flickr toys trading card,
originally uploaded by pollyalida.

I’m definitely having a little too much fun with all this. Here’s my trading card created using 2 different graphic generators. I used Face Your Manga to create a fun avatar that doesn’t look at all like me. And then fd’s flickr toys to put that image on a trading card.

This could be a fun project for kids and staff. I was talking to a school librarian in a class earlier this week and she was thinking about having students use these cards as a way to present key information for reports on states, countries, biographies, etc. Also as “get to know you” cards at the beginning of the school year. Great ideas!

smiles all around!, originally uploaded by pollyalida.

Flickr is my all time favorite online place. I love photography and what better place to indulge that interest than a site built by photographers from all over the world. It’s just amazing to me how easily we can share the experiences of someone else’s life through their photos.

At it’s simplest, it’s just a really easy way to share photos with friends, family or your library community.  But what I’ve come to appreciate most has been the sense of community here. Through comments left on photos, people make connections and share the events in their lives and communities. And sometimes those connections spill over wonderfully into ‘real life’. And what do flickr friends do when they meet up? Take pictures of course!

Since I’ve been using flickr for a long time now, I used the time for this “thing” to look for features I hadn’t noticed before. Being a travel addict, it was fun to discover the PLACES feature. Here you’ll find pages for places all over the world, places big and small. Each page includes a map, selected photos, featured photographers and flickr groups about that place. What a terrific way to explore new destinations or our own back yards.

I use a wiki to organize resources for the classes I teach.  I used to maintain web pages with all the resources and host them on my own server. That was fine, but it wasn’t easy to make changes at the last minute or add resources that students discovered in classes. I love being able to update the pages immediately when someone finds a great new resource or runs into dead links.

And being able to open the wiki up for editing by class participants and other instructors is so handy. During the “taste of 2.0″ class that I teach, each participant creates a wiki page to get a feel for how they work and how easy it is to edit. They’re also welcome to add to and edit the other pages on the wiki. That’s a kind of trust that I wouldn’t have imagined having 10 years ago.

Wikis are easy to create, but do take a fair bit of tending! Mine is very much like my garden: a bit sprawling, a bit out of control, weeds here and there and gems that get hidden.  I would advise anyone starting a wiki to think through what they want the wiki to accomplish, who will be contributing to it and who will be the “master gardeners” taking responsibility for keeping it from getting too disorganized.

It’s also important to set up some initial structure to help contributors and readers find their way around the wiki. Even if you just put up some pages with headings and subheadings suggesting what might be added and where, that will help your contributors overcome that ‘blank page-itis’ that we all suffer from now and then.

One of my favorite library wiki projects is from the Ipswich Library in Queensland, Australia.  Remember When : Memories of Ipswich is “a collaborative, web based story writing project by Ipswich seniors in partnership with the Ipswich Library”.  Such a wonderful  way to for the library and participants to create on online collection of  memories, stories and photos from the town’s past.

Hard to pick just a few!

• BBC Radio 4 Ramblings with Clare Balding – Delightful interviews about walking through various parts of Great Britain. Strap on your walking shoes.
• SirsiDynix Institute – Terrific professional development events.
• OPAL Podcasts – More great interviews and professional development programs.
• Spark on CBC Radio – Technology and culture
• Fran Sorin – Quick gardening tips.

What I’ve learned so far is that I’m already behind! It is really hard to keep up with work, life and any sort of courses or learning opportunities. Particularly when it’s up to me to make sure I’m on schedule. I’m very deadline driven, so any sort of project without a deadline (like weeding the garden?) tends to get back-burnered.

Anyways, I’m determined to catch up! And even if a topic is already familiar to me, I’m going to take advantage of the learning time to explore new things about that “thing” and will consider this time my own personal indulgence time. Anything I learn can only help me with the teaching I do. And understanding what others are going through when they participate in a Learning 2.0 project will help me adminster similar programs.

I <3 podcasts bigtime. If anything is responsible for me getting healthier, it’s podcasts. The connection? Listening to something interesting gets me out walking and running more often than I would otherwise. And listening to library and technology related podcasts lets me do some professional development along the way.

My mp3 player is NOT an iPod – it’s an Archos 104 player. It’s similar in size to an iPod. But unlike an iPod, I can use it to play books downloaded from the library. And it has that all important bookmarking feature, which lets you put virtual bookmarks in multiple files so you can return to the right spot in any of them.

For this discovery exercise, I thought I’d use the time to upgrade Windows Media Player and clean up my virtual piles of podcasts and music. The latest version of WMP (version 11) still doesn’t have support for subscribing to podcasts. Not sure why, seems like there will be a growing demand for this.

I tried out several podcast retrieving programs that were supposed to work with WMP. The programs, iPodder and it’s later incarnation as Juice, just didn’t work. Rather than waste any more time, I’m still using iTunes to subscribe to podcasts. iTunes downloads the new episodes to my computer. Then WMP scans the hard drive for new files. It works well, but it’s not the most straightforward process.

I was also determined to finally learn a bit more about WMP, so finally spent a few minutes creating playlists and getting them synched properly to my mp3 player. This wasn’t hard, but I just needed to set aside a few minutes to do it and this was my excuse to take the time.

And that’s my podcast experience for ‘thing 3′!

(p.s. true confessions – I don’t run any more, but I can walk pretty darned fast)