Week 3: Thing #5 -- Flickr

It's easy to spend hours and hours looking at images on the Flickr site and in Flickr groups. Some images are great; most are not. The tags feature is really helpful in narrowing image searches.

At The Library of Congress Flickr group I found a neat color photo of a grocery storefront taken in the 1940's. This image is from one of two collections LOC has recently posted in Flickr in an effort to bring more of their collection directly to the public. It's a copyright free image.

What makes searching the LOC images through their Flickr group different, as opposed to viewing the photographs directly through the American Memory Collection at the LOC website, is that one can leave comments about -- and even directly on (!!!) --- the images and set tags in Flickr. There's a blog attached to this group, too. I am intrigued by commenters' knowledge of times and places. I want to look further to see examples of how schools have used Flickr to engage students.

A small technical challenge that I am still working on is removing what was my first attempt to upload the image from LOC's persistent URL for that photograph. Instead of uploading the image to my blog as I had first intended, I inserted only a link to the image.

I did finally place the image in my blog by saving it first to the desktop and then inserting it from the Edit Posts page; however, the additional active link to the image remains.

Play takes time!

Week 2: Thing #4 --- Create an Avatar

This activity was fun and easy. My avatar looks great on my blog page!

Week 2: Thing #3 -- Create a Blog

The directions for creating a blog were clear, and I was able to create my blog easily a week ago last Saturday.

However, I am confused about the various passwords and logins required, especially how to get to my blog to post to it when I am not at my home computer. I bookmarked the Blogger Dashboard in Firefox on my Mac and am getting in from home that way. I do, however, have to use the Blogger password which is also a Google password. This, of course, is a separate password and login from the one used to create the avatar, which is a Yahoo registration.

A little confusing, but I am sure I'll get used to it.

Week 1: Thing #1 --- Goals for Library 2.0

My goal during this online tutorial is to learn about various Web 2.0 tools so that I can use them to better communicate with school colleagues, students, and parents. A further goal is to have fun exploring these tools and to discover ways to bring them in to my school setting.

Week 1: Thing #2 --- 7.5 Habits of Highly Effective Learners

Which Habit is hardest?

My tendency to be influenced by time pressure, including the need to make the completion of any task work for multiple purposes, kicks the backside of #7.5 Play every time. But PLAY is critical to skill building, deep understanding, and confidence.

Which Habit is easiest?

Habit #7: Teaching & Mentoring is easiest. I am a helper/facilitator by nature. Staff and students know that they have a partner in learning new things and solving information problems. And I recall clearly what it is like to be a new learner. This memory helps me relate to others who are learning something new.