot of bad stuff in podcasts as well. I searched for something under "library" and something lusty appeared. User beware.
However, I enjoyed snooping in the blogs of a few other learners to find out what they liked about podcasts. JoAnne and Sarah envisioned podcasts for instructional purposes to help library patrons login, learn about downloading audio books, order materials online and providing instruction in the from of online courses. Nadine enjoys the music videos available. I join Matt, Sarah and Yvonne enjoying the bits of humour available in podcasts, ranging from Carol Burnett and Mr. Bean to Terry Tate (as office linebacker) and, my favourite, Tina Fey's impression of Sarah Palin.
A podcast helped me get started with some confidence in this course. Way back in September when I was getting my head around RSS, I found a simple podcast that provided a visual explanation that clarified Real Simple Syndications for me.
I have my two favourites listed to the left of this blog!
Thanks again to Regional Library decision makers and for Jennifer for her leadership in making this course available and enjoyable!
ZOHO - Assignment #9
The ZOHO Group of Programs
Again... I never knew .....
Like most of programs and interfaces that we have explored in this course, I never knew Zoho existed. I am not sure how popular it is in the computer world, but it has so many related programs that I feel it could easily challenge many expensive suites of programs that are commercially available. As well, Zoho writer and Zoho sheet have all of the complexities that I need. The greatest part is that files are accessible from any computer, anywhere!
I was experimenting with ZOHO SHOW and how it can be linked to a blog so I have included a very simple slide show above.
And, as the snow greeted us this morning, my thoughts were of cottage life at a warmer time.
Assignment #8 Wacki Wikis
While shelf reading last week, I noticed a copy of "Wikis for Dummies" in the St Jacobs collection. After visiting the three sites that I used for this blog, I feel comfortable in talking about wikis and no longer feel dummyish.
The sites that I visited are:
Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki ;
St. Joseph County Public Library's Subject Guides ; and
Waterloo Way Wiki – the stories of entrepreneurs in Waterloo Region .
Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki included some great link for librarians.
I found information about everything from practical conferences for newbies, to guides to collection weeding with the CREW method leading the way. Excerpts from weeding policies for numerous libraries also looked very helpful.
This site requires an email address upon registering to help save this site from hackers and vandals alike. The template for using this site was similar to the others that I visited which allow users to perform the following tasks Navigation, search and toolbox.
The St. Joseph County Public Library provides a subject guide for local information and educational, cultural and community building resources. This site has a very professional look and requires users to sign in as patrons for some of the links. I liked the practicality of some of the information in this site. For example there was a clear and concise definition of biography, autobiography, memoirs, journals and diaries.
There is also a link from the wiki to the main library site which includes the following:
The St. Joseph County Public Library has a variety of ways to ask for assistance from its helpful staff of Librarians:
Ask a question via a live chat session, Ask a question via e-mail, Ask a question by phone, Drop by the Reference Desk for help, and Suggest a Title for Purchase.
The wiki also has some links that require logging in as a patron (such as Novelist) and others that allow navigating online (such as Pearls' Picks and Tumblebooks for kids).
The wiki site also has the standard navigation, search and toolbox tasks that visitors have available.
Waterloo Way Wiki provides the stories of entrepreneurs in Waterloo Region. I enjoyed this site because it was local. Like other wikis, anyone can add to or edit what is written in these bios. The site is well organized, has a professional layout and it's local so it's good!
Options for navigating the site are more inclusive, allowing a user to explore, interact, search and go to the toolbox.
Overview
Not being a wiki user, I have learned a fair bit and had some fun. The premise of wikis is that anyone can add or modify the contents of the site. But I did note that some sites require users to be signed in which provides some level of authenticity in the information entered. As a social networking site, wikis are monitored and the garbage entered will be thrown out by other users or the managers of the site. The sites are free to use and open to all.
Wikis seem very "democratic" but with that comes the reality that sites will be abused and wiki police will have to monitor its users.
The sites that I visited are:
Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki ;
St. Joseph County Public Library's Subject Guides ; and
Waterloo Way Wiki – the stories of entrepreneurs in Waterloo Region .
Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki included some great link for librarians.
I found information about everything from practical conferences for newbies, to guides to collection weeding with the CREW method leading the way. Excerpts from weeding policies for numerous libraries also looked very helpful.
This site requires an email address upon registering to help save this site from hackers and vandals alike. The template for using this site was similar to the others that I visited which allow users to perform the following tasks Navigation, search and toolbox.
The St. Joseph County Public Library provides a subject guide for local information and educational, cultural and community building resources. This site has a very professional look and requires users to sign in as patrons for some of the links. I liked the practicality of some of the information in this site. For example there was a clear and concise definition of biography, autobiography, memoirs, journals and diaries.
There is also a link from the wiki to the main library site which includes the following:
The St. Joseph County Public Library has a variety of ways to ask for assistance from its helpful staff of Librarians:
Ask a question via a live chat session, Ask a question via e-mail, Ask a question by phone, Drop by the Reference Desk for help, and Suggest a Title for Purchase.
The wiki also has some links that require logging in as a patron (such as Novelist) and others that allow navigating online (such as Pearls' Picks and Tumblebooks for kids).
The wiki site also has the standard navigation, search and toolbox tasks that visitors have available.
Waterloo Way Wiki provides the stories of entrepreneurs in Waterloo Region. I enjoyed this site because it was local. Like other wikis, anyone can add to or edit what is written in these bios. The site is well organized, has a professional layout and it's local so it's good!
Options for navigating the site are more inclusive, allowing a user to explore, interact, search and go to the toolbox.
Overview
Not being a wiki user, I have learned a fair bit and had some fun. The premise of wikis is that anyone can add or modify the contents of the site. But I did note that some sites require users to be signed in which provides some level of authenticity in the information entered. As a social networking site, wikis are monitored and the garbage entered will be thrown out by other users or the managers of the site. The sites are free to use and open to all.
Wikis seem very "democratic" but with that comes the reality that sites will be abused and wiki police will have to monitor its users.
Assignment #7 - Techie Tools and the Library
For this Assignment, I reflected upon Meredith Farkas's article The essence of Library 2.0?(and all of its related links and references) as well as the following three articles:
Away from theIcebergs by Rick Anderson
Into a new world of librarianship by Michael Stephens and
To a temporary place in time... Dr. Wendy Schultz.
After spending several weeks learning about and playing with all of the neat "techie tools", with assignment 7, I was faced with thinking until my brain was hurting. Actually, I spent many hours reading, thinking, pondering, formulating, reflecting and finally blogging.
Meredith has obviously been at this Web 2.0, Learning 2.0 and Library 2.0 thing for a number of years.
For me, Meredith is saying that we have to spend time finding out what the patrons want from the library and from library staff. We also have to keep abreast of the technologies that are out there and review the uses of these tools and how they adapt to our roll as information providers.
We have to have time to learn about, work with, apply and then re-tool the use of these technologies. But all the time, we have to focus on the purpose for everything we do - the library patron (not ourselves).
Meredith Farkas, as well as John Blyberg in his article Library 2.0 Bebased, emphasize that:
"when we use technology, it should be transparent, intuitive, and a natural extension of the patron experience. If it can’t be transparent, then it should be so overwhelmingly beneficial to the user that it is canonized not by the techies, but the users themselves."
Meredith continues:
"Basically, they wanted to be self-sufficient and not to have to deal with us."
Meredith's theme is to get to know the patron needs through assessment and then determine which technological tools can best serve those need. Being on the cutting edge as some libraries have, will mean making mistakes, failing, learning from our failures and then modifying. It may be prudent not to be on the cutting edge but rather observe the trials of others before adopting change.
Icebergs...
Rick Anderson states that libraries no longer have a monopoly of information sources as they did a few short years ago. We have moved from a print era of information to a electronic one.
Rick also challenges us to rethink the concept of maintaining a collection of non fiction books. What patrons want libraries to provide is the most current, authoritative information and they want it now.
Rick feels that libraries are poorly equipped and insufficiently staffed for teaching patrons about these new technologies.
