#23 Now what do I say?

What a whirlwind learning experience this has been! I started on Monday (December 17th) and here I am at the end of a week on number 23. I won't say finishing, because learning is never done, right?
It may have been an unusual approach to do the project in a week, but for me, it was great. And since I did it entirely outside of work time - other than going to work - this is about all I've done for a week.

What I liked the most was that each activity had both a great introductory activity as well ones to explore more deeply. I also liked going to other QL blogger sites to see what they had to say. As a latecomer, I had lots to choose from.

I liked the fact that for me some things were totally new - image generators, Rollyo and tagging; some I'd heard of and had never gotten around to - blogs, wikis and RSS; and some were a chance to delve more into something I already was familar with - QL digital media, Youtube, podcasting.

How I'd like to see it improve, is perhaps develop a buddy system - it might have been more fun - and I might have started sooner - if I had a partner to talk with. Actually, on Friday, I did mention it to a coworker, and now she got started, so maybe we'll get to interact about it a bit.
But to mesh web activity with face2face would have strengthened it for me.

Along the same lines, to encourage interaction - why not make posting to someone else's QL blog and posting to the QL Learning 2.0 blog a part of the assignments at some point? Or some other kind of participant interaction activity?

Another thing I'd suggest is create a list of places that participants will be creating accounts. The list could be a simple word document that people could download and fill in with their account names and password hints for themself. Because one does have to remember a lot of passwords and I finally developed a system. (I couldn't just use the same one, as what worked
on one site was taken on another.)

I'm glad that we were asked to record our reactions in a blog - as I know there are definitely things I'll want to come back to. I plan to add to this blog as I learn more, but not for a few days - I definitely need a break.

Thanks to the QL Lifelong learning team for setting this up - and also to the Charlotte/Mecklenburg Co. Libraries for creating it and being willing to share such a wonderful idea.

Would I do another program like this? Yes!!!! When can I sign up?

#22 Thinktime on OVERDRIVE!!!!

Whew! What a week! I can not believe I really have completed all but the eval in seven (gasp) days...and no cheating.
Overdrive is already on my computer - I've used it to download music, though, not books. I re-watched the intro video and used advanced search (but that wasn't new to me). So, I placed a yoga video and an audiobook, 101 Power Thoughts by Louise Hay on hold. The fact that there 10 people on the waiting list for the 1 "copy" of Hay's bookmeans people really are using this service!

I visited "most recently returned" to get an idea of what people are checking out, and also clicked on some of the left-column categories. I was surprised that the category "Children's " had nothing in it. It was under the non-fiction subhead, so was this supposed to be children's nonfiction? Are there really none? And why isn't there a subhead category under fiction for Children? Another thing that surprised me was that when I clicked on "more fiction" I didn't get an expanded list of fiction categories, rather more about the categories already there.

I'm going to see what others have to say about their journeys on overdrive.

And later today, I'll be posting THING 23!!! Whooopeeeee!!!!

# 21 Podding along

Okay, checked out the podcast search sites, put a feed for esl pod casts on bloglines. I'd like to recommend Audacity, a free downloadable software that allows you to record, edit and mix sounds. I've used it to make CD's for our adult English learners, and can be used to make podcasts, too. It has some great tutorials -- even a wiki-based one!

Zuiikin English 1

#20 I've been looking forward to this one!

Youtube and I are already friends. It's a huge unwieldy mish-mash of wonderful videos and terrible junk. But I always find something interesting on my hunt - and it always sends me off in some new direction.



See my comments below on Zuiikin English. The Adult Learner Program video is actually my own - my first editing job and post to Youtube in Jan 2006. At this point, it's my ownly upload, but expect to do a few more this year.



I came across the wonderful Blogs in Plain English intro video through the site WEShow - it shows award winning videos.


Earlier - see my post"You Tube to Me Blog" -- I learned how that I could link my blog with my Youtube account, and easily add videos to my blog. Today, I learned that on youtube, I can create my own video log - to collect and comment on other people's videos. Uh-oh....I feel a resolution coming on...resolution 4: started a video log on Youtube. Guess that's a vlog, huh?

Adult Learner Program Celebration

Blogs in Plain English

Zuiikin English 1

Hmmm... when I posted comments, I lost the video. So look for the video above. This is so funny!!! I found out this is actually a TV show in Japan. What I find funny is the contrast between the calm expressions and relatively controlled movement of the actors(performers? exercisers?) and the urgency of the phrases they are learning. I did get up and try it by the way - it's not as easy as they make it look...but now the phrase "I have a bad case of diarrhea" is permanently embedded in my brain. So I guess it works (although you don't learn the way intonation). I'm curious to see if there are other videos like this - for other languages. I'll take a look...

#19 Why didn't I do this MONTHS AGO!

A few months ago, I was working on a paper on a Health Literacy project - and the resource Medstory,, a Web2.0 finalist, would have been so helpful - it quickly came up with the research that took me quite a while to dig up on google.

