Sunday, June 24, 2007

Week 5, Thing 11 - LibraryThing

This is a great idea! What a great way to keep track of the books that I own and have read. I love the fact that it is so easy to use and add books to my library. I added several of my books and I plan on adding more when I finish my 23 Things. This is a resource that I will certainly put to good use! Click here to see my Library. Can you tell what book I'm looking forward to reading in the next month or so?

Week, 5, Thing 10 - Play with an Online Image Generator


This is the image that I created in meez.com. For those of you who don't recognize it, I'm doing the Thriller dance! What a hoot this was! I had a great time creating an alternate personality and putting myself into a place where I only go in my imagination! I love the tatoos that I have on my arms, because I'm not brave enough to get any in real life.

It's just that kind of a day...


Oh, how I wish I were sitting along side this creek. It is a beautiful day in Gettysburg and I am stuck inside with a head cold. Oh well! At least I can enjoy the lovely weather and this babbling brook from somewhere inside my head... it's just that kind of a day!

Week 4, Thing 9 - Explore MERLIN

The Drama of a Prairie Dog! I love this 5-second video. It is all over the Internet, but I found it most recently when I was exploring Technorati, which seems to be the most visually appealing of all the search tools that I looked at for this Thing. The look of the site is clean and not overwhelming, like some of the others are. I know that they contain lots of great ways to search for feeds, but most of them were extremely cluttered. Technorati has a couple of great features that allow the user to see commonly searched words (a scrolling marquis across the top of the page will allow the user to click on the random links, and a box on the righthand side of the page has a list of randomly searched words too). I also really like the link to WTF, which in the world of Technorati means "Where's the Fire" or more specifically, the latest hot topics that people are blogging about.

As for MERLIN, I created an account and look forward to exploring that site a bit more. I have heard of it, but had not used it at all before today.

Week 4, Thing 8 - RSS Feeds

I love the idea of having one location that gives me updates for all of the sites that I regularly visit. Currently, I keep all of my favs listed in "My Favories" which is a good place to keep them organized. I thought that was sufficient because I could go to each site to check out what was new at each one. As the Lee LeFever video pointed out, that takes a lot of time and by creating a bloglines account, I could save a lot of time. So, I created one and put all of my personal favorites like PostSecret, CuteOverload, and Perez Hilton in it, along with some news sites and library sites. I think that I will have a lot of fun customizing it in the future. For now, I'm glad I learn more about these and I look forward to using RSS feeds in the future. Click below to get to my Bloglines Account:

Breadcrumbs' Updates

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Week 3, Thing 7 - Anything that Interests me this week

I am a huge YouTube fan, and while I know that we are going to have a "Thing" about YouTube, I can't help but write about my most recent favorite video. If you are a fan of reality shows, you may know that America's Got Talent originated across the pond in the form of Britain's Got Talent. The show just wrapped up another season and this year's winner was an incredibly talented and humble man named Paul Potts. He is a mobile phone salesman and he is the most unassuming man. I can honestly say that if this was the American version of the show, the man wouldn't stand a chance. He doesn't have that "look" that seems to be so important on American "reality" tv. Anyhow, his talent is that he can sing opera. Now let me tell you, I enjoy all kinds of music, but I will say that opera is not one that generally listen to. Take a peek at this video and prepare to be blown away. This is the final of the show, so keep in mind that he goes on to win the show. I don't think he'll be selling mobile phones anymore!

Week 3, Thing 6 Flickr Mashups...

It was fun exploring the third party Flickr applications. I have enjoyed looking at the mashups that other folks have produced on their blogs. The third party application that I really like is the Flickr Postcard Browser which allows you to search for various tags and it produces about 25 snapshot pictures that have that tag. I searched for Gettysburg, PA and Washington, CT (where I currently live and where I grew up, respectively). It was fun to see the various pictures that popped up, especially the ones that came from my hometown. This is a great way to get some unique photographs of well-known (and not so well-known) locations.

