Week 6 Thing 13 Del.icio.us

I really enjoy the idea of the site, but I don't have much use for it personally - probably because I'm not a big bookmarker. However, I can see great uses for it at work - the children's department could bookmark our favorite sites for fingerplays and rhymes, creating a collaborative list. We could create our own 'database' of author's or reader's advisory websites for reference use, and I know some innovative teachers have been using Del.icio.us to direct their students to specific groups of websites. All of this is grand, and I can see the site's uses for research, but it just isn't my favorite of the moment - maybe it's more of an acquired taste.

http://del.icio.us/5footlibrarian

Blogging

It amuses me that my blog looks like I know what I'm doing.

Week 5 Thing 12 Rollyo

Last night I mentioned to a friend that I was doing 23 Things and learning to use things like Flickr and Rollyo. He had never heard of the latter, so I explained it to him and he said "Whoa! That sounds nifty!" And then I felt smart. :-D

Since I spend a good bit of my on-desk time searching for fingerplays related to storytime themes each time I have a new box due, I decided to do make a Rollyo search for them, and I'm rather pleased with the results. My box is in the sidebar, but I'll put it here too, because I can!

Select...Preschool StorytimesSearch The Web

Week 5 Thing 11 Library Thing

Ooh, another toy I like - yay for the play week! I have a rather extensive library at home - pretty soon I'm going to need to buy more bookshelves - so this would be fantastic for me! I tried out the Book Suggester, and sure enough, it returned many books that I enjoyed, and not all of them were in the same genre as the title I entered, so it seemed to work pretty well. Sadly, I couldn't get the Book Unsuggester to work! Here's my catalog, and I guarantee that it will be growing as soon as I have time at home to sit down with the laptop in front of the bookshelves! I can definitely see the potential for this as a reader's advisory tool - we could even set patrons up with it themselves, or share our personal libraries with people who ask "Have you read anything good lately?" I've even read about some small libraries who use Library Thing for their computer catalogs, so it definitely has uses in the library.

Meez

Yay, I made a Meez! This blog is so colorful now! Find the Meez page here.

Week 5 Thing 10 - online image generators

My, these things are fun! I took a few closeup shots of myself so I could use the Warholizer on fdtoys, which was definitely my favorite site on the list. I was intrigued by a lot of the items in the Generator blog, but they weren't quite as appropriate, so there you are. I think this one has gift-giving potential! (Well, perhaps if I were to use a more flattering photo . . .)

Success!

I figured out how to add my blogroll to the blog! Oh, sweet victory! The tutorial neglected to mention (or I neglected to notice, either is possible) that before you're able to share your blog, you must go to the "Account" tab in Bloglines, choose a username, and allow your blogroll to be shared. Oh, I'm proud of myself now!

Week 4 Thing 9 - MERLIN etc.

Eek, I'm behind already! Yay for summer reading . . .

I was amazed at how much I already knew about technology as I explored MERLIN. Geocaching - check. Social networking - check. I'm all subscribed now, so I'll be getting updates as they come in - I've developed a healthy respect/potentially unhealthy dependence on Bloglines.

I tried using Technorati to find some reader's advisory blogs - I keep one, and I'd love to read similar efforts by other people - but no luck. However, I did find YALSA's blog, which I immediately subscribed to, so it wasn't a total loss! Syndic8 confused me, and I was able to find some posts about reader's advisory using Feedster, but not an entire blog devoted to that literary art. I can't be the only one! Maybe I just need to do a bit more in-depth searching on my own time.

Week 4 Thing 8 - RSS

Okay, so I've spent way more time on this than I intended to do! I found Bloglines to be really simple, and I'm looking forward to not having to check the Vampire Librarian twice a day to see if she's updated - I love my Vampire Librarian!

However, I ran into trouble when I decided it would be a good idea to subscribe to the comments on my blog, but try as I might, I couldn't get a feed to show up for just comments. The help section says I should be able to do it, but all I could get was posts, not comments. I even just entered my blog URL for Bloglines to detect feeds, and it could only find posts. I'm a bit frustrated and not sure what to do . . . anyone have an idea?