"We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning ."
He says that we must "find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us—whether physically or virtually. At a minimum, this means placing library services and content in the user’s preferred environment (i.e., the Web); even better, it means integrating our services into their daily patterns of work, study and play"
The New World...
Michael Stephens moves for Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 to Librarian 2.0. He gives his vision of what that person would do and behaviours a patron would see.
His vision of Librarian 2.0 is a person who:
Away from theIcebergs by Rick Anderson
Into a new world of librarianship by Michael Stephens and
To a temporary place in time... Dr. Wendy Schultz.
After spending several weeks learning about and playing with all of the neat "techie tools", with assignment 7, I was faced with thinking until my brain was hurting. Actually, I spent many hours reading, thinking, pondering, formulating, reflecting and finally blogging.
Meredith has obviously been at this Web 2.0, Learning 2.0 and Library 2.0 thing for a number of years.
For me, Meredith is saying that we have to spend time finding out what the patrons want from the library and from library staff. We also have to keep abreast of the technologies that are out there and review the uses of these tools and how they adapt to our roll as information providers.
We have to have time to learn about, work with, apply and then re-tool the use of these technologies. But all the time, we have to focus on the purpose for everything we do - the library patron (not ourselves).
Meredith Farkas, as well as John Blyberg in his article Library 2.0 Bebased, emphasize that:
"when we use technology, it should be transparent, intuitive, and a natural extension of the patron experience. If it can’t be transparent, then it should be so overwhelmingly beneficial to the user that it is canonized not by the techies, but the users themselves."
Meredith continues:
"Basically, they wanted to be self-sufficient and not to have to deal with us."
Meredith's theme is to get to know the patron needs through assessment and then determine which technological tools can best serve those need. Being on the cutting edge as some libraries have, will mean making mistakes, failing, learning from our failures and then modifying. It may be prudent not to be on the cutting edge but rather observe the trials of others before adopting change.
Icebergs...
Rick Anderson states that libraries no longer have a monopoly of information sources as they did a few short years ago. We have moved from a print era of information to a electronic one.
Rick also challenges us to rethink the concept of maintaining a collection of non fiction books. What patrons want libraries to provide is the most current, authoritative information and they want it now.
Rick feels that libraries are poorly equipped and insufficiently staffed for teaching patrons about these new technologies.
"We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning ."
He says that we must "find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us—whether physically or virtually. At a minimum, this means placing library services and content in the user’s preferred environment (i.e., the Web); even better, it means integrating our services into their daily patterns of work, study and play"
The New World...
Michael Stephens moves for Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 to Librarian 2.0. He gives his vision of what that person would do and behaviours a patron would see.
His vision of Librarian 2.0 is a person who:
- assesses patron needs and plans for those needs using technologies that provides transparent access for patrons;
- utilizes technology to create and enhance communication with patrons
- uses the patron's needs as "filter" to determine a particular technology or application will work
- makes timely decisions based upon assessment, statistics, research and patron needs
- maintains professional reading and stays current
- listens to staff and users when planning, tells the stories of successes and failures, learns from both, celebrates those successes, allows staff time to play and learn, and never stops dreaming about the best library services
Dr Wendy Schultz provides some insight into where we have been Library 1.0, Where we are Library 2.0 and where we are headed, Library 3.0 and yes, 4.0. From a book centered library to a community of web searchers and bloggers, where majority rules and the expertise of the author is suspect. This will drive, she says, Library 3.0 There, we will strive to be librarian “superstars” based on buzz and customer ratings. People will collect "librarians rather than books—the ability not just to organise, but also to annotate and compare books and other information sources, from a variety of useful perspectives."
And finally, in a 4.0 world, my St. Jacobs library remains as "a country house library, and renovates it: from a retreat, a sanctuary, a pampered experience with information—subtle thoughts, fine words, exquisite brandy, smooth coffee, aromatic cigar, smell of leather, rustle of pages—to the dream economy’s library, the LIBRARY: a WiFREE space, a retreat from technohustle, with comfortable chairs, quiet, good light, coffee and single malt. You know, the library." (no smoking please!!!!)
