I am so proud of myself! I did all 23 lessons in Learning 2.0. Some better than others, some more completely than others, but I gave all of them a serious try. I can see that there are a few of the new technologies that I am relatively comfortable with and I will continue to use them. Wikis and blogs are among these, and actually it was lots of fun to talk about Wikipedia and how to create wikis at Thanksgiving dinner with my college-age nephew and my 24 year old son and leave all the other old folks at the table wondering what the heck we were talking about!
I also love keeping my reading log on Library Thing, and I want to go back and play more with delicious. I see some real potential there. I like Whyville alot for preteens and want to introduce that site to some of my colleagues, and I like having the weather and other useful information show up automatically on my Google and Yahoo pages because of the RSS feeds lesson.
Second life I'd like to avoid (I have enough trouble maneuvering myself through my first life), and I doubt I'll use Flickr much, since I have a MAC at home and iPhoto does many of the same things.
On balance, this was a fantatic program, and I want to thank the library's administration for making this available to us, and Maura Deedy for guiding me along the way. Maura, you have been awesome; enthusiatic, informed and supportive (Maura deserves alot more than an MP3 player for her contribution!)
I hope we get to do something like this again.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Oh where oh where can my avatar go??
I give up on Second Life. I was able to create an account, then I couldn't figure out how to get in and create an avatar. I tried once before. That time I was able to make an avatar, but couldn't figure out how to move around. I also looked at some of the links to ways libraries and schools use second life. I couldn't get into any of them. Grrrr!
To ease my frustration, I looked at a few avatar-using sites for teens and kids that I found listed in a magazine article. I like a couple of these, and I can see how it might be useful to include them on our library site for kids. They are: Whyville.com and Nicktropolis.com. Whyville.com is mostly a free site (although there is a way you can buy "clams" (the whyville currency) for cash. Mostly kids can earn clams without money though, by doing and learning things in Whyville. The site has a nice preteen look, and I like the fact that a user has to pass a long quiz about chat and site safety before they are allowed to start to chat.
Nicktropolis.com is a site from Nickelodeon, allowing kids to create avatars and interact with Nick TV characters. They claim that the site is very safe because they don't ask for any personal information. I didn't explore this as thoroughly as Whyville, but it seems to be worth a closer look; I know we have a lot of kids who come into the library to use the Nickelodeon website.
To ease my frustration, I looked at a few avatar-using sites for teens and kids that I found listed in a magazine article. I like a couple of these, and I can see how it might be useful to include them on our library site for kids. They are: Whyville.com and Nicktropolis.com. Whyville.com is mostly a free site (although there is a way you can buy "clams" (the whyville currency) for cash. Mostly kids can earn clams without money though, by doing and learning things in Whyville. The site has a nice preteen look, and I like the fact that a user has to pass a long quiz about chat and site safety before they are allowed to start to chat.
Nicktropolis.com is a site from Nickelodeon, allowing kids to create avatars and interact with Nick TV characters. They claim that the site is very safe because they don't ask for any personal information. I didn't explore this as thoroughly as Whyville, but it seems to be worth a closer look; I know we have a lot of kids who come into the library to use the Nickelodeon website.
I now have a presence on Facebook --so if you are a Ferguson Library person, please become my friend when you set yours up. So far I am friends with Marilee and Maura. That part is nice, but it seems that, once again, I have mixed feelings about a new technology. I can see how valuable this site is for high school/college age folks, in fact my son, who is now 24, has used facebook for years. But, it also seems like a bit of a harsh world to me, where everyone can see at a glance how many friends you have, and where people can overtly block you if they don't want to hear from you. Measuring popularity was much more subtle when I was that age. (is that good or bad??)
I also was only able to join one network, the geographic one. Because I am an alum, and I don't have an email account from any of my schools, I couldn't join any of their networks (I know, I can try to get an email account if I really want to). I also couldn't identify people I know who are on Facebook easily because my email accounts are not from one of the recognized providers and I don't have AIM friends, etc. There are things I can do to get around that, but they seemed too complicated to me. Besides, most of the folks I would find that way are my kids, my nephews and nieces and my friends' children. I'm not sure any of them would think it's cool to have me as a Facebook friend, and most likely none of them really want me to see what they are doing on Facebook in the first place.
These technologies are fascinating, but I have to admit, playing around them is making me feel old -- I am so not the target market for these things!
I also was only able to join one network, the geographic one. Because I am an alum, and I don't have an email account from any of my schools, I couldn't join any of their networks (I know, I can try to get an email account if I really want to). I also couldn't identify people I know who are on Facebook easily because my email accounts are not from one of the recognized providers and I don't have AIM friends, etc. There are things I can do to get around that, but they seemed too complicated to me. Besides, most of the folks I would find that way are my kids, my nephews and nieces and my friends' children. I'm not sure any of them would think it's cool to have me as a Facebook friend, and most likely none of them really want me to see what they are doing on Facebook in the first place.
