Thing #23 Old Dinosaur with lots of New Tricks!

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
Successfully creating my blog. I had tried once before very unsuccessfully. I like this description of a blog:

“A site one establishes for the purpose of putting one’s thoughts online for the edification or amusement of visitors, who may leave pieces of their own minds before departing.”

Discovering what others had found and were experiencing along the way by reading their blog entries, and then leaving a little piece of my own mind...

Playing with the online image generators

Discovering educational videos on YouTube

Using Flickr to share photos with friends and family

The entertaining and succinct Common Craft guys

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
While in graduate school (online), I had a mainline to the latest and greatest through my coursework. Participating in 23 Things was like being back in school with the bonus of no grades! I’m a hands-on learner, so 23 Things was the perfect learning tool. What's next, Kickball Captains?

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I was amazed at the depth and breath of this online adventure.

Actually understanding and using the 2.0 web tools my children use and talk about and understanding and using 2.0 web tools my children have not heard of!

Learning more about my SBISD colleagues. It’s amazing what you can discover about a person from reading their blog.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
Possibly offer smaller parts of the whole at a time by dividing the 23 Things into thirds and offering 6 hour credit segments.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? Absolutely!

How would you describe your learning experience?
Hands-on learning of relevant and, best of all, applicable best practices and cutting edge technology for use with students and the faculty in my library.

Thimg #14 Technorati and How Tags Work

I did a blog search on Technorati using “School Library Learning 2.0” and came across the blog Library Byte by Byte's most recent posting (how fun to see a familiar blog among the many unknowns!), which was an outstanding podcast. This particular podcast is a prime example how one of our 2.0 tools can be used with students for reader's advisory!

Overall, Technorati was a bit overwhelming to me until I used the advanced search tool, which helped to narrow the results and get rid of many of the irrelevant blogs. The Technorati video produced by the (very young!) leadership made some interesting point about creating a community of 50 million people that is the vehicle for expressing the raw, uncut human experience from individuals who have not been edited. I guess the question that stands out most in my mind is how hard it might be to sift through the blah, blah, blah to reach the meaty, authoritative stuff. Or did I miss something?

Tagging is akin to using keywords for indexing information in an article. I like the way the author of the article decides what is important in the text. However, because it is up to the author to do the tagging, bloggers need to take the time to follow through. One of the articles on tagging cites the formation of online social groups when people using the same tags discover “similarities of interests and points of view.” Once again, here is a way for educators/students to find common ground and share/contribute/interact/collaborate with other educators/students around the world.