Very cool! I'm certified.

Thoughts...

By way of wrapping up Learning 2.0, here are some thoughts:

My favourite technologies/tools/activities are Facebook, del.icio.us and blogging. My not-so-favourite was gaming, but hey, you never know, it might grab me one of these days.

Learning 2.0 @ Mac has certainly helped me get comfortable with emerging technologies, but more than that, it has introduced so many things to me that I just would never have known about. Most of the technologies were not difficult to learn and to understand, and the ETG blog plus the drop-in sessions really helped to clarify things.

If the ETG group offered another programme like this one in the future, I would most definitely participate. I think that now that we've started, we need to stay current. A programme such as Learning 2.0 is an excellent way to do that because we are all working on more or less the same things, we can share information about the technologies by working together, and we are exposed to many relevant technologies that we may otherwise never know about.

Maybe over the summer a review session could take place highlighting some of the things we've done.

What a great programme this has been!

I forgot to say...

Sorry, I forgot to say that I tried the bookmarklet for Morris title keyword, and I copied and pasted the text from the Amazon.com site for a book I was interested in, and voila, it searched Morris for me. Unfortunately, we don't own the book, but it was pretty cool.

Wrap Up

Phew!!! That was fun. Like most people, I wish I had more time to spend on the weekly activities, but even though I raced through a couple of weeks, I still learned A LOT!!! I don't feel like I'm from the Stone Age anymore.

When I think about how far we've come in the last 20 or so years, well it's quite mind-boggling! Why, only yesterday (or so it seems), I was just mastering the IBM Selectric typewriter. Then, I was deeply immersed in my 8-week full-time word processing course on the NBI dedicated word processing system with the HUGE floppy disks as storage devices!

OK, then there were the "dumb" terminals where we input and edited MARC records for the McMaster microfiche catalogue. Our first PC had that orange glow. And seriously, it really wasn't all that long ago.

I'm glad that I've had the opportunity to do all of these activities because I figure I probably wouldn't have pursued learning about many of these applications on my own without some direction, help, and information. So THANKS to the ETG group. I feel like I'm a bitmore in the know now, and to be honest, I'm much more interested in learning (and understanding!) more. And much more confident too.

I plan to follow up by creating another blog, maybe with Wordpress, by staying in touch with people through Facebook, and by exploring more websites. I want to try this Stumble Upon that everyone is talking about! As a (former) cataloguer, I'm really interested in the tagging and folksonomies, so I'd like to explore and play here a bit more.

So thanks to ETG and thanks to my group leader Alex.

Firefox

I have used Firefox in the past and I find I like it. I downloaded it to the PC I am using at the moment, which is signed on with a generic ID, but I'm not sure where it went. I downloaded it to the Desktop, but I don't see it. I will play around with it a bit more and see what's what. I also downloaded the extension for the weather, again to the desktop, so I have to look for that as well.

I am going to download Firefox and some extensions at home because I think I will be able to play around with them at home a bit more.

OK.... so does that mean I'm certifiable?? Alex, are you there?? If you are, just want to say thanks for all your help and your comments and stuff. You're the best!

Gaming

I am not so much a fan of the gaming... but I tried Slingo which is a variation on Bingo. I do love Bingo, I have to admit, but I love the old-fashioned kind, where you sit on uncomfortable wooden chairs in a Bingo Hall with quite a few oldsters who take their Bingo VERY seriously. Now THAT'S excitement! I could see sitting and playing all kinds of the games that were listed on the activities, but as I'm sure others are saying... who has that kind of time?

So I tried it, but it's just not my cup of tea. Even when I was a youth and I had a Coleco vision gaming system, I just didn't get into it. Guess I'm just far too social and prefer interaction with real, live people.

Week 9 - Facebook

Well this week was pretty good. I already had a Facebook account (which I'm very addicted to, by the way). So I played around a bit on there. I had already joined the group Learning 2.0 too (maybe it's time I actually read some posts for the group). That's on my to do list.

meebo me widget

OK, trying to put in my meebo me widget. Here goes:

Week 8

WHAT??? This stuff is free?. I can't believe that you can access spreadsheets and word processing for free. I know that it won't be as complex or powerful as Microsoft Word or Excel, but I remember paying the big bucks for the software for my home computer. Guess a lot of people are happy now that they can get things like Google Docs & Spreadsheets for free! Cool.

