Time for Flickr

Like del.icio.us, fun and easy to navigate. I can definitely spend a lot of time here, but quickly found a picture I liked. A very unusual looking flower (no idea what it is), but it made me feel amazed that nature is so unique and continues to surprise me. I also liked the title since I just finished a course on leadership. I hope others enjoy it too!
http://flickr.com/photos/belle19661/436463115/

Fun with del.icio.us

I got lost in this activity very quickly and easily once I registered for an account. It's just too easy to search, find and save sites. I first searched for movies and selected two sites, and then searched for one author (Clive Barker) and found his official site very easily. I added notes and tags for each (nothing particularly creative since the subject matter is obvious). In all cases, I retrieved lots of results and the tags used were ones that I would have used as well (so nothing particulary confusing or especially useful). I searched for Clive Barker on Google; the results were actually similar to the ones retrieved in del.icio.us. including the official site and the wikipaedia page. All in all, fun and easy to use; tagging is empowering too. Update: Once I completed the activity on Flickr, I added this site to del.icio.us.

Wiki experience

I've learned there's a lot of room for creativity when using Wikis. The first test wiki on PBWiki seemed more intuitive to use than the second wiki on Wetpaint. I thought the features were similar in both but I really needed to get used to the EasyEdit Toolbar in Wetpaint. Good hand-eye coordination (and patience) is required! After adding pages, I tried addings links and images. I thought Wetpaint was slightly easier to do this in than PBWiki. Comments and History are pretty straightforward in both. At this point, I have a slight preference for PBWiki but would really need to explore other wikis before deciding on one that I would want to use e.g. for a particular course. Wikis are fun but require more time to use than blogs. Again, another lesson learned!

Learning about...RSS

I am writing in response to the completion of Week 3 of an exercise on Learning 2.0 at McMaster. Week 2 involved creating the blog you are currently reading (a work in progress!) and then learning about RSS aggregators and feeds. I already had an account in Bloglines, but the activitiy did give me a chance to look at Google Reader. I think I'll stick to Bloglines.

I subscribed to the feed for the blog, Emerging Technologies Group, as required. Then I searched for more feeds to add. My feeds are primarily news-y, government and library related. Since I am interested in all things "history" I subscribed to The History News Network as well. The blog has been around since 2001 and provides articles written by historians on current events. More opportunities to read and learn!