These technologies are fascinating, but I have to admit, playing around them is making me feel old -- I am so not the target market for these things!
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Google docs and great aps
I just finished lesson 9--at least for now. If I wanted to explore everything in this lesson I could be at it for months. But, it has been an interesting and productive experience, like all of learning 2.0. The first thing I encountered was a problem; Google Docs cannot be accessed with my Mac browser Safari. But, this wasn't a huge obstacle; I just had to download Firefox as a new browser, and I can use that to get to Google Docs easily.
On Google Docs I started to set up a word-type document describing assembly programs that we are planning to do at schools in January. The coolest thing about Google Docs was the ability to automatically email the document to my colleagues. No opening email, then attaching the document. I really like this feature, and I'm sure I'll discover other neat things as I continue to use it.
Looking at the list of award winning aps there were several that I found intriguing, but I decided to explore one of the city guide sites --Yelp. I'm planning to go to Philadelphia for ALA's Midwinter meting, and I thought this site might help me id restuarants to go to, and maybe some new local sights to see during my non-conference time. Well, the site was fun, but I'm not sure it is going to be very useful to me. There was a lot about nightlife and bars and funky shops and restaurants. Good reading, but I think I'm in a different demographic than the average Yelp user.
On Google Docs I started to set up a word-type document describing assembly programs that we are planning to do at schools in January. The coolest thing about Google Docs was the ability to automatically email the document to my colleagues. No opening email, then attaching the document. I really like this feature, and I'm sure I'll discover other neat things as I continue to use it.
Looking at the list of award winning aps there were several that I found intriguing, but I decided to explore one of the city guide sites --Yelp. I'm planning to go to Philadelphia for ALA's Midwinter meting, and I thought this site might help me id restuarants to go to, and maybe some new local sights to see during my non-conference time. Well, the site was fun, but I'm not sure it is going to be very useful to me. There was a lot about nightlife and bars and funky shops and restaurants. Good reading, but I think I'm in a different demographic than the average Yelp user.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Technorati
So many of these things are fun and exciting as I start to play, then I hit a snag and get frustrated. I was having a good old time in technorati, claiming my blog (I figured out that one), then setting some favorites. I picked a couple of blogs by teen authors I like (Meg Cabot and Mitali Perkins), then tried to find blogs for Chris Crutcher and Sarah Dessen (no luck, but I bet they have them), and added some general library blogs. So far, so good. Then I tried to do the learning 2.0 exercise by searching for learning 2.0 in two ways. I can't do it, because for some reason I still get the old Technorati homepage, which only allows one kind of search (no blog directory). Anyway, I can see the value of Technorati, even if I didn't get to explore all of the features and I can see how enormous the blogosphere is --but I think I'll have to look a little more to find blogs about some of the things I'm most interested in.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
delicious is yummy
I just spent some time watching the delicious tutorial and reading the articles about delicious. I think bookmarking favorite sites and tagging them has lots of potential, but I am a little intimidated by the more advanced uses of the site (though if I try a few it may make more sense). Also, in watching the tutorial it became very clear to me that I am still living in the technological dark ages (although learning 2.0 has helped in that regard --maybe now I am in the technological enlightenment??).
I can see the Youth Services department of the library using delicious as a way to share good sites for reference work and class visits. There are some topics (for example Explorers) that the kids need to research each year, and we always need a readily available list of good websites on these topics.
I can see using delicious to create and add to webliographies. During the rollyo lesson, I created a search engine of Autism sites. In it, I listed about 10 sites I know that are good to go to for information on that subject. Now, after learning about delicious, I think this is a better place for that list of sites (I don't really want to search them, I just want access to them in one handy place). It would also be useful to see what other sites people have tagged on that topic.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have begun using Library Thing to keep track of all of the books I read. One of the things I am doing in Library Thing is adding tags to the book titles. The tags serve as memory aids (so hopefully when I want to find the book about the homosexual boy who goes to Brown I'll be able to do so.)
I can see the Youth Services department of the library using delicious as a way to share good sites for reference work and class visits. There are some topics (for example Explorers) that the kids need to research each year, and we always need a readily available list of good websites on these topics.
I can see using delicious to create and add to webliographies. During the rollyo lesson, I created a search engine of Autism sites. In it, I listed about 10 sites I know that are good to go to for information on that subject. Now, after learning about delicious, I think this is a better place for that list of sites (I don't really want to search them, I just want access to them in one handy place). It would also be useful to see what other sites people have tagged on that topic.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have begun using Library Thing to keep track of all of the books I read. One of the things I am doing in Library Thing is adding tags to the book titles. The tags serve as memory aids (so hopefully when I want to find the book about the homosexual boy who goes to Brown I'll be able to do so.)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)