Week 11, Thing 23: the end

#23 Summarize your thoughts about this program on your blog

I 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 with a few other librarians through social bookmarking. And as a bonus, I had a reason for messing around with some fun things and with the excuse that I was doing it for a course! Like creating a Facebook page, which has helped keep me connected to some of my nieces and nephews that live in other states. Not to mention having some lovely chats online with Mara. :-)

What will I take away with me and keep using? Well, I'm going to try using things like wikis and Google Docs to collaborate with colleagues at work and in our professional organization. I may try some things with students, like book blogs. And, partly spurred on by the 23 Things, we are thinking of making Web 2.0 the focus of the VSLA fall conference (of which, frighteningly, I am the co-chair).

Things I have already used for other purposes than just completing tasks for this course:
RSS feeds, wikis, Del.icio.us, Pandora, Facebook.

And things I know I'll keep using:
for work: RSS feeds, wikis, Del.icio.us, Google Docs, probably Library Thing, maybe podcasts;
and for personal use: all of the above (except maybe not Library Thing), plus Pandora & Facebook.

I enjoyed being able to work at my own pace and felt very little guilt about not ever working on any"thing" the same week it was assigned. There were weeks that I was far too busy to even think about working on tasks for the course and other weeks I worked on several of them. For a future offering of the 23 Things it might be good to spread it over a longer time, maybe with two weeks for each of the ten topics, or one week per Thing. That would give people more time to really check out each topic in depth, without feeling rushed. Perhaps you would also want to consider making it available in smaller bites, for those folks who don't want to tackle 23 new things but could maybe manage 5 or 10? Just a thought. I would participate in another of these courses, depending on the topic, if the DOL decided to offer some.

One thing I noticed while I was working through the course was that my obsessive need to try pretty much every link in a lesson sometimes led me to read or watch things that I couldn't make much sense of the first time through. Most of these incomprehensible things became clear if I waited until after exploring the basics of the "thing" in question before attempting to understand the "extras." Perhaps a warning message like, "now go try it out and don't even think about clicking on any of the links below until you feel comfortable with the basics!"

My final comment (ha! like you can really shut me up!): despite the fact that a few people commented that with this online course they missed the face-to-face aspect of sharing learning with others, I have to say that
a) That didn't really bother me, personally;
b) I sometimes went and read what other people blogged about some of the things, especially if I felt like I wasn't getting what was so great about it, and commenting back and forth with people can be a connection if you take advantage of it; and
c) I actually met at least one person face to face that I never would have known if I hadn't participated in this course. (Hi, Rhonda!)

In other words, for me it was a good experience and I learned a lot.

Week 11, Thing 22: Podcasts

#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 a relief! If I had failed that might mean I was not good at my job!) At the PLCMC Teen Pages I listened to an author talk about how he got the idea for one of his books (which I read a few years ago) and at the Denver Public Library site I listened to a few picture books being read in their entirety. I listened to a story being told at the Orange County Library System site and, since it's a folktale that I've read to kids myself, it was interesting to hear how someone else told it. I think I could put the podcasts from the Worthington Libraries to good use for planning kindergarten and preschool storytimes -- they have children's rhymes and songs recorded. So if I forget the words to Five Little Ducks, I'm all set. My iPod was already plugged into the computer so I decided it would be a good time to see how the iTunes podcast thing works. I downloaded a few things to iTunes on my computer that sounded like they might be interesting to listen to, but not everything could then be transferred to my iPod. I can see I might have to read some instructions so I'll know how to tell which will work and which won't. I went to several of the other podcast directories that were linked in this lesson. The user-friendliness varied and some of them would not be wise to open up in a school setting, but others seemed OK. The Education Podcast Network sounded promising, but I was a little flummoxed by how some things were categorized. I tried the Information Skills category and included in it were such things as Just Baby Names, The Business Side of Music, and How to Sell Your Car. Somehow none of these fit under my definition of information skills. The last site I checked out looked quite useful: the SirsiDynix Institute's free web seminars. The ones I thought sounded interesting were all an hour long, though, so I'll wait until I'm ready to digest that much info. I did subscribe to a few sites with podcasts by using RSS feeds. I may go back and also try subscribing to one using iTunes just to see how that would work and which method I prefer. I don't think I'd want to deal with all the copyright issues involved in recording whole books, and I also don't see that as being something my library needs at this point. But I could see having students do brief book review podcasts or making up book-related quizzes for other kids to try. When I decide I'm ready to take on creating podcasts, I'll go back and go through the tutorials, but for now I'll settle for figuring out how to find them and what to do with them. I can see that a good resource for the future would be the Podcasting – Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki page.

