For those of you who were following my "amazing" progress in the 23 Things Kansas program - I flunked.  It worked well for the first few weeks when the topics were things like blogging and twitter that I already knew about.  I was able to complete the lessons in under an hour and go along my merry way.  Then we got into some topics with which I was not so familiar...not so merry.  While I don't deny that the topics of these lessons were useful and the lessons were well presented, due to my complete unfamiliarity with the subject matter, many of them were going to require several hours to research and complete. I realize this was the point - to spend some time learning new skills - but the time just wasn't there.

Many of the topics, while interesting, do not pertain directly to my job duties.  Therefore, I felt guilty using too many office hours on the lessons and kept pushing them to the bottom of my "to do" list in favor of the actual work I get paid to do.  Also, the reward for completing the project - other than the knowledge gained and the satisfaction of a job well done - is 30 hours of continuing education credit. My library discontinued raises based on CE credits shortly after I started working here (I suspect for just this reason - too much work time spent earning CE credits that don't pertain), so there is no longer a financial incentive.  Maybe if there was chocolate involved?

At this point, the twenty-three weeks are nearly up and I am so far behind that finishing is not feasable.  My apologies to the organizers of this fantastic program.  They put in a lot of hours to provide a great learning opportunity. 

The website - http://www.23thingskansas.org/ - is still available so I (and you) can still complete any lessons we wish.  Be sure and check it out.

I am all over this week's lesson.  I've been a Twit.....uh, Tweeter?....Twitterer, maybe?....whatever - I've had a Twitter account for quite a while.  Microblogging is exactly what it sounds like, blogging on a smaller scale - 140 characters per entry or "tweet", to be exact. 

There are many uses for microblogging.  I have to be honest and say that my favorite use is entertainment.  When I was a pre-teen/teenager there were ads in the back of teen magazines where you could send away for the name of a pen-pal.  I loved having pen-pals, especially those from other countries - sending and receiveing letters, learning about their life and their culture.  Twitter allows me to have cyber-penpals.  I "follow" and am "followed" by (which just means we can view each others' tweets) an up-and-coming fashion designer in New York, a YA book author in England, a radio d.j. who's only an hour away, and the publisher of the premier K-State sports magazine, among others - all people I would not communicate with otherwise.

Twitter is also useful for making contact with fellow librarians and book-related types.  I follow a variety of publishers, authors, book stores and book bloggers who send out information on and reviews of soon-to-be-released books, which helps with collection development.  I also follow librarians from across the nation and share ideas, tips, and web sites pertaining to the library world.

The third category of my Twitter use is celebrity "cyber-stalking" (Dave's term).  I follow them, but due to their huge number of followers, they do not follow me - so basically I receive mini-messages from them, but I can not respond.  For the most part I find celebrities pointless and annoying, and many are actually just self-promotion tweets sent out by an assistant, so I don't follow many.  However, there are a few - like country singer Blake Shelton - who are just hilarious and I can always use another laugh in my day.

Microblogging is a handy tool for communicating in small doses but, like many networking tools, it can also be addicting and time-consuming.  It's all a matter of balance.

Week six's lesson is on Delicious.  I'm a big fan of Rachael Ray - De-Lish!!! - but I had no clue about social bookmarking.  Ok, bad pun, I know, but it was the best I could do.

If you are also among the social bookmarking clueless, it is basically the same as adding sites to your "favorites" list on your browser except it stores your bookmarks online, allowing you to have access to your bookmarks from any computer with internet access.  Puts an end to that frustration of bookmarking a site at work, then trying to find it from home, only to discover that my brain really is over 40.

Tagging is a method of organizing and sharing your bookmarked sites.  By adding a "tag" when you bookmark a site, you can then group similar sites together and search for them by the tag.  For example, I can bookmark other library home pages and tag them "libraries", or something equally as creative, and then access my list of favorite library sites by searching for "libraries".

Tagging also allows me to share my favorite sites with others of similar interests.  For example, if I have a group of friends who are all interested in cooking, we can create the tag "cool recipes" (cause we're dorks and that's how we roll) and tag any sites that we want to remember and that we think others might like also.  Then I just search for the "cool recipes" tag and find out what discoveries my cooking friends have been making.

So far I haven't actually accomplished any of this except creating a Delicious account and looking around a bit, but I get the gist and can see numerous possibilities for work and home. 

Photosharing is something every grandma should learn. I know 23 Things Kansas is supposed to be geared for library use, but pictures of grandsons are so much nicer than pictures of books. But what could be better than a picture of a grandson AND a book? This photo is our oldest daughter and her oldest son sharing a favorite Christmas book.

I chose to explore flikr on my first adventure in photosharing. I already had a Yahoo account so it was super simple to set up. Once I had my account open, it walked me through the steps of uploading pictures I already had on my computer. Flikr has good organizational helps that make it easy to group pictures into albums or "tag" them for easy reference later. 

Flikr also has a cool "blog" feature.  I selected this picture and clicked on "blog this" and after a brief set up to connect my flikr account and my blog account, I was able to blog this entry directly from the flikr site.  I love it when technologies work together.

Although I'm sure there are lots of library applications for this technology - summer reading, children's programs, promoting adult programs - it's a treasure for grandmas whose grandkids live seven hours away. Our daughter can upload photos straight from her camera and keep us up to date with everything they are doing. Good lesson!

Week three of my 23 Things Kansas training featured On-Line Meetings.  What a great invention for folks like us who live far from what passes as civilization.  Travel to Dodge City for a System-wide meeting requires nearly four hours of road time - four hours of non-productive, paid time per employee - plus mileage reimbursement for the driver.  And that's just to go to Dodge.  Training in Wichita, Topeka or other parts east requires overnight lodging and meals, so "webinars" are an abundant savings in both dollars and time for small libraries. 

I have done library training on Verso, Overdrive, and other topics using both Wimba and Opel.  The technology is great - allowing each participant to not only hear the instructor and view the presentation, but also to interact with the leader and each other by voice or text.  Archiving also allows for more flixibility in timing as participants who can't join in live can still view/hear the demonstration at a more convenient time.

Webinars aren't just for libraries.  Dave is able to attend a baseball/softball umpires rule meeting from home, rather than traveling to Dodge or Hays.  This is definitely a trend for the future that connects rural areas with the world.

I am participating in the 23 Things Kansas program for Kansas library employees, trustees, volunteers and friends. 23 Things Kansas is described as "a fun way to learn about and practice with online tools for community, sharing and productivity." Over the next 23 weeks you will see a weekly (hopefully) post concerning the assignment I'm working on that week. Completion of all 23 assignments is worth 30 hours of continuing education credit and, more importantly, a chance at winning a fLip video camera. The first assignment is to begin a blog - so I'm ahead of the game. However, down the road when we get to such things as screencasting, presentation sharing and cloud computing (I don't even know what that is!) I may not be so glib. You will likely be reading posts filled with angst, frustration and a few bleeps, but the worst I can do is make a total fool of myself on YouTube and, seriously, how many people actually view that stuff? If you happen to be a member of the Kansas Library Community and want to join in, check out the web site at http://www.23thingskansas.org/. It's too late to get in on the CE credit, but there's still a lot to learn.