Learn and Play #23

                                                                  

Blogging was a completely new experience for me. Although I had been using computers for some time, my knowledge was limited pretty much to e-mail and office documents. What I discovered was not only am I thrilled with the experience of blogging, but as I have gone along accomplishing the learn and play "things", I want to search out more tools and information.
I would say that several of the "things" accomplished through learn and play are effective for library use. As a matter of fact, one of the things, RSS feeds, would be very useful to "power users" of the library who would like to stay up to date with news from the homepage. An extension of this would be to use twitter feed so that posts are automatically brought to the public's attention on twitter when published. Of course, flickr is a good way to store photos because of the amount of space they take up in the computer. This could likely be said of YouTube as well.

Pixelwiki Blog                                   

After starting the Learn and Play program, I began adding posts as I felt compelled to by the nature of current events. Since CML embarked on this adventure, the world has been more active in it's history making; 2008 Olympics, extreme gasoline prices, Hurricane Ike, death of David Foster Wallace, stock market crash, 2008 presidential election, and the state of our nation as well as the world. I also posted several things for amusement and to become better aquainted with what was available and how it would present on a blog; widgets, myspace, and a mashup using silverlight to name a few.

What I have found is that many of the tools allowed me to quickly compile information from several sources to share or to document events for my own reflection later on. I also found many of the tools highly useful in connecting with others in meaningful ways. Not only did we discuss our opinions, but sometimes we were passing along useful survival information, as was the case during Hurricane Ike.                    

I feel that this means of communication can be of great value especially when sending important messages to many people whether it be a community, a nation, or even to the world.

 

NOTES:
?'s from Learn and Play;
What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
YouTube and Twitter
If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?" Yes!

This blog's format can be accessed using a Google e-mail address. That said, it is wise to create an annonymous e-mail for the purpose of experimentation when building a blog.
In addition, I think creating a "brand" name for yourself lends itself to keeping your privacy.
Using this name and similar or, if possible, the same passwords for all of the sites you are likely to join lends itself to consistancy and ease of remembering how to access tools.
I feel that Learn and Play is best considered for the possibility of staff creating things to use or for customers to use because of the ease of the social networking tools.