Week 11, Thing 21: Video

#21 Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos

I'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 sharing sites as well. I had heard of TeacherTube, but had not used it before, so I decided to search for "library" on that site. I found a whole series of videos about collaboration between teachers and librarians. These videos, by "Dr. Loopy", have some humor to them and include parodies of TV shows and movies. These include the Bionic Librarian, America Idle: Information Resources, and Codee Books: Library Agent, which I will embed in this entry. The Librarian and Classroom Teacher Collaboration presentation is in 4 parts, which total 35+ minutes; clips showing just the show parodies are posted separately. I watched them all to see if they have enough new information to merit showing any of them at staff meetings. The teachers in my school are pretty good about the type of collaboration depicted in the videos, so I don't think I will use them in that way. I'd recommend them to any school librarians who are having trouble getting teachers to see the benefits of collaborating.

Although I am not currently interested in posting any videos, I did watch the 3-minute video on "How do I make a video?", and even though I was never a Bob Ross painting show watcher, I have seen enough of him to appreciate the host of this how-to, "Rob Boss." I also checked out many of the links under "Fun extra" at the end of the lesson. The 1987 - Betty Glover Library Workout Tape Ad was a bit of a trip down memory lane, not just because I lived through the era of huge eyeglasses and high-waisted pants that was the 1980s, but I went to ASU during that time and spent some time in the Hayden Library. Not sure if I ever encountered Betty Glover...

Week 10, Thing 20: Web 2.0 awards

#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 because of the 23 Things, like Technorati, Library Thing, Google Docs, Del.icio.us, Flickr, pbWiki, etc.; and some i have used completely independent of this course, like Google Maps. I looked briefly at a few, like the bookmarking site Ma.gnolia, but since I already have a Del.icio.us account I wasn't ready to join Ma.gnolia in order to fully explore it and see what might be different (perhaps better) than Del.icio.us. The winner in the Books category, Lulu, is a totally different type of thing than Library thing, which was the second place winner. Lulu is for creating publications, selling them, or purchasing those of others. I found it interesting that two such different applications were winners in the same category. I appreciated that Lulu had a video tour that let me see what it did without having to join.

I looked at Meebo, which is web-based instant messaging that lets you "chat with your buddies on every major IM network in a single buddylist." I can definitely see the value in that. I generally use AIM, but I also have an MSN Messenger account, since that's what my daughter's friends and "family" in Peru use, as well as our former exchange student who lives in Japan. I rarely think to log onto MSN, thus missing out on the chance to communicate with these folks. I decided it was worth creating an account and now I can see my AIM contacts and my MSN contacts all in one list. It seems to function similarly to the last version of AIM I used to use. Not bad. Oh, no -- a problem. Even though I have it set to do so, no noise is played when I receive a new message. I kept our Chilean exchange student waiting for a reply without even knowing he was messaging me. Well, nothing is perfect. *sigh*

I'm off to explore more of the sites on the list.

a little later...
Week 10, Thing 20: more Web 2.0 awards
Just a few notes on some of the other award-winning sites I explored:

One Sentence is a fun read, appropriately enough, since it was the second-place winner in the category "Fun Stuff." Fuzzmail could be mildly entertaining, but I can't imagine I'd really use it.

I played some games on Arcaplay and now I know where to find Space Invaders, in case I need to relive my formative years. **Note: this site has apparently changed since I originally wrote this post. So I took out the link and the game I had embedded. (Sigh. No more Space Invaders!)

Another game site, Guess the Google, was fast-paced and a little frustrating, but I had a hard time quitting -- "just have to try once more to beat this thing..." Try it!

It may have become apparent that I mostly tried out the "fun" sites, rather than the more productive ones. :-) I figure at least I'll know where to go and look for things when I need them. A useful skill, n'est-ce pas? For instance, the music site Pandora looks interesting, and I'll probably register there one of these days. It appears that I can use it to play music (that I actually like), which I might want to do when I am working late, without having to have something like iTunes downloaded onto my work computer. Some of the Search category winners let you create a customized search engine, which sounds intriguing. And after I do the podcasting stuff in the next week's "thing" I may find I'd like to explore the winners in that category. Plenty of time for all that!