Week 5

Well, just finally getting around to working on week 5. Thought I would put a link to a picture I found on Flickr, of Coronation Street, of course!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bkm/300961460/

Also, I have set up my del.icio.us account. That was fun. I found all kinds of stuff that I could spend all day looking at (but don't worry, I won't!) I like the folksonomy idea. Makes a lot of sense. I found that when I typed in my term "knitting patterns", I found a lot of good stuff. And the other tags that appeared were on very related things. When I did the same search in Google, I got some of the same sites, but got really general things on knitting in general, and not just on knitting patterns. Hmmmmm.

Tagging, social bookmarking and folksonomies is something that I would like to play around with a bit more. In fact, I will play around with all of the things we've done so far.... maybe this weekend.

Tagging, Social Bookmarking & Folksonomies

Unfortunately, I am behind! It's been a bit of a crazy week, with moving to a new job on Monday, cleaning up stuff at my desk, finishing those things that were on the back burner, etc. So I am glad to have the 2 week break (it is 2 weeks, isn't it??) to catch up.

I've been having fun and I've been learning which is the whole point. I've been doing the odd post, looking at colleague's blogs, checking my Bloglines account, playing with things a bit, etc.

So.... I would like to do my week 5 stuff next week, and I would also like to sign up for a Google Reader account, because one of my colleagues has done this, and she showed me hers, and I think I will like it better than Bloglines.

That's all for this week. See you next week.

My Coronation Street Story

Hammersister (see http://hammersister.blogspot.com/ ) just gave me a great idea. I will tell the story of my trip to Manchester, England in 2003 to go to the set of Coronation Street. It had been my dream for about 10 years. I couldn't wait for the day when I could go to the set and visit "The Street", maybe have my picture taken in the Rovers. I worked hard, saved up, and finally got a chance to go. I flew to London (alone, and I'm NOT a happy flyer!) and met up with my sister who flew in from Japan (she'd been living there). To make a long story only semi-long, after many planes, trains, automobiles, scuzzy hotel rooms, bad food, late nights, motion sickness, directionless wandering etc. etc. I FINALLY found Granada Studios in Manchester. I could barely contain my excitement and I skipped (yes, I actually skipped) up to the ticket window on the set... except it wasn't a ticket window. No. It was a security guard shack which had a big sign posted on the window:

THE SET OF CORONATION STREET HAS BEEN CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC SINCE 2001

'Scuse me while I dry my eyes

OK, I'm back... and will continue with another episode of Disaster on Coronation Street... at a later time

Wikis

Well, the wiki thing didn't go too well at first. I didn't clue in that I had to add my page to the sidebar. That'll teach me.... should read directions rather than just jumping in and blasting away at it.

Anyway, have figured it out now. But it seems the instructions were not correct. I couldn't just type the name of my page in square brackets, I had to actually choose "Link" from the toolbar and highlight my text to link it. I would assume others have encountered this issue?

Having lots of fun!!!

RSS feeds

I like the whole idea of RSS feeds. So convenient. I tried Bloglines, but my colleague has recommended Google Reader to me which I will also try.

There is so much to explore, I can't keep up!

OK, I found out that I'm sooooo boring... at least compared to you other bloggers! What cool names you have.... Must think of a new one for mine. Lynnsblog is just so.... zzzzzzz

Hi

Hi Everyone!

Welcome to Lynnsblog. I have chosen to use Blogger instead of Wordpress because I already have a Wordpress account, and it wouldn't let me use my email address to create another since I've already used it.... so I decided to try Blogger since I hadn't used it before. So far so good.

My name is Lynn and I work at McMaster University in Mills Library (for the past 22-ish years). I take the bus from Stoney Creek every day, having sold my car a couple of years ago. I listen to some tunes along the way, have met a few "bus buddies" and generally enjoy not having the hassle of driving, scraping in winter, parking, etc. etc.

Have a great week everybody!