TA-DA!!

Week ten actually came up fast. I've kept a folder of the places I've been and places I want to go. So many possibilities. The social networking tools look scary to me as far as compromising my privacy. So many chances available to take advantage of mis-using a persons photos or mis-quoting what he/she writes. Blogs make more sense to me, more control. I also fear that future socializing could become nothing more than single persons sitting in a dark room all day, chatting on line, letting go of human interaction.

Lots of discoveries for me. I enjoyed the early exercises more so than the pods, youtubes and facebooks. The programs format worked for me. Picking the summer term was good also, as our workload is less. I would not want to start another series anytime soon. What I want to do now is go back and work with those applications I discovered. I will explore, apply, and tweek them to my needs.

Thanks for the opportunity to do this on Alden time.

Week nine challenges

My children would have loved YouTube when they were growing up. What an opportunity for imagination, creativity, hands on experience for everyone. Uses for libraries would only be limited by energy and time. How much of each do you want to spend?



I became bored looking at various videos. I found a group of videos featuring amatuers making commercials for Listerine tabs. I know of this product, saw a video made by connie, and that's why I chose to use it for assignment number 20.

I found a podcast tutorial at the wise-women website which said "podcasting is like TiVo for radio. Made the whole directory thing doable. I looked at several, but didn't find anything to my interest or more so to my life style. I just don't sit much. Now as I write this I see that is what the point is to podcasting....recording it to an ipod and go mobile. Tala for exercise 21.

Dance

If there is one thing I have learned about life, it is that we should dance more. So many rules, so many commitments, so many people to interact with...the sheer abundance of our lives is overwhelming. Stop, step back, listen to the music, open yourself to complete abandonment and dance. http://flamingosoul.blogspot.com/

Week eight nightmares

Is there a blog limbo land? After viewing Zoho Writer and Google Docs, I thought I would write a little ditty and publish it to my blog in order to fulfill assignment 18. It seemed so simple and for one moment I found it on my blog, but I didn't like the spacing so I revised it, hit publish and looked for it. Couldn't find it, republished, got the message that I was successful, refreshed my blog but still can't find it. In the meantime I thought I would try adding my link and then I hit publish to the world. Supposedly I was "successful", but I can't find it either. I sure hope I don't suffer any repercussions.

I attended the help session for this weeks homework and was pleased/disappointed when Whitney could not get her google doc to appear on her blog space either. Technical glitch?

Discovery 19 found me checking out the Web 2.o Awards. I just looked for what I thought would be fun sites. I found a site http://www.onesentence.org/ where contributors tell a story in one sentence. Creative and somewhat addictive when reading through them. They're so short...just one more. Another site http://www.game2web.com/ allows me to play meaningless games, thereby making procrastination all the more a reality.

HALLELUJAH! I tried one more time to publish from google to my blog and did it. The difference is that I saved my google doc before I hit publish. Mission accomplished.

Week seven wiki wonderlands

So many wikis, so little time. Good grief, between blogs and wikis when does one sleep? As an avid public library user, I have suggested that they dedicate a bulletin board where patrons can post reviews of the books they read. Wait till I tell them about wikis.... I may just drop them off a copy of exercise 16.

Exercise 17 had me stumped. Finally Lynette came to my rescue. I could not follow the written directions to get my blog added to the favorites. I didn't know to highlight or where to find the Link box. Now it's there. In the meantime, I created yet another account with the peanut butter group. Just wanting to put out a statement that might cause comment, I chose Mike Vick. I saw the page it went on, but now when I want to link that here, I can't find it. Cyberspace feed.

Week six experience

Del.icio.us has features that I can not imagine ever wanting. It's way overkill for my computer musings. In checking my bookmarks, I find that I have seven. Categorizing them is not necessary. Completing exercise 13, I read all the material suggested and then explored the heavily used bookmarks. Certainly seems popular. Maybe I'm missing the point.

Number 14, the Technorati exercise was interesting. Talk about networking through words. Amazing. The different search results remind me of searching in our library databases and how chosing the correct word impacts the results. At one point of my exploring, I ran across an video of Jan Maxwell. I didn't watch it, but did a double-take when I saw it. I also checked out the oulibraries tag and enjoyed looking at the photos.

After completing the required reading for exercise 15, I found an article about L2.0(http://www.blyberg.net/2006/01/09/11-reasons-why-library-20-exists-and-matters/ and its significance in todays world. Reading the comments from other readers, one stood out. His point was that L2.0 is all well, good, and even necessary for todays libraries, however that emphasis seems to be for the tech-savvy population. He reminds us that many of us are not techno users for many various reasons and this population group should not be forgotten. Also found another article about librarians, the existence of "non-authoritative data," and how to deal with it.

Week five brain drain

These three exercises have so many possibilities and spinoffs, that my thoughts just keep running around and around in my brain. Not having enough time to explore any of them thoroughly, I did just the minimal assignments due. Exercise 10 is already posted. Recently I started knitting, so I've been scouring books for interesting but fairly easy patterns. Exercise 11 reflects my latest interest. http://www.librarything.com/addbooks

Travel interests have me checking several websites weekly for hot deals and/or cheap flights.
I compiled my favorite sites into a rollyo account. http://www.rollyo.com/cflores/

I uploaded a yahoo widget (formerly Konfaulator) that allows you to upload images to the flickr photo-sharing service. http://bighugelabs.com/ With this I did a Warholizer to a photo of my granddaughter, Stella. Gotta love it, right?

4 generations

Oldest is grandpa-great at 89 years old. Larry has been married to Maydelle for 65 years. Youngest is Tayrn Parker Whited, born May 6, 2007.

Week four reactions

This is pretty neat. I found the tutorials helpful. Like most people, I do check certain sites daily, so now I can find them in one click. I will pull in some to feed my "retirement" days activities. As to work, yeah, I can see uses for medical news, library happenings, pubmed, places that I go to several times a week.

Week three thoughts

Discovering flickr has been very informational and interesting. I actually plan on using flickr to create a blog for our family to leave photos and messages. In checking things out, I stumbled on flickr retrivr. Quite a concept and fun. Basically though, I must not be curious enough, because I still am not interested in reading other peoples blog. Too many outside activities to be sitting in front of a computer. I think there has to be a personnal link to technological growth in order to really appreciate it.

3 generations

Our Phoenix family visited in June. Grandma and Grandpa are holding Taryn and Stella. Megan, Chris, and June behind us. Carrie, Ryan, Jason, Jenn, and Todd fill out the last row.

Homework assignment:Easiest: number 1. My goal is to have my children see this blog on the internet.Hardest: number 6. I've always wished I could create posters, announcements, charts, etc. Now I have the opportunity to do this at work and not feel guilty.

Becoming a "blogster" is taking me a lot of time. After an hour, I am still confused. I have tried to follow the clues, but I am not sure of how I got here and more specifically, how do I get out of here? I will be there early for the one-on-one help session.I will get this. Now that I am into it, I see great blogs in my future.