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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Thing 5: Flicker Fun

N I_McElman_070718_2970 C
O Bead Letter L E

I used spell with flicker to write out my name using pictures from flicker. It was really easy to use; however, it was really had to figure out how you get the picture into your blog. :-( Anyway, I was also looking at Big Huge labels which have a lot of interesting Flickr tools. However, my name didn't turn out as great as I wanted it. Oh Well.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Thing 4: Flickr

This is a photo that I found while looking through the Library of Congress' photos. The photo is called At the Vermont State Fair, Rutland and was shot by Jack Delano in Sept of 1914. The photo itself if interesting but what I would was so great about it was the "add a note" feature people have already used because lsmucker2002 added the note "Puzzled? which way to go..." to the girl with the scrunched up face. As of right now I don't know how to add notes but it seems to be a lot of fun and almost like a hidden message to gets added to your pictures. However, adding pictures and a link to one’s blog was quite a challenge and in all the hardest part of thing 4. It took me forever to realize that I first needed to download the picture to the desktop and then from there upload it to my blog. I did set up my own flickr account, which was relatively easy and painless; however, I still do not know if I would want my photos to be open to the public or only private. Adding photos was easy and in all very fun.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Thing 3: RSS

Of all the things, that I have learned, and just let me remind you I am on thing 3 and so far all the things beside thing 2 have been really interesting; however RSS feeds has been the most interesting and exciting Thing so far. I feel like I have finally learned something that I can implement throughout my life. The hardest part being finding all the RSS feeds I want to add and realizing that there has to be a limit to how much I can or should want to add, because really I can only read so much a day. However, besides all that I found setting up an aggregator to be relatively easy. I set up an aggregator through Google Reader, which I was happy that I did, as I was already familiar with how Google is set up. Meaning that I have used Google calendar extensively and because my blog is also through Google I thought in the end that it would be easier having all these items in the same location so to speak.

What I love about Google Reader, which is really strong words for a program that I only learned about yesterday, is that right away it asked showed me different bundles of RSS feeds that I could belong to. For example, they have the bundle called FUN, which included You Tube Most Viewed, Quotes of the Day, The Onion, and three others. And even thought I deleted the rest of what was in that bundle including You Tube because all the main videos were of a guy being slashed by another skater during a hockey game and if that is the kind of videos You Tube viewers like then I don't think I want to know what they like every day. However, I am getting off topic Google also had different bundles like News and Sports, which again I did not subscribe to but liked that I had the chance to. Also, the next RSS feed it tried to get me to subscribe to was The Form which I thought was really cool and then I wondered how they knew I wanted to subscribe to The Form; oh well. Adding different blogs was made easy and finally making my Google Reader all neat and organized by putting them into subfolders made me realize that Google Reader Rocks and that I need to find a lot more RSS feeds.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Thing 2: Library 2.0

I really had no idea what Library 2.0 (L2) was and in fact, I had not ever heard of the term before. However, I think John Blyberg makes an interesting statement in his blog when he stated that L2 is happening right now. I agree with his statement that L2 is a movement that is happening right now and I feel it is one our patrons are helping to push forward. What I mean is that I have been asked so many questions about how to use the computer that it has really solidified what I know and what I do not know. However, whenever I was asked a question I did not know I always tried to find out the answer whither it was by asking staff or other patrons. Therefore, I really think 23 things will help prepare me to answers a completely new set of questions patrons will ask. In addition, this program will be almost like a stepping-stone to understanding a whole new group of patrons because sometimes I have no idea what some of our younger patrons are talking about when they have computer questions. I am excited to learn these common computer items.