Week 7 Microblogging

As Heather pointed out, I'm a "Plurker", I was introduced to microblogging by Kevin Honeycutt in Nov. 2008 and I became a plurk addict. We have PLN "Professional Learning Network" on plurk and my user name there is Librarygal also. For me having my PLN on plurk has been extremely helpful and healthy. We've been through many struggles the last two years in Kansas education and it's been extremely helpful to share with my online professional friends. They have listened and given a lot of advice.

Some of the biggest successes I've had with microblogging, include networking. I signed up because Kevin encouraged me to after he did a workshop at our school. From there my PLN has grown to over 180 friends who are educational professionals, teachers, librarians, tech people. I know that if I have a question, I can usually post it on Plurk and i'll get answers and advice almost immediately. It's been fun going to conferences and meeting people face to face that I plurk with on a regular basis.

I chose to remain on Plurk and not start a Twitter account because I don't have time to keep up with all the "social networking" i'm doing already. I know many more librarians are using Twitter but at the moment it's not in my time schedule.

I haven't added a lot of new people lately on Plurk, though just this week I did add a teacher from Oregon, who had heard Kevin present and she was looking for education friends. For me it was very easy to get friends on Plurk. I looked at people who were following Kevin Honeycutt, Dean Mantz, Alan Beam and others and when I found things in common I would add them as friends. I chose to keep my profile private and not have fans to limit the spam.

For me it's been a good experience and the networking aspect has been a great help.

Since I didn't Twitter Heather, I can't do your bonus work :) but you know me, I'm stuck in Plurk :0)

Week Six: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

I was introduced to Delicious at the MACE conference in the Spring and then again at the I Connect I Learn Conference in Hutchinson this summer. I have a bad habit of clicking and adding to favorites on whatever computer I'm on and then not knowing where to find the site again. I've found it very helpful to look at some of my colleagues delicious accounts for things that I was searching, like free legal music downloads, and web 2.0 tools for teachers.

I imported my favorites from this computer to my Delicious account and deleted some things. I sent a link of planning favorite tea parties to rbrown3 as instructed. I created a tag bundle, but i need to go in and add more tags. I wanted one for computer class stuff and one for summer reading, but i need to work on that some more. I did have to go in and add the tag button, i didn't have that on my toolbar, makes it nice as i tagged 23things site and my blog site for quick access.

I have looked at Diigo and Stumbleupon, both again recommended by some of techie school friends. If I ever slow down long enough to tag my bookmarks, they would be especially helpful and I see great value in a good Delicious account.....now whether I ever get that organized, i'm not sure :)

I do like the thought of making a library delicious account where I could post sites that I would like to reccomend for my summer reading and computer classes.

Week 5--RSS Feeds

I had heard about RSS but hadn't ever taken the opportunity to learn about them. I listened to the information on Google Reader, because I have most of my stuff on Google and rather than add another forum, I'll use Google Reader. It was pretty easy to use. I liked the fact that it had all the blogs I'm following already on there when I sat up the account. I checked out those and really like the feature where I don't have to go to each person's blog to read their new posts.

Then I started messing with the "Browse for Stuff" and that had a gold mine of opportunities for me. I had to be careful or I would end up with way more subscriptions than I would have time to read. The first one I chose to follow was Kevin Honeycutt's web 2.0 stuff. I know him and he actually was one who talked to me about RSS feeds first. Then because genealogy is my hobby I picked a genealogy feed. From there I went to the recommended sites and chose an ancestry feed that was recommended. I was looking for local news feeds and ended up adding Osawatomie Library and Linn County News. Since I'm involved in a lot of education stuff, I added one that was KASL and KSDE.

I think I will play with this some more and see how I could add an RSS feed to our public library site. I like the feature of using the J key to go down between feed items and the K key to go back up. That makes it really nice for navigating.

All these blog activities are from http://www.23thingskansas.org/ It is a class or workshop that many librarians across the state are taking this spring. It's been a lot of fun.

Cat in the Hat & Daisy Head Maizie

Cat in the Hat & Daisy Head Maizie
Originally uploaded by LaCygneLibrary

I'm not sure, what I'm doing now, but I am taking a photo from Flickr and posting it to my Blogspot account. We will see if this works.

Week 4: Photo Sharing

I chose to create an account in Flickr because the Library already had a yahoo account. I created an icon and profile with information about the LaCygne Library. I added photoes to Flickr that I had taken at some events at the Library. I have used some other Photo Sharing programs like Kodak and Shutterfly and Snapfish and enjoy getting pictures from friends this way. This is the first time I have actually tagged photos, though I notice that in Facebook a lot of photos are tagged. I have also created movies in Animoto and looked at things in Photobucket.

I would like to associate the Flickr page with my library's website, and show pictures there. If I do that, then parents can see the activities that occur at the library. I have some concerns about posting photos, but will try to do groups and not identify by name the people in pictures.

I think that photo sharing sites are a good way to preserve your memories as well as share them.