Week 10, Thing 19: Google Docs

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. Of course there's an arial type (which they call sans serif), times new roman type (serif), Trebuchet MS, which I think I usually use in my blog, and Verdana, which I also sometimes use. And a few more. That should be sufficient, I guess. What else do i typically use in Word? Highlighting, columns, indents. These are all available. Special characters. Mañana. In fact, though there are fewer special characters than in Word, I found that ñ faster here -- I like the set-up. Adding a hyperlink is quick too. Let's link to something truly exciting, like my school library webpage. OK, that was quick and easy enough. This seems very functional. Oh, I forgot to try the tables.

I have	no
stuff	to put
in this	table.

I figured out how to make the table smaller, so that's good. And maybe I should insert an image, just for kicks.

That may be a bit too large...

I think I have tried enough features to say it's useful. I was trying to remember what toolbars I tend to have open in MSWord and was thinking that I use the reviewing toolbar -- but I guess that is obsolete in an application like this!

Now to figure out how to post this to my blog.

I did a little editing of text size and the like. But posting something from GoogleDocs to my blog is pretty easy. I'll have to try out the spreadsheet later.

Week 9, Thing 18: Wikis

#18 Create a wiki or add an entry to a Vermont’s 23 Things sandbox wiki
I 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 from the meeting is at PBwiki: vslacentral. The wiki was created during the meeting and many resources we discussed at the meeting are on there, but not all.

I plan to explore a few more of the wiki sites to decide which seems the most user-friendly to start a wiki on a classroom project, collaborating with teachers. Or perhaps one for the Allied Arts team (aka "specials teachers") for an interdisciplinary project we have in the works.

Week 9, Thing 18: Wikis - part 2
Oh, heck. I couldn't leave well enough alone. I decided to try out Wikispaces and the next thing I knew I had started a wiki for our Allied Arts project and pasted in some links from an e-mail from a colleague. And added some details.

Week 9, Thing 17: Wikis

#17 Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them
Having 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 means I'll have to really watch more closely to see if I am actually on a wiki site. Best thing about wikis: ease of collaboration, can access many people's points of view; worst thing: inability to authenticate sources. Whether I would rely on information obtained on a wiki would depend on the topic. Would I try a recipe from Recipes Wiki? Sure. Would I trust the article on "How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry That Prevents Windows XP from Starting" from wikiHow? Well... I think I'll stick with the article I found on that same topic on the Microsoft tech support website. Especially since the first instruction from wikiHow has me taking the cover off not one but two computers and hooking them together (like a jumpstart for the non-functioning one) and Microsoft has me start out by inserting the Windows CD. The fact that step one of the Microsoft fix actually worked (that is, it got my computer to start, even if the repair is not yet complete), days before I found wikiHow, has no bearing on this comparison!

But would I use a wiki in my library? Yes, I would. I might try a book review wiki with students. I'll definitely try some project-based wikis with classroom teachers so we can collaborate by adding resources for students to a page they can access from school or home, and we can do it on our own time, not in those few minutes when our planning times overlap or we all happen to be working late.

Week 8, Thing 16: perspectives on Library 2.0

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 remain relevant to our patrons. I liked what Dr. Wendy Schultz said in To a temporary place in time...: "create a global, and globally accessible, catalog; invite readers to tag and comment." And actually, John J. Riemer said the same thing in To better bibliographic services: "Libraries should welcome the submission of reviews, assignment of keywords (“tagging”)..." Wouldn't that just make teacher's lives so much easier, if they could tag things in the library catalog with their own comments about what units they used things for? As it is, I can create bibliographies with that information (and I'm sure I could train the teachers to do it themselves, which of course plays into the issue of user education brought up by Rick Anderson in Away from the “icebergs”) but just think if patrons could easily do those tasks themselves, in a way that made things more useful and accessible to them.

Week 8, Thing 15: Technorati

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, but I just couldn't work up any real enthusiasm for it. I'm not sure if it was the fact that I couldn't foresee a use for it or that I wasn't really keen on the look of the pages, or both.

