Thing 12

Twitter is everywhere. I heard about it after there was a sermon series at my church on "The Theology of Twitter." There was coverage by local TV networks and apparently CNN ran a clip. One part of the clip showed my husband sitting in a pew and typing into his phone. We were encouraged to Twitter during the sermon. My husband confessed he really wasn't "twittering", he was just playing. The theological impication was that the church must communicate and will need to embrace new technology in order to do this. However, I haven't used it yet. I'll write more after I set up an account
S
I set up the account, my name "morereflections". I found another blog where somebody had posted their user name, but when I tried to become a follower Twitter said the account didn't exist. I haven't found anybody else. Maybe I should go write something in my account in case I have some followers. I think having the tweets appear on my phone would be annoying, and I probably won't remember to check the web page. Maybe e-mail would be the easiest way for me. I follow my spouse, who felt guilty after appearing on the new and did set up an account and 4 organizations.
S

Thing 11

I signed up for AIM Express, http://www.aim.com/aimexpress.adp since it was web based. I tried the Google IM first, and it never would load. My screen name is "somereflections". It would be nice if someone would message me. I don't think IM will be very useful for me. I think the odds of my friends and family both being on the computer as the same time as me and having the time to IM are small. If we had that much time, we'd phone. E-mail is a more useful form of communication because it can be read and answered at the reader's convenience. Text messaging on the phone is also convenient for short messages. I don't see how I would use IM in an elementary library. However, I have enjoyed finding out about all of this technology.
S

Thing 10

Ning was interesting. I found several sites on it for things I was interested such as mysteries, books, Bluegrass music. However, I didn't join after reading the article. Privacy is an issue here. Also, I know several people on Facebook, and it will take enough time keeping up with that
S
July 29
A friend told me that a child we know was recently diagnosed with an rare disorder. I did what any librarian would do- a little research. I used the NORD data base and found a support group for this metabolic disorder. I was inerested to find out that it was an Ning site. It seemed like a very useful site for parents and friends of children with this disease. I'll be on the lookout for other Ning sites.
S

Thing 9

I guess I will have to admit that I have found Facebook pretty addicting. I have made friends and joined groups and become a fan. I put the website to my local library on my wall. My patronus is a bat. I joined my local church, town, and library group. I joined a Star Trek group. I work with a blind student a few hours a week, so I joined a blind students group and a braille group. One of my daughters has CP, so I joined a group for that. It will be interesting to see how useful these will be for me in the future, but it has been fun today. I do see the privacy problems, since my page tells what town I live in and where I go to church.
S

Thing 8

Facebook wasn't difficult to set up. I feel like I maybe the only person in the world without a page. After putting in my name, e-mail address, and age a list of potential friends appeared, two of whom I know. Okay, how do they do that? I didn't put in my e-mail address for finding friends. I told my husband he would be in big trouble if he didn't accept me as a friend. And the wise man did so immediately, even if I can't spell his band's name. I can see how it could be bad to have too much personal information on a page. I am interested in doing the next lesson to see more ways to use Facebook. From my husband's page I went to our church's music ministry page. It seems like a good way for members to keep in touch as well as encourage people to join. I am also curious so see the page of my daughter, the new librarian.
S

Thing 7

I added a feed to my Google Reader and another to my blog. It was easy to do. And I think these are great ways to handle blogs, the issue again is time.

Thing 6

I am afraid that Google Reader may be dangerous for me. I ended up signing up for blogs on some of the topics that interest me, such as accessibility and mystery books, and if I read them all I won't have time for anything else! In reality, it is a great way to keep up with a field.
S

Thing 5

Image generators were also fun to play with.
.
This time cutting and pasting the code worked! Very exciting. I also created a magazine cover, but my husband complains that his band's name should be two words. I told him reporters always get names wrong.

S

More Flickr

Playing with the Flickr was fun, especially adding captions and the mashup. I played with lots of toys.
I spelled out the word "read" and pasted in the code that the site said would allow the letters to appear on the blog, but it didn't work.
I posted pictures to flickr. I don't know if my daughter will like the mishmash of her graduation picture, but that was fun, and it was fun making a mosaic of wedding pictures. I don't know if I have time to play with flicker much, but it does to alot of great stuff. I did decide to put the account to use, and put some wedding pictures that family were wanting there, instead of waiting for my husband to put them on DVDs.
So I have learned a lot.
S

Flickr

June 13, 2009
I obtained a Flickr account and uploaded some vacation pictures.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleaseview/ is the location. It wasn't hard to upload the pictures. I wasn't able to change the icon, I think the picture I was trying to use was too big, I decided it would be better to try again later. This does seem like a great way to share pictures.

Electricity

June 13, 2009
There is one problem with this technology--it all uses electricity. Our house was one of the 500,000 who lost power from downed power lines from thunder storms in the DFW area on Wednesday. It was great when it came back on on Friday. However, it made working on 23 Things impossible. My daughter went to a public library to do her e-mail and some work for her on-line job. However, my links and passwords were on my computer, so I didn't work on 23 Things there. Okay, I should write them down. My neighbors were surprised to learn that, as long as the place has electricity, the local library is great for checking on e-mail. And it has air conditioning, besides all of the great books. So there may be more visitors from my neighborhood at the library if this happens again. I did a lot of reading by flashlight, so the outage wasn't all bad.
And the neighbors check in with each more often, looking for the latest news.
Flickr is very interesting. It was great looking at pictures from my favorite places. I will use the account. This is great for libraries. I wonder if school libraries use it much? I'll blog more after I set up an account.

Library 2.0

June 8, 2009
I watched the videos today. Stephen Abram's was very interesting. He referred to the minor change of technology and the web made on libraries. I disagree. I became a school librarian in 1975. I had a manual typewriter to type the catalog cards with. Students signed their names on cards to borrow books. Buying a new set of encyclopedias every year was crucial. Technology did make a very big difference in the library world. I do agree that all of the different parts of technology that make up 2.0 are making enormous changes. I agree that we must make it a focus of libraries or we will be seen just as warehouses, not an important part of today's society. He was also right that we must use the technology ourselves, but that can be the hard part. It takes me more than a few minutes a day to learn something new.
"Think Library 2.0" did a great job of showing visually just how much technology has changed from pencil and paper to things like Flickr and Utube on the web. I like how he showed how Web 2.0 is linking people. Now we need to use Web 2.0 to link people to the library!