Week 3, Thing 5 - Explore Flickr


The Big Mall
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9144581@N05/581654300/

It has been a hectic week and I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to explore Flickr, but I did create and account and post a picture of my own to my account. The link above will take you to my picture (which I was finally able to add to the beginning of this post - major accomplishment!!), which was taken about 3 years ago at the Mall of America. My husband, my brothers, and their significant others are in the picture, along with Snoopy and the gang. My brother Gabe and his wife Lisa (who just had a baby on Thursday night - my adorable nephew Jack) live in Minnesota and took us to The Big Mall, where we enjoyed shopping, taste-testing deep fried twinkies, and a ride on the roller coaster in the middle of the mall! It was a great trip and I can't wait to go there this summer. Of course, I'll be more interested in meeting Jack, but I'm sure I'll find some time to get to the mall!

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Week 2, Things 3 & 4 - Set up your own Blog and register it

Clearly, I'm having fun with this! I'm looking forward to spending some time customizing my blog and truly making it my own. I'm a bit ahead of schedule though, so I'm going to slow down and enjoy the ride. As I said in a previous post, I tend to learn by rapid-fire (jumping in too fast and not learning everything that I need to before I get overly-involved in something). So, my blog is now set up. It was quite easy. I'll confess that I have another blog (on AOL) that I recently started and I am a frequent commenter on other blogs (Cute Overload is one of my favorites). So, I have been exposed to blogging, but I haven't spent too much time on my own. This will be a great way to learn new things that I can do on my blog!

Week 1, Thing 2 - Pointers from Lifelong Learners

Well, I already posted quite a bit under the title "7 1/2 Lifelong Learning Habits," but I'm sure I can add a bit more to what I have already learned! I would like to say that the habit that I am most looking forward to is #7 1/2: Play! I love to try out new things. I used to teach computer classes, from the very basic "How to Use a Mouse," up to more advanced classes like Word, Publisher, and Searching the Internet. When I taught my beginning classes, I would always tell my students (who consisted mainly of senior citizens) that they can't break the computer. Usually they were very apprehensive new learners and they were so worried about breaking the computer. I would always tell them that they may get lost (on the internet, for example), but that they couldn't "break" the computer. I always keep that in mind when I am learning new things. I would also tell my students that the best way for them to learn was to play around and experiment on the computer. While most of them started out to be nervous learners, I am proud to say that many of my students went on to be successful and skilled computer users. So, that being said, I'm looking forward to Playing with the new technologies that will be taught in this program!

Week 1, Thing 1 - About the Program

This is where it all starts. I'm on my way to learning a lot of new technology - and I hope that you will have fun too. As I have mentioned in a previous entry, I love to blog and I believe that this is going to be a great way to learn.

I am participating in the MD Libraries Learning 2.0 program, which will allow me to learn and play with new technologies on my own. Of course, there are lots of librarians participating, many from within my own system, so I will have lots of folks to talk to about the 23 "Things" that we will be learning in this program. There are "things" in this program that I am especially interested it. I love photography, and I love to use my digital camera, but I haven't had any experience in posting pictures to the web. I'm excited about using flickr and some of the other resources that we will learn about in the coming weeks!

I'll have an entry for each "Thing" that I learn and I will likely include other entries as well!

7 1/2 Lifelong Learning Habits

I love the idea of lifelong learning. I love to learn new things and to keep my brain constantly engaged. Of the 7 1/2 habits, I feel pretty good about most of them. My best habit is that I have confidence in myself to be a competent and effective learner (Habit #4). I like to challenge myself and I feel as though I can learn anything, if I put enough effort into it.My great challenge, however, is that I am not very good at beginning with the end in mind (Habit #1). Often, I will get half-way through learning something new before I really consider why I am learning it. My goal is usually to learn something completely, from start to finish. But I am often well into the project before I really think about the purpose of why I am doing it. For example, I wanted to learn how to knit so that I could create an afghan for my brother's wedding gift. I learned quickly and got half-way through the afghan before I realized that I could have learned (and probably should have learned) a lot more information before I dove into the project. I'm certainly not afraid to learn new things, but sometimes I get so excited about learning something new that I forget to learn the preliminary items that go along with it. I have to slow down and take my learning a bit slower!

The Beginning

I'm working on this project for work, learning about lots of new technologies and one of our first assignments was to create a blog. This will allow us to track our learning and to share what we have learned with others. I love blogging and I'm looking forward to incorporating learning new technologies into this journal. This should be a fun project!

I've decided to name this blog Breadcrumbs because I feel as though these entries will be like bits of me left on the trail of my life. I hope that you will enjoy my breadcrumbs! Until next time...