To test out the searching, I decided to look for something not related to school and see what came up if I searched both Technorati and Google Blogs. I figured I'd check out knitting blogs to see if I could find an interesting pattern that I might want to try out. I'm only an occasional knitter but I have noticed in the past that a lot of folks seem to blog about what they have been knitting and they share photos of finished projects as well as patterns (for free -- woo hoo!) For both knitting and one other topic I searched, I found some interesting things and did about as well on the Google Blogs search as the Technorati one. And when I found something I wanted to keep track of, well I tagged it in Del.icio.us, of course.

As suggested, I tried the advanced search and put the web address of my blog in the URL search box. No results. But I tried the URL for Vermont's 23 Things blog and found that there are 19 "blog reactions" or blogs that link to it. I poked around a few of those blogs and read a few things and ended up finding some very entertaining videos promoting National Library Week.

I didn't bother to "claim my blog" on Technorati. I mean, who is really going to go looking for it, other than people who already have access to the link from the participant page for Vermont's 23 Things? (And maybe my daughter, who can stalk my blog easily now that I've showed her how to use RSS feeds.)

Week 8, Thing 14: tagging & Del.icio.us

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 then the 8-minute tutorial, although I have to admit, I didn't really absorb everything in the tutorial. Some of it I felt would make more sense to me after I had actually tried using Del.icio.us for a while. It's hard to understand how some of the features and functions will apply to your own use if you haven't even tried the basics yet. Same thing with reading some of the articles. They will probably be more helpful to me after I have dabbled a bit. So I went ahead and set up an account, then added some of my personal bookmarks. I added the buttons for my browser, which really do make adding bookmarks a lot easier.

I did as suggested and tried checking out some of the tags other people have used for a topic I'm interested in. Based on how others had tagged the same sites I did, I ended up editing my list of tags for some sites, adding new ones and even including a singular form in addition to a plural form of the tag, or vice versa. (This can help you to see more things others have tagged, since there is no convention for singular/plural forms in a folksonomy.) Then I tried the same search in Google and came up with lots more hits but not really any more useful sites on the topic. Of course, I also picked a fairly narrow topic that's probably not of interest to as wide an audience as some,which helped limit the results to something somewhat manageable!

I can see how libraries, particularly school libraries, could use social bookmarking sites for research assistance, with teachers and/or librarians creating lists of sources to get students started on a project. And as a person who uses multiple computers, it makes sense to create bookmarks that can be accessed from any of them. I decided it would probably make even more sense for me to have 2 separate Del.icio.us accounts: one for personal stuff, another for strictly school-related things. Then I won't have to keep track of which tags would pull up things colleagues would want to see and which ones might bring up links that would be fairly useless in a school setting.

I may decide later to check out Furl, as suggested by Heather in her comment, but I found that I couldn't get much of a look at it without registering first and just wasn't ready to commit to that yet!

Week 7, Thing 13: Library Thing

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 when I do, I'll add that feature. Meanwhile, I set up a blog for my school library so I could put the LibraryThing widget on it. Linking to the blog on the website will be a much quicker fix than redoing my home page!

Hmmm... So what was the assignment and did I do everything I was supposed to? I created a LibraryThing account. I added at least 5 things to my library (though trying to remember "new" acquisitions from a few months ago strained my memory, since I was doing it from home!). And now I need to add a link to my LibraryThing catalog and I am done with week 7's assignments!

Week 7, Thing 12: Play around with an online image generator

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 some point. To really mess around online, though, I figured I'd try the Meez image generator. I noticed that a few other people (those "all caught up" types) had used it and thought it was pretty good stuff. And now, of course, I have yet another username and password to remember. I created an avatar that is definitely a much-better-looking version of me. Now to see if I can get it to show up here.

Looks like it worked. If only I was really that thin...

Week 5, Thing 11 : Set up a Facebook page

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 folks who are not already deeply into Web/Library2.0 use (but probably useful to those that are!) I also read "12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally" and it had a few good tips, as well as links to other useful things, like "Top 10 Facebook Apps: Work."

Done reading up on it, ready to sign up and create a Facebook page.

OK, that's done. I've added some applications, joined a few groups, invited people to befriend me. Now I have to wait for folks to confirm that they will be my friend. And I will no doubt have to tweak my profile and such.

Week 5, Thing 10: Explore social networks

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 5. A lot of our students don't have access to the Internet at home and I don't think they'd get much chance at school to use this type of site. It would probably reach a few of our 4th and 5th graders who like to and have oppportunity to do things online, but I don't see it as anything with a broad base of users at this point.

