Sunday, February 10, 2008

Thing #8

Okay.....I've seen those little orange boxes at the bottom of websites and wondered why it was there and now I know more about RSS feeds. I love the fact that I can set up a reader page/place where I can get the latest information posted on those websites without having to visit them daily or weekly. It saves time for busy librarians or anyone from scrolling through information they may not want to read and select things that interest them from that site.

I can see this being very useful for staying up to date with the last technology and media, but also getting news from other blogs by librarians and teachers. Now, I just have to learn how to manage it all on Google reader. I found that some of my favorite websites don't have an RSS feed-interesting I would have thought that all websites would want their readers to subscribe to them.

Thing #7

Google has so many cool tools......I didn't know how much to access was out there! I, like so many others I'm sure, used google to search for websites, images and information. I never thought to look at the other tools they had to offer. I was introduced to Google Earth and set up a gmail account last summer.

Well, I spent about two hours playing around with some of the other tools. I set up a calendar and embed the code on my blog. I see that working out great for family and friends to know what I have planned for the day, month and week. As far as using it for educational purposes, I could see setting it up to show what's happening in the library and making it public for teachers to access from their computer. It would be a great to use as teacher for parents to see when I have time available for conferences or to check on their scheduled time.

I also set up an igoogle page...which I plan on playing around with more later and I used Google notebook to bookmark websites to reseach for a webquest. I'm still trying to figure other ways to use the notebook but it would be great tool to use to help students when doing research...all the websites they locate could be put in one place for easy access.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Thing #6

There are so many cool tools to play with on the internet. I was able to make a trading card and post it on Flickr. I also made a comic strip with Bubblr and put the link on my blog. I think the comic strip would be cool for students to use to write reviews of books for the library. As a librarian, I could see using it to post upcoming events in the library, new books or invites to teachers.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Thing #5

I knew about the website from other friends, but never tried it out-until today. I uploaded pictures and put them in sets to share with family and friends. It's really cool to be able to see pictures from people around the world. I tagged most of the pictures (writing a description) and explored some the groups put together by librarians. I found pictures of a library in Norway, which was really cool and an awesome library in Brisbane County.

I plan on playing around with flickr some more-I want to figure out what the difference is between a collection and a set...can you put sets into a collection?

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Thing #4

I did it......I registered my blog, so now 19 things left to do.

Thing #3

Ok....I've set up my blog after about 3 & 1/2 hours of changing templates, fonts and colors like ten times. I'm satisfied with my choices, successfully loaded my avatar and now, I'm ready to go!

Thing #2

After watching the video on 7 & 1/2 habits for lifelong learners, I think #2 is the easiest for me. I have always taken responsibility for my learning. If I'm interested in learning or doing something new I find out how to do it by reading, searching the internet or asking someone.

As for the hardest, it has to be habit #1-begin with an end in mind. I tend to start things and never finish them, especially books. I always have good intentions but somewhere along the way I just stop and move on to something else. It's a habit I really need to work on-setting a goal and following it through to the end.

Thing #1

I'm looking forward to learning 23 new things. I'm a little worried about keeping up with doing all 23 things....so I guess we'll see how things go and at the end I hope to be web2.0 savvy.