Thing #4 Technorati

It is amazing to me how much information is out on the web that I was totally unaware of! I am learning so much from this "Library Learning 2.0 class". I had never heard of RSS or Technorati until this class.

I played around with the Technorati search terms and was amazed at some of the results. When I typed in "web 2.0", I had 195,333 results. When I narrowed it down to "library web 2.0", I had 63 results. A much more manageable amount of information to scan over.

Next I played around with some tags. I don't think that I am ready to tag my blog topics yet! I tagged "books" and had 143,666 posts. Then I searched for "romance book recommendations" and got 1 post.

Technorati could be very helpful when students are needing to do research and find different opinions. They can use the Gale website of opposing viewpoints, but I think that they could find some good blogs that are well written, just not published in a magazine. The keyword search and tag options will help narrow topics down.

Thing #3 RSS

I now know what that little orange box means that says RRS! Really Simple Syndication!
The Common Craft video really explained in simple terms what RRS is all about. "The news comes to you from your favorite websites." The video said that there are two easy steps: 1) sign up for a feed reader (our class chose bloglines) and 2) subscribe to your favorite websites, meaning feeds.
I have managed to figure out how to subscribe to all 13 individual blogs from our class, plus added the main class blog. The blogline tutorial was helpful, and of course Myra was excellent in showing us what to do! I have subscribed to 8 other newsfeeds and need to find 2 more to fulfill my homework assignment. I also figured out that you can change your initial email address on your blogline and still keep your subscriptions!

Rafe Needleman's video "CNET video" said that RSS is our secret weapon to blogging! He said that you can eliminate the SPAM, set up filters to customize your blogs, and subscribe to your exact interests.

I'm not so overwhelmed with the blogging information process now. I can filter in my interests and have the news come to me!

Thing #2 Blogging Reflection

My personal reflection on blogging after reading the Bloggers Quick Tutorial is that I am basically exposing my personal diary, "memos to the world". Yicks!

Blogging is my own voice on the web. How scary is that! Blogging is connecting and engaging friends for responses. Thanks heavens there are 13 of us trying to learn this web 2.0 together. I feel like we already have our own network, with Myra leading the troop!

I love the templates that are already in place for us to chose from. Next I want to try the drag and drop and then see if I can download a picture.

I spent the weekend at Glenwood Springs on a middle school church youth group ski retreat. 45 middle schoolers, 10 high schooler/sponsors and 13 adult sponsors. My 6th grade daughter begged me to go. I survived but I am exhausted! I do have some mountain pictures that I will attempt to download.

Hopefully I can keep up with this class. Working, being a mom of 2 kids, wife, and attending at least 2 high school basketball games a week leaves very little time for experimenting with blogging. My son plays on the JV team for LYMDSR. Basketball is 6 days a week.

Thing #1 Learning and Web 2.0

I've just read all of the suggested articles that were posted for our Thing #1 assignment. I am slowly gaining a better understanding of Web 2.0
The key themes that I picked up from these various articles is that Web 2.0 means

• constant change
• creativity
• sharing between users
• rich interactivity
• simplicity

In the article "Hot Technology for 2008", the author said that blogs, wikis, social networks and mashups are all used to "collaborate with others". He said that these are easy to use and the user does not need to go through a bunch of corporate channels to create a blog. So I guess that learning the tools for Web 2.0 would be perfect for a group of librarians....who in turn can help faculty members and students gather information.

So what is a mashup?

My first attempt at starting a blog!

This is my first attempt at starting my own blog! I am taking a class to learn about the 23 Things about the tools of Web 2.0