A Note to the Disillusioned

Want to know WHO is reading your Blog? Or should I say, want to know IF anyone is reading your blog? Put a free Statistic Counter (http://www.statcounter.com/) on it. The general public seems to think that if you post something on the web, then everyone in the world will see it. Well, this is a far cry from what really happens. Actually no one wants to see it. A blog is for the benefit of the blogger.

Another thought I had is that the common hysteria is that the internet is an evil place. The world was much "safer" before World Wide Access. News Flash - the world wasn't that safe 40 years ago either. I have experiences from the "predawn" era known as my youth that would turn my mother's hair grey. It's all a question of learning how to be safe in the world we have.

Flickr, My Space, and WWW are not bad places. Bad people use these places and good kids use these places. Smart kids know how to be safe. The real question is then, are we creating smart kids, or just trying to scare them.

I love watching wikis in action! It's like watching evolution on fast-forward.

Technorati

I spent a couple of hours exploring Technorati last night. I need to spend a couple more hours there. I’ve been meaning to look into this concept for a couple of months now, thanks to the PLCMC learning 2.0 project, I did it.

See more progress on: Explore Technorati and learn how to tags work with blog posts.

Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Learning 2.0
After reviewing some of the information from the South Carolina Public library Tech Day and the articles on the OCLC newsletter I had an idea evolve based on my experience as a budding teacher in the early 70's. This rolling stone, known as 2.0 this and that, reminds me somewhat of the new idea that erupted in the teaching community in the late 60's, early 70's known as "schools without walls". In theory the idea was fantastic and all of the talk was on how the concept would allow students to continually absorb information from a variety of sources. In practice, the teachers went crazy trying to keep the class tuned into the lesson at hand.

So what happened to a great idea that flopped? One problem was that the teachers who had already bought into the "old" method couldn't adapt. And the pressure to "teach to the test" kept mounting on the teaching staff causing riffs. A large part of the problem was the perception, real or not, that the administration was forcing this new concept onto already overtaxed staff.

So how does this relate to 2.0 technology and libraries? Not well, I hope, because I am a strong supporter of incorporating new technology trends into our information structure. What I do worry about, though is how the changes will evolve and what the perceptions will be.

I am very pleased to see library systems like PLCMC working to encourage the staff members to learn about the new technology.
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
Library
library 2.0

The nice thing about blogs is that you can record our thoughts and ideas. There is, however, the possility that what you post may not reflect what you mean. The previous post was very positive about value of the new online tools such as writely and google spreadsheets, however, I neglected to include in my post the caveat that information posted should not include personal information. I guess I thought that would be obvious. We are seeing a new generation of internet users who are not very mature in their online presence. "My Space" is an example of a place where people, including predators, meet. Somewhere along the line, someone needs to teach about the predators on the internet.

Google Spreadsheets

I do not have a computer to call my own at work and I keep records of claims and damaged books. Keeping up with a floppy disk is annoying, plus the failure rate for those things is dangerously high. I have started using google spreadsheets for these tasks and have found this tool to be very helpful. I can access my information on any computer and it is password protected. Now that Writely is again available I am going to see if I can use this tool for the letters I generate.

See more progress on: Take a look at some online productivity (word processing, spreadsheet) tools.

Library Thing

I created an account a few months ago and added one book. My goal is to catalog my cookbooks, but I’m not sure why I have this goal. There are somethings I can spend hours doing (like working on wikis or spreadsheets) and somethings I don’t see a value added purpose in. But the bloggsters seem to like it so I will keep it on my “to do” list.

See more progress on: Take a look at LibraryThing and catalog some of my favorite books.

Image Generators

You just can’t love everything!

See more progress on: Play around with an online image generator.