tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13819700161792970392011-11-06T20:42:47.534-05:00A blog to track my progress in <a href="http://vermontlibrarieslearn.wordpress.com/the-23-things/">Vermont's 23 Things</a>.Cherylnoreply@blogger.comBlogger251100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-55072239578189896532008-05-25T19:40:00.013-04:002008-05-25T21:29:14.444-04:00

#23 Summarize your thoughts about this program on your blogI guess my favorite thing about this program was that it got me to try a lot of things that I knew I should do, but just hadn't made time for. Now when people talk about blogs, RSS feeds, wikis, and podcasts, I have a clue what they are talking about. Not only that, I actually have a blog, am associated with a few wikis, and even connect

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-84718535021679561852008-05-25T15:50:00.011-04:002008-08-15T21:22:29.630-04:00

#22: Discover some useful search tools for locating podcasts.Podcasts are one of those things I have heard of but never took time to learn about, so this "thing" will be good inducement for that. Naturally I started out by going to every link on the lesson page. I enjoyed the Springfield Town Library Children's Room podcasts. I tried out all the Book Beginnings quizzes and did pretty well. (What

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-55396414778884628282008-05-24T16:53:00.010-04:002008-08-15T21:16:36.691-04:00

#21 Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videosI've watched videos many times on YouTube, including videos about libraries and librarians (ninja librarians, anyone?), so the whole YouTube concept is not a new one for me. But I do enjoy a good excuse to watch more! I checked out most of the videos that were linked from the lesson and went to most of the video

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-5987345498734500562008-05-18T14:06:00.017-04:002008-08-15T21:13:39.951-04:00

#20 Explore any site from the Web 2.0 awards list, play with it, and write a blog post about your findings.I decided to check out the "short" list of award winners first, rather than the comprehensive list of nominees. (The more comprehensive list, which includes honorable mentions, is annotated, though, which is helpful.) I noticed a number of sites on the list that I have already visited, some

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-86336558422954288732008-05-17T22:10:00.007-04:002008-05-17T22:25:59.839-04:00

Week 10: Online Applications & Tools#19 Take a look at some online productivity (wordprocessing, spreadsheet) tools Time to test-drive Google Docs. I'm writing this blog post in a Google document and then I'll get it onto blogspot. Let's see... features. Simple text formatting changes are ... simple. Now what else can I test? Fonts? Here are a few. I like comic sans, so I'm glad that's available

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-11980769916373224512008-05-11T21:33:00.009-04:002008-05-14T20:54:45.128-04:00

#18 Create a wiki or add an entry to a Vermont’s 23 Things sandbox wikiI visited all 3 of the Vermont's 23 Things sandbox wikis and added my blog to the "favorite blogs" on all of them, plus added a few other things here and there. I didn't create a wiki yet, but have edited a freshly-minted wiki only a week weeks back, following a VSLA meeting where the topic was Web 2.0. Our wiki of resources

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-84160097379846504382008-05-11T17:21:00.005-04:002008-05-11T17:44:19.854-04:00

#17 Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using themHaving just spent hours cruising through all kinds of wikis, one thing I noticed is that I would not have known that many of these were wikis if it had not been pointed out to me. There is such a wide variety of formats and the look of many of these wikis is very much "traditional web page." So I guess that

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-37665020577700038202008-04-24T23:29:00.006-04:002008-04-24T23:51:01.071-04:00

16. Read a few perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the future of libraries and blog your thoughts.I read all the listed articles from the OCLC newsletter and really felt like so much of the content was more applicable to public libraries or high school libraries than my elementary school library. But I definitely saw the point: libraries can't keep doing things the old way and expect to

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-63647285283158949192008-04-06T15:06:00.006-04:002008-04-06T19:08:34.892-04:00

15. Explore Technorati and learn how tags work with blog posts.Well, I played around with Technorati but I really don't think it's anything I'd use for my work in an elementary school library. I might occasionally find a reason to search for blogs on a specific topic, but off the top of my head I can't think of any. I clicked around and checked out the photos and the tag clouds and all that stuff

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-259760867953510202008-04-06T13:52:00.006-04:002008-04-06T14:30:23.972-04:00

14. Learn about tagging and discover Del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site).OK, first of all, I just now realized, after having looked at it and clicked on it many times, that the title of this on the main assignment page said "social bookmaking" -- I wonder if Mara has some numbers racket going on that she hasn't told us about!On to the actual assignment: I watched the Common Craft video and

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-51695421032977901862008-03-29T15:24:00.009-04:002008-03-29T16:01:05.072-04:00

13. Take a look at LibraryThing and catalog some of your favorite books.I'm not sure I would ever really use LibraryThing for my personal library, but after I had looked at basically every link on the assignment page I decided that LibraryThing would, indeed, be a cool thing to add to my library web page to highlight some of the library's new acquisitions. I need to revamp my web page anyway, and

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-52122340813058243452008-03-22T18:35:00.005-04:002008-03-22T18:53:27.870-04:00

So even though the folks who are all caught up are on week 8, here I am on week 7. Thank goodness for week 6 being a catch-up week. Maybe I can get caught up to the right week for the date soon!I took a look at the sites that were linked on the assignment page and tried out a few, like the scolling typewriter text at screedbot. I'm sure I will go back and explore a few more of them further at

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-79856833745319214522008-03-15T23:00:00.014-04:002008-03-16T21:45:49.032-04:00

Facebook is going to be my social network of choice, mainly because my kids use it. Before I went to set up a page I checked out the resources linked on the assignment page. Watched the presentation: Michael Porter’s BIGWIG 2007 Facebook Presentation, which rambled on a bit, but did explain some of the applications available on Facebook. I thought it seemed like it would be a bit confusing to

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-8523983317286495052008-03-15T22:58:00.005-04:002008-03-16T13:53:10.093-04:00

I looked at all the pages linked on this assignment and I can see where many libraries could find social networks to be a good avenue for communicating with their teen patrons. I mean, these kids are online already, might as well approach them in a venue with which they are comfortable. I don't see as much use for it in my setting, which is an elementary school library serving PreK through grade

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-25439325028200578872008-03-15T22:48:00.006-04:002008-03-15T23:20:21.315-04:00

I browsed around and found a few blogs that look interesting. I decided to narrow it down by subscribing to blogs that contain reviews of children's books, something useful to my job and that I might actually use at work. Of course, in my travels I came across a link from Roger Sutton's blog (thanks to being reminded of it by Julie's comment) which led me to the New Yorker's Humor section, so I

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-13431602205767844922008-03-15T18:15:00.005-04:002008-03-15T23:13:38.008-04:00

OK, so I got Sage set up on my Firefox browser and then I managed to figure out how to subscribe to blogs with it. I was wondering what one does when there is not that handy RSS icon on a web page or a link that says "subscribe." Actually Sage makes finding feeds on a site easy, so that was a quick thing to figure out, without even resorting to reading a tutorial. It took me a bit longer to

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-69164427510811953432008-03-15T13:33:00.007-04:002008-03-15T23:10:46.474-04:00

"Learn about RSS feeds and set up your own feed reader." I admit this one seemed a bit daunting compared to the other tasks thus far, mainly because I have zero experience with RSS feeds. After reading the assignment, the first thing I did was watch the video "RSS in Plain English." It was awesome. Brief, entertaining, and informative. After watching it, I felt like I was ready to start setting

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-80891174740866672282008-03-12T22:09:00.001-04:002008-03-15T23:07:14.472-04:00

The assignment was to "Create a blog post about anything technology related that interests you this week." What to choose? Well, I went to our first district technology committee meeting of the year yesterday. One of the topics of discussion was how to get more teachers to put up web pages on the district site. The tech guys make it pretty simple -- if you want, you can just e-mail them a

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-64125322168820739512008-03-12T21:57:00.001-04:002008-03-15T23:06:30.206-04:00

I played around with a few of the mashups (first I had to figure out what "mashups" meant -- could have saved myself stress by remembering to read the assignment for #6 before worrying about it during #5!). I had been reading other folks blogs and seeing the things they made with Spell with Flickr and the trading card maker so I tried the spelling one. I liked the fact that you could click on an

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-67163573504670342052008-03-12T21:22:00.001-04:002008-03-15T23:07:37.082-04:00

Well, I have been mucking about on Flickr a few times now. I browsed around the first time, searching for things by tags like "Vermont" and "libraries" and looking at the group created for this course. I admit to being a bit obsessive-compulsive (I mean, we all have to be, a bit, to keep everything organized in our libraries, right?) and right off the bat I noticed a photo with a Vermont tag that

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-75874073116009969852008-03-01T21:22:00.002-05:002008-03-15T23:07:54.675-04:00

My daughter, away at college, asked what fun things I'd been doing today and I explained I'd started working on this "23 Things" project to learn more about Web 2.0 things, setting up a blog... "Wait, you have a blog??" She's now awaiting/dreading the assignment where I create a Facebook page. (I told her she has to "friend" me, of course.) Isn't it nice we're never too old to (potentially)

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-17662549148010320892008-03-01T17:42:00.001-05:002008-03-15T23:08:10.352-04:00

E-mailed Mara at the DOL, so I guess i can cross this "thing" off my to-do list.I have been looking at other participant's blogs and am amazed at all the things people find to write about. I guess I'd better add "be more creative with blog postings" to that list of mine...

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-53755028301749627222008-03-01T17:40:00.000-05:002008-03-01T17:42:06.152-05:00

Done!

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-67185074307621552202008-03-01T17:31:00.001-05:002008-03-01T17:39:34.858-05:00

I have to say, the pointers were not anything new, as most of us found. Having said that, I suppose having it all in one list of 7 1/2 things is a handy way to break it down. Of the 7 1/2 things, I find it fairly easy to have confidence in myself as a competent, effective learner. The hard thing for me would be beginning with the end in mind, I guess. Deciding on a goal is the trickiest thing;

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1381970016179297039.post-4674159243654953872008-03-01T17:27:00.000-05:002008-03-09T17:45:30.197-04:00

Learning about new-ish technologies in bite-sized chunks sounds like a good way to try these things out. And it doesn't hurt to have a friend doing it at the same time and prodding me along!

Cherylnoreply@blogger.com0