Some may think that her vision through 4.0 glasses is sci fi. I have a different view. I taught computer science in the 70's 80's and 90's. My futurist "talk" to teachers, parents and others in the early 80's focused on a cashless society; with visual communications with those we talk to any where in the world; computers that will be hand-held devices rather than filling a room; and microchips in every device in the home. Of course we have surpassed all of those predictions with the blink of a eye.
Our task as librarians will be to manage the information in what ever form it takes and keep it authentic and relevant for our patrons.
Well, I'm off to a Buffalo Bills - New York Jets football weekend so I will be having even more fun!
Delicious and Technorati - Assigment 6 (and learning, still)
When I saw "social bookmarking" I was thinking...party; only for fun not business; sharing with friends. But Isoon learned that it is more about the commonality of "tag" given to a particular URL by the throngs of people who visit it. The tag that rises to the top will be the most popular one. And many tags are show as "clouds" so that the most frequently used tag will appear BOLD large print while the tag names that appear less frequently will appear in small lighter print. It is kind of like the survival of the fittest. The users of social bookmarking in Delicious will be shown the cloud of various tags for a particular URL. The user can then use one of the previously used tags or they may create their own, which will be added to the cloud.
I found a personal benefit in social bookmarking as well. Rather than storing my "favourites" in my computer, (which seems to slow down my system), I save the favourites as bookmarks in a site like Delicious and then give them tags to label them in a way that makes sense to me. I can also see how others have tagged the same bookmarked site.This also allows me to access my favourites from any computer that I may be using.
Below is an example of a tag cloud:
1 2 area balcony beachfront condo days dining diningkitchen florida from indian indianrocksbeachrental irb irbcondorental living master meaghan michaels monica mosaic peters pool rental rocks room suite sunset vatican view wedding
This is a cloud created in FLICKR illustrating all of the tags that I have used to label my pictures that I have saved there. Note that wedding pictures are the most frequently used. And it looks as though I have more pictures of Meaghan and Peters wedding than I have for Michael and Monica's wedding.
Delicious, is just one of many social bookmarking sites. Some are more specific sites like FLICKR for photographs and Technorati for searching blogs.
Tagging is the key to controlling and organizing your online experience — be it a learning experience or an entertainment experience — and sharing it with others. It uses terms you choose, your vocabulary, as opposed to library cataloging terminology, to meaningfully apply descriptive terms to a website, photograph, video, document or music. Tags can be anything, even non-linguistic symbols. As you select tags and apply them, you are building your very own classification system from the ground up. It is fun and very creative!
I found another group of people learning about WEB2.0 on a Delicious site and I learnt quite a bit from reading their blogs. They too were library types learning about other technologies.
If you are interested, their blogs can be found at :http://krl2pt0.wordpress.com/. I found some of their insights and learning interesting.
I have created my delicious account and I am impressed with the flexibility that it has. I am still learning and experimenting but I have found tags of a few people that I know (one is a manager with RWL who used the same tag as I did).
I have gone back to Delicious each day this week and I am building my confidence level in using this site.
With more experience using Delicious, I can see how it will be another useful tool for me. However, I will have to get into blogging and sharing blogs with others.
I have also had several trips to Technorati but and I see that it is the similar to... but different than many of the sites we have seen so far.
The popular tags in Technorati today are : OBAMA, McCain, Politics, Football and the Economy. Yes... the site is used mainly by patriotic Americans. All of the political links seemed to be about their election. Not even a whisper about Canada. Although there was an newslink about the Blackberry and Rim in the business section.
I find it very easy to find blogs and other links in Technorati about a number of topics.
I promise to have fun during my "week off" as well.
I found a personal benefit in social bookmarking as well. Rather than storing my "favourites" in my computer, (which seems to slow down my system), I save the favourites as bookmarks in a site like Delicious and then give them tags to label them in a way that makes sense to me. I can also see how others have tagged the same bookmarked site.This also allows me to access my favourites from any computer that I may be using.
