Learning

All the lessons have been completed and now I must tell what I have learned. There was a lot to learn and one thing I learned is that there is a lot to learn--nothing is static, things on the internet are always changing and it will take time to learn. I think one thing I learned is that I must take a few minutes each day to investigate things on the internet. It is much like taking time to smell the flower, by taking a walk each day, stopping at the store to talk to people, pausing to look at the sky, slowing down and observing. It seems people use the internet to speed up their lives and for that it is convenient but to appreciate it fully takes time. I think it could become addictive, information overload, isolating from the world, but for every good thing there are bad things that go with it.
Overall it will take discipline, discipline to log on and learn something, investigate something each day and also discipline to not spend too much time looking at a screen and spend time looking at the world around me.

WIKI

I logged on to the South Dakota Library challenge today to see if I was behind. I haven't looked at it for awhile--busy time of the year. I was pleased to find out I wasn't too far behind. I looked at the lesson about Wikis and went to a few of the sites. I am familiar with Wikis but never really knew how they worked. I know from experience that the Wiki the students use at school, the encyclopedia, is often full of partial or misinformation, however it is a good place to start. After I read up on Wkis I realized why the site the students use is full of partial and misinformation. It is user driven. So, that is the advantage and also the disadvantage of Wikis. On the American Library Assoication web-site there is a Wiki for the upcoming Mid-Winter Conference in Denver. I will be attending that so I was interested to see what was on there. Now I understand why some of the areas in the schedule are filled in and others are not. The advantage of using Wikis for this type of information is that it can be changed quickly and easily, added to by people responsible for the event and easily accessed.
I saw on one web-site a Wiki that had been vandalized--the disadvantage. I guess people had changed information or added information inappropriate to the site. Even though this is a disadvantage there are ways to insure this does not happen--securing the site with registration is one way.
All in all Wikis are fun, useful tools to share information quickly and easily.

Widget

In taking this Library challenge and doing the activities, I have found so many things on the internet, some I knew were there just haven't used them and others I had no idea what they were. I recently discovered "widgets" which are fun and interesting tools. I use one on my computer at home for the Coke Rewards. It is on the desktop, so when I want to add a code it is there without logging onto internet then the website. I thought I would try this one from Schoastic to see what it would do. Here goes: