# 15 After a meditative return flight, succeeded by a quiet interval of preening plumage, readjusting my crown and halo, I am again settled into a gloriously blossoming almond tree, ready to sing about this Learning2.0 odyssey. Back during Week 6, I skimmed over a number of Library2.0 articles without commenting. One in particular entitled: Web 2.0 and Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software by Michael Stephens, so tickled my feathers, I paused to find out FAQs about Kankakee Library's podcasts, explained in detail even a byzantine bird could comprehend. Excited by podcast possibilities I've begun planning a brief program of psaltery plucking and poetry to record. Kansas City Public Library's nicely designed subject pages (for instance, Our World Guide) utilizing RSS feeds are technologically exciting but the results once I clicked on a link seemed much less well organized because an RSS feed allows for more ephemeral data, more possible mental clutter. Now, a BizWiki, seems a solid idea for sharing and building upon each other's knowledge in a field. Imagine a wiki for all the lore we fabulous creatures have accumulated over the centuries!
# 16 "Why wiki, why wiki, oh, why wiki, cry I? It takes their shared knowledge for humans to fly." Just a bit of silliness before putting quill again to parchment to scribble about wikis, which like fowl, can live on hosted WikiFarms or exist free range on your own server. To regress to Week 7 discoveries, I skimmed over Wikis: A Beginner's Look, following a link in Resources to E-Rhetoric Wiki and Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not (too much to ingest), then backtracking to Using Wikis to Create Online Communities, which talks about wiki subject guides and community wikis. Being better informed I visited SJCPL Subject Guide for Pets which offered me books, links, tips in an easy to digest format. Next I dipped into the Book Lovers Wiki, a bibliophile's Turkish delight. (Oops, time for a real meal or I will be eating my words).
# 23 Even an ardent adventurer like myself must pause for supper before concluding her account.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Week 9: Podcasts, Video & Downloadable Audio, eBooks #20, #21, #22
# 20 Nestled on a remote branch, nibbling a leftover bliny, I am recovering from my visit to YouTube. A feather shuddering experience for a sensitive bird/person. Upon landing there had been too much to view. I immediately decided to select a Bird group, one with a number of members. Parrots had 118. You may smile, but it was a shock to realize these birdies were captive "pets" performing silly, ingratiating tricks. Then I came upon this supremely degrading instructional video: How to Clip a Bird's Wings! My human brain recognized what a useful tool this could be for parrot owners, so my angry bird claws seized upon it, and I soared away trembling from the visual realities of YouTube.
# 21 Legendary powers refreshed, I alighted at Podcast Alley for a quick survey of its territory with a Genre search of Education. This turned up instructive podcasts to teach me French, Spanish, Italian, or Chinese, as well as some rather odd subjects I'll not mention here. But then I spotted the perfect addition to my Bloglines nest - a series of lectures on lives of my old acquaintances, Constantine, Basil, and Alexis. Since there was no time to immerse myself in listening to our shared history, I used Podcast Alley's link to Lars Brownworth's website, 12 Byzantine Rulers, where I got the podcast feed url to put into Bloglines. What pleasure to anticipate hearing again the exploits of my famous friends while ingesting an evening meal!
# 22 Landed at last in familar surroundings: eBooks. I'm not in the mood for NetLibrary's technical books, today. OverDrive Digital Library has an audiobook version of Saving Fish from Drowning I might sample (can one download to a nest?). Instead, I'm bird-hopping on to Project Gutenberg which I know has an online version of this classic avian favorite: The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit. The best way I've found to browse if I haven't a title or author, is to try a keyword search from SJLibrary's WIRed page Free eBooks Online. But being especially fond of picture books, I'd rather open an illustrated The Hollow Tree Snowed-In Book or Max und Moritz at Children's Books Online. In International Children's Digital Library I met another fabulous creature El Amaru, a winged snake deity inhabiting the mountains and lakes of Peru. When I again have a desire to hear Beatrix Potter's stories read in English, French, German or Japanese just another hop will bring me to Wired for Books Kids Corner. This rapidly expanding eBooks country certainly provides many excellent perches for the curious mind of an Alkonost-Sirin.
# 21 Legendary powers refreshed, I alighted at Podcast Alley for a quick survey of its territory with a Genre search of Education. This turned up instructive podcasts to teach me French, Spanish, Italian, or Chinese, as well as some rather odd subjects I'll not mention here. But then I spotted the perfect addition to my Bloglines nest - a series of lectures on lives of my old acquaintances, Constantine, Basil, and Alexis. Since there was no time to immerse myself in listening to our shared history, I used Podcast Alley's link to Lars Brownworth's website, 12 Byzantine Rulers, where I got the podcast feed url to put into Bloglines. What pleasure to anticipate hearing again the exploits of my famous friends while ingesting an evening meal!