Below is an example of a tag cloud:
1 2 area balcony beachfront condo days dining diningkitchen florida from indian indianrocksbeachrental irb irbcondorental living master meaghan michaels monica mosaic peters pool rental rocks room suite sunset vatican view wedding
This is a cloud created in FLICKR illustrating all of the tags that I have used to label my pictures that I have saved there. Note that wedding pictures are the most frequently used. And it looks as though I have more pictures of Meaghan and Peters wedding than I have for Michael and Monica's wedding.
Delicious, is just one of many social bookmarking sites. Some are more specific sites like FLICKR for photographs and Technorati for searching blogs.
Tagging is the key to controlling and organizing your online experience — be it a learning experience or an entertainment experience — and sharing it with others. It uses terms you choose, your vocabulary, as opposed to library cataloging terminology, to meaningfully apply descriptive terms to a website, photograph, video, document or music. Tags can be anything, even non-linguistic symbols. As you select tags and apply them, you are building your very own classification system from the ground up. It is fun and very creative!
I found another group of people learning about WEB2.0 on a Delicious site and I learnt quite a bit from reading their blogs. They too were library types learning about other technologies.
If you are interested, their blogs can be found at :http://krl2pt0.wordpress.com/. I found some of their insights and learning interesting.
I have created my delicious account and I am impressed with the flexibility that it has. I am still learning and experimenting but I have found tags of a few people that I know (one is a manager with RWL who used the same tag as I did).
I have gone back to Delicious each day this week and I am building my confidence level in using this site.
With more experience using Delicious, I can see how it will be another useful tool for me. However, I will have to get into blogging and sharing blogs with others.
I have also had several trips to Technorati but and I see that it is the similar to... but different than many of the sites we have seen so far.
The popular tags in Technorati today are : OBAMA, McCain, Politics, Football and the Economy. Yes... the site is used mainly by patriotic Americans. All of the political links seemed to be about their election. Not even a whisper about Canada. Although there was an newslink about the Blackberry and Rim in the business section.
I find it very easy to find blogs and other links in Technorati about a number of topics.
I promise to have fun during my "week off" as well.
Assignment #5 - Library Thing and Facebook
I enjoyed investigating the Library Thing, creating an account and adding five recent reads to my account. There is a lot of flexibility with the account and a person's privacy can be maintained with this site. It is great to have a site that brings together people of common interest, yet from varied bacgrounds and from around the world. The option of having notices about local happenings is also a nice feature. It would be interesting to view profiles and even communicate with people who enjoy the same authors. Book reviews, ratings and even previews of upcoming books are all available. Special groups of Librarian types and authors allow common interests to be shared. I love the fact that reviews are not there to sell books but are from real people who read. Yes I enjoyed the visit to the Library Thing and I will be checking back to this site regularily. I even posted 5 of my recent reads( with pictures of covers) from the Library Thing to this blog. There was a simple link feature on the Library Thing that made this possible.
Awww Facebook..... I was amazed last year when I found out that my adult daughter was keeping in touch on a daily basis with cousins in Seattle and Vancouver, friends in Sweden, India and the Northwest Territories, and old camping friends and high school friends through Facebook while she was living in Halifax. I met an high school friend of hers last fall who said that she had been "talking" to Meaghan that morning??!! Meaghan and her fiance had a Facebook link that was sent by email to give an early notice of their upcoming wedding. Later, this site became a link for all to learn about their unique wedding location and itinerary and was a bulletin board for folks to chat about the upcoming adventures of that special weekend.
Our son also advertised his stag and doe on a similar Facebook page. He knew which invited guest were definites, maybes and unable to attend.
Of course, many shower and wedding pictures quickly show up on Facebook from all friends and family, who attended each of the weddings, to share and view.
A chat feature is also available within Facebook that is similar to msn messenger and yahoo messenger.
Privacy is definitely an issue. However, newcomers to Facebook and those that are presently using it, and are uncertain about its safety, are wise to spend time reviewing all of the privacy features that are available with the Facebook site.