But back on topic, I feel much more confident now that I know what RSS is - funny how I'm not scared of it now that I know what it stands for!

Week 3 Thing 7 Anything about Technology!

I'm not sure if this is more about technology or about a sociological phenomenon, but isn't the cell phone culture we live in interesting? No one in my family ever had one until I was a teenager with my own car (Mom had this silly idea that I might need it if I ever got into a car accident . . .), and now we live by them. My husband and I don't have a landline phone in our apartment, and my mother and sister just moved to a new home, where they don't have a landline either! Everyone has cell phones - I do double takes in the library when I see 7 or 8 year old kids with phones clipped to their belts. And then there's the whole Bluetooth phenomenon - it's always comforting to see someone walking through the library talking to himself and then see that it's just the tiny little phone in his ear. So much better than the other people who walk around the library talking to themselves . . .

But it's not just the widespread nature of cell phones - it's the dependence we have on them. I know that I, at least, feel as if doom will strike me if I'm ever without my phone. I had one die on me when I was in college, and I was completely cut off from the outside world until I could get a new one. Nobody could call me because I hadn't bothered to give them my dorm phone number (I was never there, so what would be the point?) I couldn't call anyone because I didn't know anyone's phone number (Why bother? I'd put them all directly into my phone!) And while this is a part of myself that I don't like very much, I haven't done anything to correct it - after all, my new phone works perfectly!

My husband spent two years in Bolivia, and he said one of the sights he saw regularly was a farmer outside his cinderblock house, plowing the field with his donkey, talking on his cell phone. What a world!

Week 3 Thing 6 Flickr mashups

These things are fun! I liked the Warholizer feature on the fdtoys website, but I didn't have a portrait that would look good. I did create a blog header and a nifty motivational poster, both saved on my Flickr page and here in my blog. I could spend hours exploring this stuff! I have a ton of pictures on my computer at home just begging to be presented in new and interesting ways . . . incidentally, it would probably be convenient to include a link to my Flickr page, so there it is!

Week 3 Thing 5: Flickr

I can now Flickr! I posted three pictures of the art on the ceiling tiles in our teen room, which is by far one of my favorite parts of my branch. An art class at a local high school incorporated books into famous paintings as a project, and they look spectacular!

This photo is called "Picasso, Enrique, and Julia" because it includes the painting and two READ posters on the wall below featuring Enrique Iglesias and Julia Stiles.

I found it very easy to use Flickr - I actually already had an account but I had never used it before. I was able to create my page and change my alias very easily, although I had some trouble getting the pictures to upload the first time and had to start over. I also had to try twice to get the picture to upload into my blog - the first time I used "add an image from the web" in Blogger, and I think that was the wrong choice. Now that I know what I'm doing, I'll probably be adding more to my page!

Week 1 Thing 2

7 1/2 Habits of Highly Effective Lifelong Learners:
Begin with end goal in mind - specificity
Accept responsibility for your own learning
View problems as challenges
Have confidence in yourself as a confident, effective learner
Create your own learning toolbox
Use technology to your advantage
Teach/mentor others
Play!

How curious that one can be a lifelong learner without really thinking about it - I think I do a lot of these things already! Probably the easiest habit for me is viewing problems as challenges, because I'm a rather competitive person, even when I'm competing against circumstances instead of people. If things crop up that make my project more difficult to complete, I tend to hunker down and work harder so I can say "Hah!" at the end of it.

The most difficult habit for me is beginning with a specific goal. I'm great at developing plans, but it's sometimes hard for me to focus in on the details that define the goal enough to make a really good plan. As a result, I sometimes get frustrated with trying to follow through.

These are a few of my 23 Things . . .

Here's my blog! Every time I hear the phrase "23 things", the music from "My Favorite Things" starts playing in my head. Ah, The Sound of Music . . .