# 22 Landed at last in familar surroundings: eBooks. I'm not in the mood for NetLibrary's technical books, today. OverDrive Digital Library has an audiobook version of Saving Fish from Drowning I might sample (can one download to a nest?). Instead, I'm bird-hopping on to Project Gutenberg which I know has an online version of this classic avian favorite: The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit. The best way I've found to browse if I haven't a title or author, is to try a keyword search from SJLibrary's WIRed page Free eBooks Online. But being especially fond of picture books, I'd rather open an illustrated The Hollow Tree Snowed-In Book or Max und Moritz at Children's Books Online. In International Children's Digital Library I met another fabulous creature El Amaru, a winged snake deity inhabiting the mountains and lakes of Peru. When I again have a desire to hear Beatrix Potter's stories read in English, French, German or Japanese just another hop will bring me to Wired for Books Kids Corner. This rapidly expanding eBooks country certainly provides many excellent perches for the curious mind of an Alkonost-Sirin.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Zoho Writer: Dreamscape - A Sirin Lullaby
Dreamscape
Listen, winged children,
For the panther's cry as it tears
Golden feathers from the sky.
The demon cat of unguarded nights
Pads silver-clawed around our dreams
Til we wake squawking,
Dreading to topple from parents' nest
Down into earth's black paws.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Week 8: Online Applications & Tools #18, #19
# 18 Actually pulled a quill from my gorgeous tail to try out Zoho Writer. Logged in under Alkonost and penned a poem-song inspired by this Dreamscape watercolor. Being cautious, I saved the whole on a floppy disk as a Word document. Then I tried posting it as a draft from Zoho to my blog. This worked only when I was simultaneously logged in at Blogger. The draft was formated in HTML which I edited, taking out repetitive, unnecessary coding, fixing line spacing and margin indent. Perhaps I didn't need to fuss so much with the original draft; it would have been presentable, but as you know by now, I am a perfectionist whether in feather attire or creative endeavor. As soon as I've mastered the technology, you also will be able to hear this siren song.
# 19 Ah, I could happily sing about LibraryThing. A wonderful roost for an avian with a long literary history! Once signed up, I entered a few of my favorite books, choosing less well-known titles tasted decades ago but which have kept their savor, like Twilight of the Gods by Richard Garnett (1 other owner), Walter de la Mare's The Three Mulla-mulgars (3), and Shilappadikaram by Ilango Adigal (0). To properly list a title, I had to determine publisher, edition, date, illustrator, etc., using information from Amazon.com, the Library of Congress, or other sources I selected to search. This meant frequently returning to my booktree to see what I really had. An absorbing exercise for collectors, but a bit frustrating if you'd like to record your library quickly. The exciting part was dipping into other folk's libraries and following tags to reading lists or reviews. Clicking on Albert Bigelow Paine, author of The Hollow Tree Snowed-In Book (0), brought up his more popular stories and their owners. A bookloving bird could easily get lost for the rest of March in this site.
# 19 Ah, I could happily sing about LibraryThing. A wonderful roost for an avian with a long literary history! Once signed up, I entered a few of my favorite books, choosing less well-known titles tasted decades ago but which have kept their savor, like Twilight of the Gods by Richard Garnett (1 other owner), Walter de la Mare's The Three Mulla-mulgars (3), and Shilappadikaram by Ilango Adigal (0). To properly list a title, I had to determine publisher, edition, date, illustrator, etc., using information from Amazon.com, the Library of Congress, or other sources I selected to search. This meant frequently returning to my booktree to see what I really had. An absorbing exercise for collectors, but a bit frustrating if you'd like to record your library quickly. The exciting part was dipping into other folk's libraries and following tags to reading lists or reviews. Clicking on Albert Bigelow Paine, author of The Hollow Tree Snowed-In Book (0), brought up his more popular stories and their owners. A bookloving bird could easily get lost for the rest of March in this site.
Week 7: Wikis #16, #17
# 16 I'm chewing on some ideas. It's lunch time and this bird is just too hungry for words.
# 17 Finally managed to drop two edits into the Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki's Favorite Animals (naturally) and Favorite Books. This should have been easy but the Point & Click edit mode doesn't work for a sirin using more medieval technology. The Classic mode editor is the appropriate choice. The skimpy help information didn't cover this problem. Apart from having to poke around a lot to understand how to contribute, adding one's own considerable knowledge/expertise to such a public encyclopedia is very satisfying. Flew off with some reading recommendations for that evening I can nestle down with a book.
# 17 Finally managed to drop two edits into the Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki's Favorite Animals (naturally) and Favorite Books. This should have been easy but the Point & Click edit mode doesn't work for a sirin using more medieval technology. The Classic mode editor is the appropriate choice. The skimpy help information didn't cover this problem. Apart from having to poke around a lot to understand how to contribute, adding one's own considerable knowledge/expertise to such a public encyclopedia is very satisfying. Flew off with some reading recommendations for that evening I can nestle down with a book.