Organizations that utilize Facebook must also be ready to have uninvited people join in and disrupt discussions and postings. When I visited "Green Because You Can" yesterday I was dismayed at the useless discussion that had been initiated by one foolish person whose objective was to disrupt the purpose of the site. He could have been blocked from the site but then censorship would become an issue. I am not sure what the answer is.
Educational institutions are also grappling with the use of Facebook and such sites to encourage student success. While one student was subject to possible expulsion from Ryerson a few months ago, professors at other universities were promoting Facebook as a valuable tool for students to share ideas and create study groups for courses.
I am still having fun learning !
Awww Facebook..... I was amazed last year when I found out that my adult daughter was keeping in touch on a daily basis with cousins in Seattle and Vancouver, friends in Sweden, India and the Northwest Territories, and old camping friends and high school friends through Facebook while she was living in Halifax. I met an high school friend of hers last fall who said that she had been "talking" to Meaghan that morning??!! Meaghan and her fiance had a Facebook link that was sent by email to give an early notice of their upcoming wedding. Later, this site became a link for all to learn about their unique wedding location and itinerary and was a bulletin board for folks to chat about the upcoming adventures of that special weekend.
Our son also advertised his stag and doe on a similar Facebook page. He knew which invited guest were definites, maybes and unable to attend.
Of course, many shower and wedding pictures quickly show up on Facebook from all friends and family, who attended each of the weddings, to share and view.
A chat feature is also available within Facebook that is similar to msn messenger and yahoo messenger.
Privacy is definitely an issue. However, newcomers to Facebook and those that are presently using it, and are uncertain about its safety, are wise to spend time reviewing all of the privacy features that are available with the Facebook site.
Organizations that utilize Facebook must also be ready to have uninvited people join in and disrupt discussions and postings. When I visited "Green Because You Can" yesterday I was dismayed at the useless discussion that had been initiated by one foolish person whose objective was to disrupt the purpose of the site. He could have been blocked from the site but then censorship would become an issue. I am not sure what the answer is.
Educational institutions are also grappling with the use of Facebook and such sites to encourage student success. While one student was subject to possible expulsion from Ryerson a few months ago, professors at other universities were promoting Facebook as a valuable tool for students to share ideas and create study groups for courses.
I am still having fun learning !
Really Simply ??? Syndication - Assignment #4 Sept. 30
I spent too many hours in the last day and 1/2 exploring RSS and Newsreaders. I have to begin to limit my time because of the tangents that I tend to go on. But I probably won't....
I read(watched) all of the articles on RSS and Bloglines and I created the Bloglines account. I added some feeds to this account including sports related, news related(although all of the news was quite depressing - the market crash; the power hungry politicians in not one but TWO countries), and some feeds from feedster, topix and sydic8. I also added the blogs of two fellow learners (as well as my own Blogger site) so that I can keep up to date with their writings.
I added a book-of-the-day feed to my Blogger account(this would be a great site to have on each patron computer when they log in to the computers at the library) and word-of-the day feed to my Bloglines account (since I am a life long learner).
There were some initial frustrations with Bloglines and links but with experimentation and persistance I was able to complete most of the expectations.
Libraries and librarians are sources of information and computers are "keepers-of-information" so RSS feeds are an excellent way of keeping up to date with general and specific facts for our work-related and personal growth.
I will have to experiment more with bloglines to determine which methods of finding feeds I find easiest to use and most helpful. Am I right in assuming that Blogger lacks the ease of linking "feeds" that Bloglines has?
I am still having fun ... but storytime starts tomorrow so I may have to limit my time for this course to 5?? hours a week.
I read(watched) all of the articles on RSS and Bloglines and I created the Bloglines account. I added some feeds to this account including sports related, news related(although all of the news was quite depressing - the market crash; the power hungry politicians in not one but TWO countries), and some feeds from feedster, topix and sydic8. I also added the blogs of two fellow learners (as well as my own Blogger site) so that I can keep up to date with their writings.
I added a book-of-the-day feed to my Blogger account(this would be a great site to have on each patron computer when they log in to the computers at the library) and word-of-the day feed to my Bloglines account (since I am a life long learner).
