Thing 30 -- addendum

Whoo-hoo! I tweaked the delicious cloud font colors by looking at the color numbers from my settings page on blogger and cutting and pasting the codes (minus the #) into the html from delicious in the spots that appeared to be the color codes.

Hey, for you tech folks that might be a no-brainer. But for someone like me, with a degree in English and whose last math class was in 1975, it's a big deal. :-)

Thing 30 -- More RSS and Delicious

I have a link to Google Reader on my iGoogle page, which is my homepage at work. I spend about 10 to 15 minutes each morning skimming through the short versions of posts, and click on the full texts of those that I want to read more fully. I do this every work day, and usually on the weekend too. If I go to Google Reader separately, which I do if there are over 50 feeds, I have the feeds sorted into folders. For example, all the 23 things blogs are in the same folder. It helps somewhat, so that I know what it is I'm looking at. I do not use feeds for ordinary news material--it would just overwhelm me. I keep it--for the most part--professional. (Ok, Mark Bittmann's food blog doesn't count, but...)

I don't really use most of the Delicious bells and whistles. I did take advantage of this "thing" to improve my sorting of tags, tag bundles, etc. I got rid of duplicates, and added a bunch of new tag bundles to make my account more useful. For this "Thing" I added people to my network and tried subscribing to a few tags. But I have a feeling I will just end up with too much. I find most of my sites through all the feeds I subscribe to. But I will give it a try to see if I find new material this way too.

I do like the tag cloud, especially after I tweaked the size. I'm still going to try to tweak the color so that it matches my blog layout better. The new cloud from delicious comes with a button, so I didn't add a separate one.

Thing 29 -- Google Tools

From the first section, I chose to explore Google News. I find it too busy for my taste, but I suspect that is in part because I am an inverterate newspaper reader. I love the feel of the paper in my hands, and I would much rather sit at my kitchen table with paper and breakfast than sit at my computer to read the news. While I can appreciate that many people would prefer to read only the news they are interested in, I find that I read more deeply and in greater variety when I read the print versions. Nonetheless, I thought it wonderful that I could pick a section in a different language, and that I could allow them to create a personal "recommended" set of readings for me. (Although, as one of my colleagues asserts, it begins to feel a bit stalker-ish.)

On the other hand, I love the archive search and timeline feature. I can think of many applications in how I could use such a thing with students doing research on an historical topic. I also found it fun to see how often and when my school showed up in the media.

From the second set of options, I chose to work with Google Pages. I am fairly impressed with this feature, and even explored with a colleague the idea that we might change from the service we currently use for our teachers to a service like this one, since this is free and the other is not. But after working with it for a while, we decided it would not be cost-effective, given that we would have to train teachers in on this site, which is less user-friendly than the one our school currently uses. Still, if we did not have that option, I could easily imagine spending some time to customize this further. I put up a fairly rudimentary version of a class page here: http://sites.google.com/site/ttsplibrary/Home

On a similar note--but not strictly under this thing--I followed some advice I got in response to my forum question on the 23 Things Ning and set up a PBWiki page to start consolidating information for teachers on the topic of technology in our school. (Thanks, Caitlin!) Here is a link to what I have gotten together so far. http://ttspmedia.pbwiki.com/FrontPage

I've also recently shifted to gmail for my home email account. I haven't really played with tags and folders yet, but I do like how the "conversations" keep info together. I just have to get used to it.

Thing 28 -- Personalize Your Homepage

Because I had created an iGoogle page with the original 23 Things class, I chose to do more with that homepage. I chose it initially because I had begun to use Google Reader, so it seemed a logical fit. Now that I have changed my Internet provider at home, I have also started using gmail for my home account.

As part of this Thing, I added back my Yahoo mail account to the front page. I also added a Twitter gadget, a gadget to link to the MToaS wiki, a tab with Library materials, and a few more news and education gadgets. Because that felt a bit too "plug and play," I decided I would try to create a new theme for my home page. That took a bit more effort, since Google was not particularly clear what size or shape of photo would work. My effort isn't particularly spectacular, but it uses a photo from my vacation last year, so I like it. (It doesn't seem to be available to be shared, although I thought I gave that permission. It's called "Mountain Sunshine," if it ever shows up.)

I would have to say that I like having Twitter there, as well as Reader and the email accounts. I also find that the education gadgets often point me to things useful for my school. Many of the other gadgets and widgets seem too much for play and not so much for work.

I really want to explore how I can use these items as part of my library or for school services. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Some of the reading (the end of the Metz article) got more technical than I am, so I am still unsure how I can make this work.

Thing 27 -- Twitter Me This

Well, I had set up the Twitter account last year when I was working on the original 23 Things, but nobody I worked with or knew had heard of it. Nor were they interested in the minutiae of my life, not that I felt like sharing it either.

This year, I have discovered that many more people know about it (duh...) and I am more comfortable in having an "on-line" presence. Originally I was quite concerned about attracting oddball attention. Now, I think I worry more about getting no attention at all. Gee, I think I made it into the Cyber Age! My Twitter user name is LibraryLady90, and I did manage to add the widget to my blog as well.

I guess I would have to say that while I don't love it, I don't really hate it either. I'm actually more interested in seeing what the institutional users (L of C, SLJ, etc.) do with it than I am in writing about myself. As for my using it as part of my library, I'm not sure the school I work at has any need for it. I could see this being useful at the college level, maybe even high school, but I think as a K to 8 school, we don't have much need for this. At least not yet! ;-)

I am, however, going to try to post regularly (maybe once or so a day), just so that I can get the feel for it.

Obama me

This site was just too fun not to share. You can upload a photo of yourself and make an Obama poster.

The site is: http://obamiconme.pastemagazine.com/

Here is my photo

Thing 25-- Continued

I decided I wanted to play around with blogging in a different way. I set up a blog on Wordpress (http://las4poems.wordpress.com/ to focus on my poetry. Let me just say—I really understand why we were encouraged to try Blogger as newbies. I like the cleaner look of the Wordpress layout and the fact that I could customize it, but it was much less intuitive to navigate and more difficult to figure out what I was doing.

I also played with creating a Simpsons-style avatar. I think it worked okay, but I like the flexibility of the Yahoo ones better.

So my goal now is to use this blog to focus on Librarian and teacher type things, and to use http://las4poems.wordpress.com/ to focus on my poetry. Gee, are we shocked that a librarian would want to separate and categorize things?

Thing 26 -- More Things on a Stick

I joined the 23 Things on a Stick Ning last year in Round 1. I tried posting a question, but didn’t get any contributions or commentary. This time around, I took down the old question and reframed it as a new question as a discussion. I also created a “School Librarian – Media Center” group, so that I could find local teacher-librarians. I did join a group in the initial round called “Teacher Librarian Ning” that had some useful information and discussions. I thought I would try to do the same thing within our own little group.

I also left a comment for a metro area school librarian because I went to her school’s media website and liked how it was organized.

I would love to be able to use this forum for getting and sharing ideas from other people who work in a school. However, given that no one commented on my discussion for a year, I’m not sure how practical that might be.