And the premise of Peertrainer is certainly interested. You create a group to help you lose weight. What's fascinating about this, is that groups are limited to 4 partcipants, which really keeps it on a human scale. One of the biggest problems with online groups is that they get sooooo large. I also love its calorie wiki, where you can add info on foods you know.

Thought I might find an interesting story on One- sentence stories, but nothing to report yet.

But definitely going back for another look at P B Wikis...been meaning to do that for a while.

And just for fun, I visited Zillow - a site for real estate. You can give a street address or zip code and it can show you values of homes in that area, or homes for sale - all merged on a google hybrid map. Looks like it isn't being fully used yet, but I'm betting it takes off.

#18 googledocs

Took a look around google docs. Always looking for short cuts and simplifications for the novice computer customers, I was wondering if their Spreadsheet would be easier to use than Excel but I don't think it is. As an Excel user, I had no trouble getting around, but don't think it would help the novice. But the sharing feature is interesting.

I was very interested in Google pages, as well as Google for Educators, which has some lovely posters to print. Also liked Google pages - google's new webpage creator. Okay, resolution #3: I'm going to do a test of a Google page, and if it works, present it to My ALP colleagues for use with our students.

#17.5 Not my Face ..yet

I've done the tour, read the 10 applications - and many look useful but I'm still a little nervous about Facebook. Read this article, Beware of Facebook's Beacon? by Jesse Hirsch of CBC news.
It's also nice to be a slowbie at this -- I've been reading through what other QL bloggers have to say about Facebook.

Negatives aside, there are some useful tools - Calendar, Slide show, BooksiRead to mention a few I liked. But I think for the moment, I'll stick to Microsoft Outlook for my calendar and experiment with the others in my blog.

I'll keep reading and considering and maybe will take it up in the future.

#17 a teeny contribution and a plan...

I added some advice for managing stomach cramps to Wiki how. Can't believe no one had mentioned yoga.
I have a plan to set up a Wiki (see previous post) but that will be thing 24, I think!

#16 Windows into Wikis

Browsing through Library Success, I first stumbled onto 3 nonfunctional links (all in distance learning) but then came across Stephen's Web, (by Stephen Downes, who has been blogging since 98) where he has posted his article 9 Rules for Good Technology. He has a few very interesting points. One is, that technology gets simpler and easier to use as time goes on,He gives the analogy of the elevator, that when first invented. He says, "Once so finicky it needed operators to take you from floor to floor, today's elevators function flawlessly with little intervention on the part of the user." Downes argues that new technologies in e-learning are going in that direction, though we aren't there yet. Of course, the article was written in 2000, so I think we are a lot closer now!

I actually have been exposed to wikis a bit in the past as part of a TESOL group I belong to, but never took much time to think about its potential use in my QL life. I think it would be an excellent tool for those of us in the Adult Learner Program to use for conference, training and workshop planning. And that is my new year's resolution #2 - to try it out!!!

#15 Library 2.0

Lots to think about here, especially from my non-librarian perspective. I facilitate computer BASICS ( press the start key, click with a mouse, etc). My first thoughts was that for those who cannot even do a rudimentary internet search - this 2.0 stuff is not at all relevant. But then I started to think a little more and realized maybe we need to rethink the basics - are there parts of what is/will be Library 2.0 that we should be and could be incorporating into sessions? Makes me want to revisit the curriculum and see what it is that needs reworking.

Success! Youtube to Me Blog

That was fast! I signed up, and posted it. It is amazing how all these technologies that start out separate begin to come together. Now I'm going to remove the random video from the bottom...

Raw for 30 Days - Trailer

#14 Technorati and technomessy

I'm not signing up for technorati- I think I've got enough new sign-ups for a while. It was interesting to explore. I did some searching around and came across an amazing trailer for a Youtube video Raw for 30 Days - Trailer . I wanted to post it on my blog - so I was fooling around with the template, and came across the video portion - but it didn't do what I wanted it to.

But I went back and signed into Youtube...and discovered how to link my blog with my Youtube account! so now I should be able to do that...I'm going to try now, and we'll seee...

layout for dummies

Here's a great spot for playing around with layout. I promise to come back to it before year's end. But not now.. I'm on a mission to get 23.5 before 24 and the clock sure is ticking!!!!

http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2007/07/template-or-layout-which-is-better.html

#13 Favorable favorites favored

Interesting to read others comments on the QL site, but for me, its probably most useful to have the ability to carry my favorites. I do travel around ALOT - and that's why I don't use favorites too often.
I'm not wild about the name (never can remember where the "dots" in del.i.cios go) nor the physical look of the site, but as a non-librarian, I can see how useful this will be for me for doing various research projects.
I did set up my account.

#12 Rolly-me

I've set up my rollyo, and plan to come back to it later to add more.
If you'd like to see it,
http://rollyo.com/love2think/esol_health_literacy/
I'm listing sites related to ESOL and health literacy.

