#23! The end is here!!

Congratulations!! You have reached the 23rd thing!! Amazing! Please give yourself a pat on the back completing the program. Your reward for completing this journey before the deadline is a useful and handy flash drive! But before sending you off into the world, I ask for one last discovery post.

I ask that for your last and final exercise for this program, reflect on your learning journey and post a few thoughts. Here are some questions to prompt you if you’re drawing a blank …

• What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
• How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
• Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
• What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?And last but not least…
• If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?

I want to thank you each and every one of you for going on this journey with me. I have learned so much from each of you, and have been impressed with your thoughts, insights, and accomplishments. I hope that this isn’t the end of our learning journey, but rather the start of something amazing, collaborative and fun!

#22 Get a Second Life!

Computer and video games have always been popular among teenagers. Role playing games can be an especially effective learning tool regarding community, relationships, and decision making. Second Life is a very popular online game rendered in 3-D, imagined and created by the residents.

Second Life was developed by Linden Research, and in echoing the “real world” or “first life”, you are able to own land, trade goods and services, engage in commerce, participate in education activities, and much more.

Residents of Second Life are represented through avatars, or a users representation of themselves. Avatars can be human in appearance, can be of either sex, and have a variety of humanoid forms. Communication in Second Life is through a chat or instant messaging. Second Life also has a growing economy, where residents can exchange currency for the Linden dollar, the currency of Second Life. Some entrepreneurs are doing a brisk business in Second Life, creating stores, designing buildings, and offering services and making real money in doing so.

Public and academic libraries are building libraries in Second Life. The Info Island Community is

Discovery Resources

Second Life: Take a look through the website, look at the exchange data, and learn more about the pricing for this community
Introduction to Second Life: a short YouTube video
Libraries in Second Life
What is the fuss on Second Life?
Teen Second Life: PLCMC (the same one that created Learning 2.0)

Discovery Exercise

1. Take a look at the Discovey Resources. If you are feeling adventurous, sign up for an account with Second Life and explore the islands. (Make sure your computer can handle the software requirements.)
2. Write a blog post about your findings and thoughts on Second Life. Is there a role for Second Life in libraries?

#21 Social Networking

Social networking sites have exploded all over the internet in the last few years. The first big site to gain attention was MySpace, which revolutionized the ways people in online environments form and maintain relationships. Facebook is another of the most popular social networking sites and gained a lot of popularity when they opened their network up to everyone. Originally, this site was developed for college and high school students. Since opening up the site to everyone in Sept 2006 the number of users has grown. Facebook as a social networking tool helps facilitate the sharing of information through a users real world social network. While MySpace allowed people to cultivate a personality, Facebook is about the relationships one has in real life and outside the digital realm. Facebook has over 54 million registered users and active users double every six months.

Facebook introduced some innovated concepts in the past year, opening up their code to developers to create applications. (Think how Microsoft Word is an application that runs on a Windows operating system or platform. Facebook is the platform.)

Wary that social networking might not be for you? Consider joining LinkedIn, a social networking site for professionals. Think of this site as a way of networking with business contacts, colleagues and former clients.

Discovery Resources:

Facebook Site Tour: Learn about the site, how to set up a profile and security features
12 Ways to use Facebook Professionally
About LinkedIn

Discovery Exercise:

1. Register for an account at FaceBook or LinkedIn.
2. Create a profile and search for friends, family members or colleagues. Take a look at the privacy settings. Find
3. Blog about your findings. What applications do you like? How do you think you can use these tools?

#20 Discovering Web 2.0 tools

The end is in site! The end is in site!

Throughout the course of this Learning 2.0 program, we have explored a small sampling of these new internet technologies and websites that are empowering users with the ability to create and share content. Estimates place the number of Web 2.0 tools somewhere between 300 and 500, with only a handful emerging as market dominators. Time will tell which of these new collaborative, social networking and information tools will remains on top, come and go, one thing that is for sure, these tools are here to stay.

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to select any site from this of Web 2.0 nominees and winners explore it. With so many to choose from, it might be handy to first select a category that interests you, or jump right to the list of the winners. Be careful to select a tool that is Free and that doesn’t require a plug-in or download. The majority of these are free, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Select any tool/site from the list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees or winners.
2. Explore the site you selected.
3. Create a post about your discover. What did you like or dislike about the tool? What were the site’s useful features? Could you see any applications for its use in a library setting?

There is SO much to explore in Web 2.0, so just start with one!

#19 Web-based Applications: Go beyond the desktop!

The availability and use of online productivity web-based applications (think word processing and spreadsheets) has exploded over the past few years and with great reasons! These powerful application provide users with the ability to create and share documents over the internet without installed desktop applications. Some experts have speculated that this emerging trend may mean the death of Microsoft Office and other software-based productivity tools, while some think these tools have their place, just not in the office.

