Thing #1 & Thing #3

(Backtracking a bit, because I didn't actually document things 1 and 3.)


Thing #1 - Discovery

When I heard about the Learning 2.0 program Helene Blowers was starting at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, it sounded like so much fun! This was about two years ago, in August 2006, and a lot of the discovery exercises really were new. I followed along with most of the program, mostly on my own time, since "playing around" on the computers at work hasn't always been sanctioned. I vaguely recall mentioning it to a couple of admin types, but really, SAPL wasn't ready for all that 2.0 - yet.

Two years later, the lessons are not quite so new, the original group has moved on to 2.1, and SAPL is finally on board! I appreciate the push my branch manager has given all of us to participate, or at least explore, the SAPL 23 Things project. The way the lessons are set up, in small "bites" makes it much easier to work on. It may help some tech-wary folks become more familiar with the medium, and in turn, help our patrons who are exploring on their own. For those of us a bit more comfortable with web "things", it gives us a chance to share our skills with our co-workers. I'm looking foward to all 23 lessons, and a chance to win a prize! Any chance of it being a G1 phone? :)



Thing #3 - Grab a blog
As I mentioned previously, I'm not new at blogging - I think the first blog I kept was hosted on iVillage, way back around 1998. I moved on to a few other sites, somehow bypassing LiveJournal completely. I started hand-coding my website and blog, then moved it to a Movable Type platform, which continues to serve me well. For work related committee communication, I've used a WordPress blog, in order to have more than one author. This is my first experience with Blogger, and I must say, it's not the friendliest thing!

I'm surprised at how bare-bones it is - you get a lot more in a free WordPress account. The Blogger "dashboard" doesn't tell you much about your own blog, and I haven't figured out how to get it to show me recent activity. The things I like are all the easy to add gadgets, the variety of templates to choose from, and the ease of posting. I can't say that I'll keep this blog up past the 23 Things, but I do hope to explore Blogger much more in the coming weeks.