Now on to #13!
I know this was supposed to be 9 weeks, but I think I'm going to get there in less than 9 days...
And today, I encouraged a co-worker to start.

#11 Ony 200 free???

Oh this is fun...a new way to get lost in the stacks...but only 200 free books - I'd fill that up in about a week, I think. I listed some and plan to come back when I'm on the hunt for something to read (probably tomorrow).

#10 Image Generators

Some pretty interesting things here. It was interesting to browse - I had fun converting my name into Tibetan, Chinese http://www.chinesetools.eu/names/, making an ASCII character poster http://www.asciiposter.com/create , playing with text on photos, and making a photo calendar www.freephotocalendar.net/free-printable-photo-calendar.php.

I think it's useful to know these things are here -- but feels like I'm just "playing." Might make more sense to have something I want in mind, and then go searching for it. The e-mail card creation might be nice for some of our computer classes.

What this really all reminds me of is the "shareware" of the 80's -- lots of people creating lots of free software, some of it useful, some of it not. Ha! And now I've both dated myself and shown my early interest in technology. I began my techno-life with a Kapro .. which ran with Cpm, not DOS.

#9 A truly exciting resource!

Okay, now I'm happy!!! I just found- through the feed search on Bloglines a blog that I've added to my feedlist http://wccniuesl.blogspot.com/atom.xml "Technology for the Adult Education Instructor" - I'm really excited to start reading through it and share it with my Adult Ed colleagues. So maybe I'm starting to change my mind a bit...
But one question more on Really Somewhat Stimulating...why is it better to use bloglines than just to add the feed in Internet explorer?
Maybe it's time to visit QL chat and see if anyone else has anything to say about it.

RSS -Really Somewhat Skeptical

Admission #1: I never knew - and never though about what RSS stood for (and I usually am curious - I know that URL is Uniform Resource Locator and PDF is portable document file) but I never thought much about RSS. Really Simple Syndication!!! Who thought of that?

Okay, I admit it. This one doesn't really thrill me. I think I could get really overwhelmed with too much input coming in. I'm just not sure why I'd want to use this. On the other hand, I guess if you want to keep up on a little bit of everything, you could quickly scan through a lot -- or if you were doing specific research and wanted to be up on everything in your field, sure. But it's not a form that jumps up and grabs my interest...feels like it might just make me feel a touch overloaded.

A thought about technology (#7)

It is interesting to see how technology develops over time. On the one hand, as time goes on, tasks become easier. For example, all this composing would originally have to have been done in HTML. But now, there are quick short cuts, like this "compose" menu, so people can do some basics without learning html. But on the other hand, the more that is invented, the more there is to learn, and sometimes it feels impossible to keep up with.
I feel like I'm just getting the tip of the ice berg with all the variants of Flickr - but I'm making a list of things I want to revisit.
One thing I still haven't figured out is fair use of images posted on Flickr...I'm still hunting for my answer.

flicker spell -here it is

Flickr words

Oh that spelling was fun!!! Here's my word, and I guess that's what I'm doing...exploring!!!

Discovery on Blogspot - beware

I just found out if you click on "next blog" you get a view of what I assume is the most recent blogger. Once, I did it and got some lovely poetry. But the next time was some photos in very poor taste. I don't know if there are any regs, but these definitely should not have passed the censors. I'm going to check the guidelines to see what is prohibited.

NYC - Queens - Flushing: Kissena Park

NYC - Queens - Flushing: Kissena Park
Originally uploaded by wallyg

I decided to search flickr for Queens, NYC 1907 - to see what I could find about 100 years ago. I came across this lovely photo of Kissena Park, complete with a description.

I was attracted to the photo initially because of the serenity it depicts - so different from my usually hectic days. And because as I write this, I am upstate looking out my window at a foot of snow.

But I've learned a few things, too. First, I didn't know that people could publish text on Flickr! And by reading the accompanying text, I learned quite a bit of history. Including that "kssena" comes from a Chippewa word meaning "it is cold."

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Lifelong learning

As I was listening (and reading along- that's how I learn best!) and reading the post, I realized that I have a lot of these habits - and a lot of the things mentioned, I've learned as an adult. The problem for me is generally finding the TIME to do it! I seem to always have too much on the plate. I think what is most important for me is to set specific and realistic goals.

I might be the last one starting a QL blog - and it really isn't that I've been procrastinating. I open up the weekly memo and say to myself, "this week, I'll start." But then a few projects come in and it gets pushed to the bottom of the "to-do" list.

I've wanted to learn blogging and about podcasting for sometime, so hopefully, I'll stick with it and finish the program...even if I don't make it by 12/23!!!!

Cold weather

It's refreshing to be in a snowstorm. It makes me feel so Alive! But too long and I can think of nothing but cold toes and frozen fingers.