Sunday, April 27, 2008

Sent email after I completed Thing #23

I emailed OTC-Learning@ci.stpaul.mn.us on 04/27/2008 at about 11pm:
Now that I'm finished with Thing #23, is there anything else I need to complete?
I seem to remember an Excel spreadsheet related to the process, but that may have been just to organize our thoughts...

Thing #23 - Is this really the end? Or just the beginning....

I thought it was a great idea to start by offering people completing the program a $25 gift certificate (I'm choosing iTunes) & to be entered in a drawing for an iPod shuffle! I also liked the idea of checking into many of the technologies that the average teen seems to understand really well, despite the fact that the average adult does not know much about them. Good time to pick up a bunch of this stuff, even if I need help from one of my teens!

Blogging was one of the first concepts introduced and through all of the sessions we got to keep adding to our blogs. I liked the way some of the sessions then introduced different ways to add Pictures, Videos, Clips, etc to our Blogs. When I last checked I hadn't gotten any comments to my blog, but did get one commenting on the Clip that I pulled out with Clip-to-Blog. :)

One thing I would change is to add more Bonus Exercises, so that those particularly interested in some concepts would have some good "next steps" by checking them out further. One example of this is in the area of MP3 players and files -- for which we did check out Podcasts and I had a lot of fun with them, but would have liked more.

If offered another discovery program like this in the future I would definitely choose to participate!

Friday, April 25, 2008

Making use of Thing #22 -- Clip-to-Blog

Alex asked me to visit his blog.
Pretty cool way to check it out and grab a few word for my blog!

Hello, this is Alex B., my dream as a pilot is to become a pilot for MAF, (Missionary/Mission Aviation Fellowship) or another christian aviation organization.

 blog it

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Thing #22 - Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

Selected http://clipmarks.com/ from the list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees at http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/

I got hooked with the description of "Clipmarks" as gives people the chance to save web content that makes them sit up and take notice and to share that content with others in the hope that it will make them go "wow!" To check it out I created Clipmarks account genebyland, with email sent to gene.byland@gmail.com

Could I see any applications for its use in a city office setting?
Yes! Since Clipmarks lets you Clip-to-Blog, Clip-to-Email & Clip Videos -- it gives you a useful way of saving Web site info visited and to share it with others.

BTW: I've been asked to set up a cross post for http://pilotsdream.blogspot.com/
which I should be able to do with Clip-to-Blog. I found most of the usage of Clipmarks pretty intuitive, but didn't get the part of posting right (it brings up a final piece asking how/where you want to post) until I tried it a few times.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Thing #21 - Web-Based Apps: They're not just for desktops anymore!

Created free account gene.byland using gene.byland@gmail.com for me in Zoho Writer using URL http://www.zohowriter.com/
Explored the site and created a few test documents.
Tried out Zoho Writer 's features.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Thing #20 - Playing Around with PBWiki

Added a few entries to the Learning 2.0 wiki http://otc-learning.pbwiki.com/.
1. Added my blog http://genebyland.blogspot.com/ to the Favorite blogs list.
2. Played with PBWiki by adding to the lists of favorite books/movies an entry for
Harry Potter and the goblet of fire by J K Rowling.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Thing #19 - What's in a wiki?

For this discovery exercise I checked out some city wikis:
* Rochester, NY
* Davis, California
* Sacramento, California
* Twin Cities, MN ******
* City-Wiki-Center - a city-wiki-canter gathering city-wikis worldwide.

Quite a few different styles of web sites. I liked the fact that the Twin Cities one http://saintpaul.openguides.org/ allowed a “feed” of frequently changing content on this site. I subscribed using my Bloglines account!