I have been experimenting with RSS feeds and dabbling in Facebook lately. The RSS feed video from Common Craft was great - straightforward, fun to watch and they don’t talk down to you! The website http://www.commoncraft.com/ has many online videos like this to share for free and I will have to try to post on my blog and again on my website. Why not now…here’s one called Web Search Strategies in Plain English by leelefever:

I did it! All I did was cut and paste what the Common Craft people told me to!
RSS feeds were fun to get – but there are so many, I had to stop myself and become more selective. Paying attention to how often information is posted to these feeds is helpful, too – some of the weather feeds can be too frequent – compiling every 15 minutes or so, for example! I couldn’t resist getting the daily Writer’s Almanac feed – and the podcast, too. So when I am logged onto a computer where I can listen, there is Garrison Keillor’s amazing voice just for me! So much better than hoping to catch the show on the car radio! Want the link? Sure you do! http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
Google Reader was the easiest aggregate for me to use, since I already have gmail, and igoogle (that’s fun – you can load your page with all sorts of gadget and tools. I like the language translator, unit conversions tool and, just for fun, Hangman). One stop for everything in a click happy world!

I'll blab about Facebook in my next post!

As I progress through Vermont’s 23 things I have found that experimenting with websites and gadgets has been fun and has taken me down some pretty wonderful rabbit holes – but maintaining a Blog has not been easy at all! I cannot seem to be able to put myself out there and must write things over and over again before I post them, usually editing them down to nothing. This ‘web log’ is not exactly like the diary that I used to keep under my bed, letting my mind ‘throw up’ anything and everything onto its pages. (Ever go back years later and witness with horror what you once thought and actually wrote down!) It is frightening!

O.K. – so what are some of those 23 things that I have done but failed to blog about?
I experimented with Spell using Flickr http://metaatem.net/words/ . It was fun and the html code is provided so you can cut and paste your spelling creation into your blog/website. I put our school letters on my school website by doing this and it worked great…until I realized that only staff could see it, since each letter is really a link to Flickr and Flickr is blocked for students by our IT department! A work around is to paste the letters into Microsoft Paint, decorate and/or experiment further, save as a jpeg then upload as a picture. You can also paste the letters into PowerPoint and manipulate them there. So, here goes (html code pasted into compose window):


Something for me to remember: occasionally sign on to my school website with a student sign on - so I can see what they see without staff privileges.