My opinion on social networking in general is that it's a good thing as long as it doesn't take the place of face-to-face interactions. It can actually facilitate those, such as when my son and his friends set up an "event" on Facebook and invite folks to attend. They can see who's planning on going and even coordinate who's driving or whatever. Since so many teens use it, it can also keep them connected to people with whom they might otherwise lose touch, like high school classmates at different colleges. My daughter can use it to easily keep in touch with some of her cousins, who are spread across the country. Basically, there are good and bad aspects to it, just like with almost anything. (The obvious exception here is chocolate, which is only bad if you are allergic.)

Week 4, Thing 9: Locate a few useful library related blogs and/or news feeds.

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 had to subscribe to that, too. And to Roger's blog, which I hadn't remembered to look at since right after he spoke at the Red Clover Conference. Now I see that if I had learned about RSS feeds earlier, I might have been reading his blog all along!

I think I have done this week's tasks to death!

Week 4, Thing 8: RSS feeds (part 2)

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 figure out how to do it with Google Reader, but not long -- yes, I had to read the directions, then it was easy. I decided to subscribe to some of the same sites/blogs on both readers, see how they look, and after test-driving them awhile, I'll decide which one I like best.

Week 4, Thing 8: RSS feeds (part 1)

"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 up a feed reader, no worries. Now to go learn more about the different ones and make a choice.

Well, I looked at the home page for FeedReader and it had an almost overwhelming amount of info on all the marvelous things it could do for me. I had already decided not to use it, though, because the computer I mainly use for this course hasn't exactly got the largest hard drive and just doesn't need one more thing installed on it. Still, I had to check it out in the interest of being thorough (or perhaps it's just more evidence that I am somewhat obsessive-compulsive, but why split hairs?) Next, I looked briefly at Bloglines. I realized at this point that I had no idea what features I should actually care about. Perhaps I was a bit overconfident jumping in so quickly and ought to go back and try the "Feed Me" tutorial. It had screenshots from several of the readers, which was the only thing that kept me going -- the "RSS in Plain English" video was a much more appealing presentation of the material! Back to looking at readers. The sample screenshots from all of these things look pretty similar at first glance, so I'm finding it hard to see why I ought to choose one over another.

On to Google Reader. Hey, I already have a Google account; these guys are ready for me to jump right in, which is very appealing. But wait, what about Sage? I already use Firefox as my browser, so adding Sage to it would be an easy thing to try. But there is almost no info on the Sage download page to tell me what it can do for me. (Good thing there is a page with info from our 23 Things gurus!) Oh, how I hate making these decisions. What the heck, I'll try them both.

Week 3, #7 : anything technology related

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 document you want on there (like a weekly classroom newsletter) and they'll put it up as a web page. Right now there are only two of us with web pages in my school and both of us have been at it for a while (and do more than e-mailing a simple document). The history teacher on the committee is ready to start by posting his weekly assignments. For my part I am working on finding at least one more elementary teacher willing to take the plunge.

Week 3, #6 : Flickr Fun

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 individual letter in your word and get a new image for just that letter, giving you the ability to create just the effect you are looking for (if you have patience enough to click till it's just right!) Then I tried playing Sudoku. I agree with the person who blogged about that and said it would be cooler if you could do it with your own photos, but there does not seem to be a way. Unless you created some truly unique tag for your photos in Flickr and used that tag to select photos for the game...

Week 3, Thing 5 : explore Flickr

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 had an error in the caption. Of course I had to create a Flickr account right away so I could comment on the photo. Now let's see if I can link to the photo here in case you want to check it out. (BTW, the original poster did fix the caption!) OK, so I had issues with getting the photo to show up here, but I know enough html to at least adapt, so instead of a weird little empty box, you can click on words...

Week 2, Thing 3: Set up your own blog. (part 2)

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) embarrass our children? :-)

Week 2, Thing 4: Register your blog

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...

Week 2, Thing 3: Set up your own blog.

Done!

Week 1, Thing 2: Pointers from Lifelong Learners

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; it means I have to prioritize and make some kind of decision. It was hard enough for me to decide on a title for this blog! Once the "thing" is decided on, I am confident in being able to do it, though.

Week 1, Thing 1: About This Program

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!