Thing 30-- done!

Thing 30

Things 29 and 30 could almost be combined, I think. Certainly “discovery exercise 1” in 29 could be combined here.

And speaking of doing things differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

Fewer things. 30 is daunting. I know, I know, what do you leave out? Well, Combine a couple—Week 9 has 3 things about Flickr—are they all necessary? I found it hard to distinguish well among the discovery exercises. Week 5 IM. The two things could be combined. The two blog posts could become one.

I found a number of libraries in Va. that are doing Learning 2.0, most with fewer things. It would be interesting to know their rationale for this decision. Are the staff more advanced than us? Was this all the time their leaders could permit staff to devote to it? Are they planning a followup that includes the things they left out before?

I’m sure many people have commented on the surprisingly long time that it took to complete many of the things. This is very difficult to control. I know that many persevered because of the prize at the end. If I had had to fit this in with a desk schedule, I’d never have been able to finish it.

I doubt that similar incentives can be offered forever. So how about just offering one or two related things each month, and keeping them up for a long time. That way people will have more time to devote to it, and not feel pressured.


Unexpected outcomes:
I understood much more of what I was doing than I expected. The step-by-step, multiple approaches (read about what it is, then take and tour, then do it) worked for my learning style. If someone says “here’s how to change a lightbulb”, I want to know what a lightbulb IS, and how it might be useful to change it, first. As I mentioned in #29, there’s tweaking I still need to do for some things. But, on #29, I FINALLY successfully added a comment to a blog. I’ve been trying to do that off and on for months.

Semi-unexpected outcome: I really enjoyed blogging—or at least the opportunity to express myself in writing. Even though I know I’m mostly talking to myself (my blog isn’t going to grab anyone’s attention), I can at least believe in the possibility that I’m writing for someone. I’m not a diarist—I prefer writing for a presumed audience.

Would I choose to participate in a future program? Of course. We’ll have to have future programs just to keep up with the next steps. Not having been born with a mouse, I need a little more help with some of the newer things—even knowing they exist.

Thing 29

Thing 29, most probably

I am hoping you won’t take these “Things” down from blogspot. I’ve gone back to earlier lessons several times since October, to reread information, or to verify something. Since so many of the resources are (duh) links, printing the ‘things” won’t help.

I just went back to Thing 9, about RSS feeds and sent the thing link to my brother in Richmond. He was talking about how he gets his news, the browsing of multiple sites, etc., etc., so I asked if he knew about RSS feeds. He had been wondering about the little orange buttons!


Initially I was fearful I wouldn’t be able to get the technical parts, but the program was structured so that it explained what we were doing and walked us through a lot, so that I became more confident. Even though I’ve had trouble with some of the “things”, with practice I’ve gotten better at them. With time I can work out some of the other glitches, too.

DANGERDANGERDANGER: I can be a bit obsessive/compulsive, and found myself spending more time than I should on some of the sites. I can easily see spending hours and hours playing with Library Thing, or Flickr, or YouTube, or (name almost any tool we’ve learned about). Even while reading the introductory articles I’d get lost in a trail of related links. It’s probably a good thing that I haven’t had a functional home Internet connection for a couple or three years.

In looking at other blogs and web sites, I can now recognize what I’m seeing in many cases. For example, back in November I looked at a blog and was impressed by the drawing of the blogger. Now I understand that it came from one of the image manipulation tools (the blogger told me that when I talked to him several months ago, but I didn’t understand him).

ROLLYO thoughts

Interesting. I can see how useful this could be for a specific hobby or interest, or research topic. Like anything else, of course, it has its limitataions. I searched the “free photos” rollyo for “Tom Selleck” and “Elizabeth Peters”. There were a number of hits that weren’t pictures—just the mention of the name on someone’s profile, or an artistic photo or bricks “Tom Selleck’s Mustache” (didn’t understand that!).

Even with folders, “favorites” lists become cumbersome. I expect a very personal Rollyo could help this. You really wouldn’t even have to organize them—just pull it up and search the topic. And, since the site list is conveniently located, if you know you need to look at the main site for a particular topic, then you can click on that.

I’m wondering how it would work with sites requiring passwords to search, or databases you must subscribe to. For example: If I were doing research, I might like to be able to search my topic on Ebsco, Literary Resources, and Wiki. Could I create a Rollyo of all 3? Probably not.

Nice that the paid ads are in a different color!

Library Thing

Intriguing. I would also like to add audiobooks to the list. I'll have to try that when I have more time-- probably work by adding a book manually by ISBN. I fumbled around trying to figure out how to add reviews and ratings. It wasn't intuitive (to me, at least).

I just added some books I've read in the last couple of months, from several genres, etc.. It was interesting to see how many-- or how few -- others had added the same books.

Melvil Dewey Warholized, better

This from www.shadowfire.de/warholizer
I like it better than the old format one.
Class in 779

Altogether I tried and more or less successfully posted 3 different images-- 3 different posts. Looking at the others, especially from "The Generator Blog", I can see there are lots of fun things to try out-- and now I understand some of the images I've seen on other blogs.

Rats. Technical difficulties. Yesterday the image showed on the blog. Today I get the pesky corner x.

Melvil Dewey Warholized

Tasteful Lady on Funny Face Generator (26)

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It was this one or the pinhead, a definite "pear" shape. I prefer uniform fat.
Our instructions did say "try to be tasteful, too."