Thing 12 FD toys

I just added the code for a gadget on the blog; I tried the fd toys gadget of the "where have you been" map. It worked the first time and I was quite surprised. Not sure if I can add to it, though. I wanted to try this one so I can create a family blog and we can keep track of my niece's travels as she studies in England this semester. Hope it can work.

Blogging Workloads

Now that I have a reason to have a blog (assigned for homework) it feels more legitimate to me. And now that I have several very good blogs I use for work-related information RSS'd to me every day, I find that I have even greater respect for bloggers. I used to think it was a self-indulgent exercise, keeping a blog, and now I find I am very disappointed when a blog that I like has nothing new for the day. It's a lot of work for these good bloggers and a different sort of pressure than, say, writing for a newspaper.

We are all out there waiting in the "cloud" for great stuff; it feels more connected and personal than just reading a book or watching a commentator on TV. I guess that's the point everyone is making about web 2.0. It's just taking me a while!

Thing 11 -- Facebook

I have actually done it; I have joined the scariest part of the web 2.0 world -- a social networking site. And it is less scary in some ways, yet just as scary in others, as I thought it would be. I was happy with the controls I could put on my privacy and I found that it was easier than I thought to upload a picture of myself for the world...but within a couple of days I was contacted by people wanting to be my "friend." How did they know I was even on Facebook, I wondered? And now I am getting information on their friends (and I guess they see me as well). That is blowing my mind a little, still. I find it amazing and still somewhat intrusive to know that so-and-so is having a beer right now, especially if they are a friend of a friend. I am still an uptight Yankee at heart, I guess, and it is good for me to have these social connections broadened for me.

I joined the Library 2.0 group and already I have found some interesting stuff on it. And I have gotten completely distracted by fun apps like "flair." So there have been productive and totally non-productive aspects of Facebook for me.

But this is the best part of all; I just read that very few educators have Facebook or MySpace accounts; this is a problem if we want to be able to work with students who all do. We should know something and have tried some of these 2.0 tools, so that we can lend our opinions to our students with some kind of authority. How can I really talk about online safety if I haven't exposed myself to the risk and seen exactly how it feels to be online and whether it actually is risky?

It was the exercise I dreaded the most but it has turned out to be an excellent learning (and very real life) assignment.

Blog Dating Correction

I just learned, by looking at my blog posts, that the date for the BLC conference post is correct. Since I wrote it on 7/17 and the draft was saved before I lost wireless, that is the date on the post, even though I published it today 7/20. Very exciting.

Week Four, Thing 1 -- RSS Feeds

Ahhhh, technology!

I just published the blog entry from the November Learning Conference (Building Learning Communities 08) because the wireless in the hotel kept going in and out and I couldn't publish while I was there. So even though it's dated today, the post was actually written days ago.

Which brings to mind, how do all these bloggers keep their sites updated? Some do, some don't. And you really have to be attached to your computer to be a force in the blogosphere. That's not going to happen for me anytime soon; there are too many other humans in my life pulling me away from the keyboard (and that's a good thing, I think.)

Anyway, RSS feeds and readers were something I already knew something about, so I thought this week would be a piece of cake, but I found it just the opposite. I got very confused trying out different aggregator options, from easy to hard. Some of the RSS out there is so available and user friendly that my 7 year old is doing it -- the downside of those is that you are limited by what you are offered. For example, you can make a fun iGoogle home page with tons of changing feeds in about two minutes. Most of the feeds are games and silly stuff that wastes time and bandwidth but it's so FUN!

When I tried to make a serious attempt at finding good library blogs worldwide and adding them to google reader (because that's the reader I had settled on) I got frustrated and overwhelmed. The technology definitely took over. I am still trying to decide on the best aggregator and then just use it. This takes time. I know my students don't have the time or the background to make these decisions, so it's been an important lesson to me in how we help them navigate all this information. We need to demystify, simplify, and remind them why they need a certain technology; or maybe that they don't. Right now I feel like I'm serving the RSS machine rather than it serving me. I'll keep plugging away and something will click eventually.

Greetings from the November Learning Conference

I am writing from the Alan November Learning Conference in Boston (BLC-08). It's an amazing opportunity to meet and learn from educators from around the world about using technology. It's a wonderful combination of big picture ideas and nuts and bolts tech tips. The best part is that it's not about the latest gadget and how to use it; it's about teaching in meaningful ways and perhaps using technology to do that. The keynote speakers have been funny, inspiring, creative and tech savvy. The other professionals are an enthusiastic and hard working bunch. And it's really interesting to meet people from other countries and learn about how they do what they do.

I felt fortunate to have learned a lot this year, through 23 things exercises and my own professional development, about technology. I have noticed that in the course of just a year jargon that was politely being explained in a speech is now just mentioned as if we all know what it is (ex: blogs, wikis, RSS, aggregators, twitter).

Anyway, I recommend visiting the November Learning site to find conference notes from presentations. there are also tons of podcasts being produced from the conference on all sorts of topics of interest to librarians.

One of the main tenets of Alan November is that students need to be taught how to work through and analyze all of the information and media they encounter, and he has an excellent book and program on the subject. I highly recommend his stuff.

Librarians and Tagging

Just a thought; someone should do a study to see whether Librarians' blogs have more meaningful tags than other blogs. You would think ours would be better, wouldn't you?