Thing 4 - Online Communities

I thought the clip about the social media revolution. Unfortunately, I was trying to watch it from a hotel internet connection and it took forever to load and play. I am definitely going to watch it again when I get home. The facts and figures were astonishing. It's hard to believe that e-mail is passe (or soon will be).

I am on vacation this week in Florida. (It's been so beautiful here all week. It will be hard to come back to upstate NY.) My internet connectivity has been very spotty so I will wait to finish my thing 4 blog until I return.

Thing 3 - Photo Sharing

I have a Snapfish account and use a Picassa album for a group I'm in so I was interested in finding out about Flickr. I signed up for an account and posted a set from a recent author visit by Nancy Castaldo, to our school. (See pictures which was easy to link to my Blogger account using Flickr's blogging tool.)

I also explored some of the pictures and decided to search for golf in Alaska. My son is moving to Valdez, Alaska in June. I'd like to try to golf when I'm there for a visit, but certainly not in conditions like the one I choose to display on my blog page. I was unable to add this one to the body of this blog. I think the owner of the photo has it protected. But, it worked fine using Flickr's blogging tool and gave all the proper credit to the photographer automatically. 

I have more to learn about Flickr before I decide whether or not I'll continue to use it for the library photos. For personal use, I will continue with Snapfish since they have all the options to create albums, calendars, mugs, etc.

Birchwood Media Center's photostream

Birchwood Media Center's photostream on Flickr.

Here are the pictures from Nancy Castaldo's visit to Birchwood on April 8, 2011.

Arctic Golfing

Arctic Golfing, a photo by David Brannan on Flickr.

Thing 2:RSS #2

Today I added LISNews: The Original #librarianchat to my iGoogle page. It has some interesting blogs.

Thing 2:RSS

Loved the introductory video...clever and funny way to learn about RSS.

I created an igoogle home page and, for a start, successfully subscribed to CNN, Learn with CDLC, and YouTube. I put Snopes on it too. I seem to get so many of those inflamatory e-mails (ie Cell phone numbers going public) and wind up checking Snopes frequently. What a great way to keep abreast of the newest urban legends.

I tried to subscribe to the Learn with CDLC blogs page. I got the gadget to appear, but no information. I guess I'll bookmark that page. It's much easier to keep up with everyone in the class through the NetVibes page. Thanks for that.

I'll spend the rest of the week looking for other RSS feeds that will be useful to me.

Our automated library catalog, OPALS, has recently included a feature allowing us  to add RSS feeds to the home page. Animal of the day was their sample feed. I tried adding another one but couldn't get it to work before I ran out of "play" time.

Thing 1: Blogging

My name is Beth Disque. I am a K-5 librarian at Birchwood Elementary School in Niskayuna School District. I am taking this course because I want to learn more about, try to discover the relevance of, and "catch up" with all the  new tech tools in the online world.

Starting with Thing 1: Blogging...
My past experience is limited and never provided any reason for me to want to keep up with blogging. My colleagues and I had a blog we were using a couple of years ago when we were trying to decide on what product we wanted to use for a new online library catalog. Several members were regular contributors and others never even logged into the blog. I found it to be "one more thing" I had to remember to do each day. To me, group e-mails were just as effective, quicker,  easier to access, and easier to add a comment.

I have a close girlfriend in CA who blogged her experience with cancer from diagnosis to "cure". While writing about a terrible time in her life, she made us all laugh with her marvelous wit and sense of humor. It was a way for her to keep all of us informed without lengthy phone conversations. I don't know if I'd be able to keep a blog if I were faced with a life threatening disease, but it worked for her and all of us who read her blog appreciated her willingness to share her experience.

On the other hand, that same friend blogged about her trip to India which I only looked at so that I could add a comment every now and then and appear to be interested for the sake of friendship.

Now, here I am "learning with CDLC". After reading the article on Webjunction I decided that I would try to "learn to care" about blogs.

Several of the sample blogs looked very interesting, but more like websites than what I think  of as being a blog. I liked The Daily Dragon but think it would take a lot of time and work to keep up-to-date. The same can be said about most of the blogs I viewed.

I had a hard time setting up a blog. I tried WordPress, but for every username I chose (and I spent about 30 minutes trying different ones), I got a message that said that name was available for $17 a month but not as a free one. I finally gave up and came to Blogger. com.

So here I am, posting my first blog for the class. I think using a blog to keep track of learning accomplishments is a good idea. I am looking forward to it.