There were some initial frustrations with Bloglines and links but with experimentation and persistance I was able to complete most of the expectations.
Libraries and librarians are sources of information and computers are "keepers-of-information" so RSS feeds are an excellent way of keeping up to date with general and specific facts for our work-related and personal growth.
I will have to experiment more with bloglines to determine which methods of finding feeds I find easiest to use and most helpful. Am I right in assuming that Blogger lacks the ease of linking "feeds" that Bloglines has?
I am still having fun ... but storytime starts tomorrow so I may have to limit my time for this course to 5?? hours a week.
Assignment 3 - more new learning
Although I had used Flickr before, everytime I have done so, I learn something new. A few months ago, I had a need to post one picture of a condo in Florida but one photo just could not tell the entire story. So I decided to create a collage effect. Flickr has an option called MOSAIC that could do exactly what was needed. There is even a group I could join, where other users and a facilitator answered questions that I had. The result was great! I have uploaded the picture here using the "add image" button above.
I have also uploaded other pictures... the tux shot and the barenaked ladies (the band of course...nothing rude here).
This week I also learned about "mashups". I was on google map which provides an array of options including: a typical map; a satelitte view that allows you to zoom in from above; a street view for some cities that places you on the sidewalk and allows you to "pan" the houses in a 360 degree view(very cool); and posting of photographs that can be "attached" to various locations on a map. Using a program called Panoramio. So the "mashup" in this case was using combining the data from Panoramio and Google map. I also investigated mappr and montager and I want to experiment with Montager(I learn from experimenting).
I played with JellyMuffin.com image generator and custom made a few items that could be used for a website or a web link.
I see that web design can use a multitude of applications that include maps, photographs, images, image generators and the combination of many of the above. I look forward to trying some of these techniques in my spare time for both personal and work applications.
Yes I am having fun...
life long learners
I found something that helped me understand RSS. I hope it is useful to others as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
this should be fun !
My learning has begun! Setting up this rudimentary blog is my first step, I guess. I hope to refine it, personalize it and eventually share it with colleagues.
I look forward to experimenting with all programs, tools and applications that are included in this course. I have had to experiment with a few of the applications already since my daughter uses Flickr to store and share pictures and we, in turn, posted pictures of her recent wedding on Flickr. I have found that it is necessary to decide who can view those pictures and set those limitations.
Many people have jumped into Facebook, including my wife, two married children and several friends. My son has posted pictures of his recent wedding there so, again, there was a need for me to enter that site. I am finding that using Facebook can be very time consuming and requires the same self discipline as walking up to a desert table.
Other products that I have used include MS Word, Wordperfect and Excel. I also use these applications for personal use.
I recently attended a workshop and was introduced to RSS but I have not yet used them.
The hesitations that I have are the fear of "doing something wrong" and finding the time to thoroughly investigate each application. I will get over both of those hesitations. I tend to approach computers as tools and experiment with them when I have a need to learn something new.
I will now email this to Jenny (who can share it with other participants) and I hope she receives it!
Visit me here...or in St Jacobs!
Pat
I look forward to experimenting with all programs, tools and applications that are included in this course. I have had to experiment with a few of the applications already since my daughter uses Flickr to store and share pictures and we, in turn, posted pictures of her recent wedding on Flickr. I have found that it is necessary to decide who can view those pictures and set those limitations.
Many people have jumped into Facebook, including my wife, two married children and several friends. My son has posted pictures of his recent wedding there so, again, there was a need for me to enter that site. I am finding that using Facebook can be very time consuming and requires the same self discipline as walking up to a desert table.
Other products that I have used include MS Word, Wordperfect and Excel. I also use these applications for personal use.
I recently attended a workshop and was introduced to RSS but I have not yet used them.
The hesitations that I have are the fear of "doing something wrong" and finding the time to thoroughly investigate each application. I will get over both of those hesitations. I tend to approach computers as tools and experiment with them when I have a need to learn something new.
I will now email this to Jenny (who can share it with other participants) and I hope she receives it!
Visit me here...or in St Jacobs!
Pat
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