One of the benefits to web-based applications is that they eliminate the need to worry about different software versions or file types as you email documents or move them from computer to computer. Another bonus is that collaboration features are built in, making it easy for multiple users to edit the same file (with versioning) and provide users the ability to easily save and convert documents as multiples file types. You can even use many of these tools such as Zoho Writer and Google Docs to author and publish posts to your blog. It’s this type of integration with other web 2.0 tools that also makes web-based apps so appealing.

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to take a look at the web-based word processing tool, Google Docs, create a simple document, and then write about your discoveries in your blog.

Discovery Resources:

A short list of web-based productivity applications.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Create a free account for yourself in Google Documents. (If you are using Blogger, you should be able to login with the same username and password as your Blogger blog.)
2. Explore the site and create a few test documents. Try the spreadsheet capabilities or the presentation software.
3. Create a blog post about your discoveries.

Optional: If you’re up for the challenge, try using Google Doc’s “publish” options to post to your blog.

* Note: You can also explore Zoho Writer by creating a free account.

#18 Exploring the depths of the blogsphere with Technorati

You’ve been blogging for about 6 weeks now, exploring the blogs of the other participants and perhaps outside the Ferguson community. And as the blogs seems endless, perhaps you have wondered, just how big is the blogsphere? Is there an end? According to Technorati, the leading authority and search tool for blogs, 1.4 blogs are created every second, and they are currently tracking over 70 million blogs!

These numbers are truly astounding, but you have already seem for yourselves just how easy blogging can be. Many industries are taking advantage of the publishing tools to communicate their messages and ideas, including libraries!

So how do you get your blog listed as part of the blogosphere and tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search? Since you are using Blogger, the most popular blogging too, changes are your blog is already being captured by Technorati. But you want more? To have your blog listed on Technorati and take advantage of the watchlist and other features, you will need to claim you blog yourself. As for tagging posts with Technorati tags, piece of cake! All you need to do is add a little bit of HTML code to the bottom of your post (see my example below) and Technorati will pick up these tags when it spiders (or web crawls) your site.

There are a lot of new features that have been added to Technorati this past summer, including new ways to search for blogs. You can search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like photography or libraries).

Discovery Resources:
Technorati Tour – videocast of new features & new look
Technorati Discover & Popular features

Discovery Exercises:

1. Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for “Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different?
2. Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?
3. Create a blog post about your discoveries on this site.
   
   OPTIONAL: If you’re up for a challenge, learn how to tag your posts by with Technorati tags so they can join tag searches. Create a post about something. It can be anything you want and add the HTML code to the bottom to tag it as “fergusonlibrary”. You may also want to consider claiming your blog and creating a watchlist.NOTE: When adding HTML code, you’ll want to make sure you’re in Blogger’s Edit HTML window.

There’s a lot to explore.

Technorati: newcanaanlibrary

#17 Folksomonies, tagging and social bookmarking in Del.icio.us

Tagging is an informal and open method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content. Library subject heading follow a strict set of guidelines for their use. Tagging is unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want and in ways that are meaningful to them (and possibly others).

Flickr and LibraryThing are two of the many sites that allow users to take advantage of tagging. This week, in addition to exploring Technorati tagging, we want to also explore the popular social bookmarking site called delicious (which is found at http://delicious.com).

Delicious is a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize our bookmarks.

As a web 2.0 tool, many users find the value of delicious in the social network aspect, which allows you to see how others have tagged similar links and discover other websites that may be of interest to you. You can think of it as peering into another user’s filing cabinet or bookmarks, but with this tool each user’s filing cabinet helps build an expansive network of knowledge.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at delicious and learn about this popular bookmarking tool.

(Delicious recently was known as del.icio.us, which is why you may see it on some of the older posts.)

Discovery Resources:

• Otter Group Del.icio.us tutorial (8 min video) - Highly recommended!!!
• Us.ef.ul: A beginners guide to Del.icio.us
• Several Habits of wildly successful Del.icio.us users

Discovery Exercise:

1. View this 8 minute tutorial on del.icio.us to get a good overview of the features.
2. Take a look around delicious using the New Canaan Library Learning 2.0 account that was created for this exercise. http://del.icio.us/NCL2 (NCL2/learning2009) (Click sign in in the upper right hand corner)
   
3. Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by many other users. Can you see the comments they added about this bookmark or the tags that they used to categorize this reference?
4. Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool.
   Can you see the potential for this tool for research assistance? Of just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed for anywhere?

OPTIONAL: If you’re up to the challenge, create a Delicious account for yourself and discover how this useful bookmarking tool can replace your traditional browser bookmark list. You might even want to explore Delicious’ latest addition, a network badge. (Psst! see it over there at the end of the navigation sidebar)

Note: If you do setup a Delicious account, here’s a quick word about the Delicious Buttons. On PCs that have the toolbars locked down, these will install as options in your browser bookmarks. Use the “Post to my Delicious” link to add the current webpage to your account (you may need to log in). Use the “My Delicious” link to view your online account.