Week 6: Tagging, Folksonomies & Technorati #13, #14, #15
# 13 Not to denigrate my friends and frequent flight companions, but birds are messy creatures who mark their favorite perches with quantities of droppings. I've picked up some very slovenly habits which make my using Del.icio.us a wing-stretching challenge, therefore I am rushing back to my favorite nests to tidy before attempting to tag their contents. After tossing my smelly dead links, I dropped (oops, a very avian action) my fresh tasty ones into Del.icio.us where I am constructing a new and hopefully better nest in which to keep them. The procedure of tagging is agreeably bird-like; we visually store impressions of the creatures and landscape features we pass over. It's also familiar to have a word-cloud hovering above, although at first it appeared to be more of a word-fog
I'm still tidying but you're welcome to drop in (oops, again) for a guest's taste of what I've collected. Just follow my Flight Path (below left).
# 14 How shall I tag myself? This is the question. Perhaps Technorati will offer a solution. First I tried a Technorati Discover search for lubok to locate any interesting references to my popular 18th century hand-colored woodcut portraits and found that this style of art is still being used in Russia for political caricature and social satire. A photo link to Flickr took me to a reproduction of that Lubok favorite, Celebrating the Dead - Mice on Parade, illustrating rodents happily assisting with a drunkard cat's funeral. I resisted following one of this blog's enticing tags, Vintage Childrens Books, preferring to circle back to claim my blog at Technorati, so I, too, could entice web wanderers.
# 15 Although I visited Wikipedia before undertaking that tagging task, I'd like to fly forward into next week before talking about Web2.0 and the Library of the Future.
I'm still tidying but you're welcome to drop in (oops, again) for a guest's taste of what I've collected. Just follow my Flight Path (below left).
# 14 How shall I tag myself? This is the question. Perhaps Technorati will offer a solution. First I tried a Technorati Discover search for lubok to locate any interesting references to my popular 18th century hand-colored woodcut portraits and found that this style of art is still being used in Russia for political caricature and social satire. A photo link to Flickr took me to a reproduction of that Lubok favorite, Celebrating the Dead - Mice on Parade, illustrating rodents happily assisting with a drunkard cat's funeral. I resisted following one of this blog's enticing tags, Vintage Childrens Books, preferring to circle back to claim my blog at Technorati, so I, too, could entice web wanderers.
# 15 Although I visited Wikipedia before undertaking that tagging task, I'd like to fly forward into next week before talking about Web2.0 and the Library of the Future.
Week 5: Play #10, #11, #12
# 10 Haven't had much daylight to play. Birds are always busy searching for food to keep themselves aloft. Tiresome for the human half of me. Can I trade my Melusina image for play credit?
# 11 After circling a bit, decided on a closeup investigation of the Book (link) area of Web 2.0 Award Winners. Found 4 good perches out of 7 sighted. Using Coverpop might qualify as play since it just offers a flashy page of images. However it does have a link to MagazineArt.org's collection of vintage cover art. Zack Bookmaps, a German site, will help me locate a book about mythic (ha!) creatures in selected German, Swedish, Norwegian library catalogs (if I am fluent enough in these languages) as well as in the Library of Congress and Melvyl. Sixapart hosts personal or business and professional blogs for a fee. When I don't have a flight itinerary to follow I'll probably try out Reader2 to find some recommended books about the sort of fabulous adventures I undertake. (I'll hop back to LibraryThing for Thing #19.) But my two favorite perches are Lulu which provides a way for me to publish my autobiography online and in book format, and CiteULike, where I was able to locate a congenial group or two, such as Learn Online and eLearning whose members have submitted some articles I would consider excellent mental food. Tried a search for Mosaics that unearthed a Jstor article on Mosaic Ateliers at Tabarka with a reference to a handsome mosaic depiction of heraldic birds and orants flanked by candles.
# 12 All this flapping around has given me a human-size appetite. With Rollyo's Ask an Avian search tool I did a quick dive into my preferred wild and pet bird websites to seize tips on the most nourishing meal for a stressed avian. Better not mention what I found until I've eaten it.
# 11 After circling a bit, decided on a closeup investigation of the Book (link) area of Web 2.0 Award Winners. Found 4 good perches out of 7 sighted. Using Coverpop might qualify as play since it just offers a flashy page of images. However it does have a link to MagazineArt.org's collection of vintage cover art. Zack Bookmaps, a German site, will help me locate a book about mythic (ha!) creatures in selected German, Swedish, Norwegian library catalogs (if I am fluent enough in these languages) as well as in the Library of Congress and Melvyl. Sixapart hosts personal or business and professional blogs for a fee. When I don't have a flight itinerary to follow I'll probably try out Reader2 to find some recommended books about the sort of fabulous adventures I undertake. (I'll hop back to LibraryThing for Thing #19.) But my two favorite perches are Lulu which provides a way for me to publish my autobiography online and in book format, and CiteULike, where I was able to locate a congenial group or two, such as Learn Online and eLearning whose members have submitted some articles I would consider excellent mental food. Tried a search for Mosaics that unearthed a Jstor article on Mosaic Ateliers at Tabarka with a reference to a handsome mosaic depiction of heraldic birds and orants flanked by candles.
# 12 All this flapping around has given me a human-size appetite. With Rollyo's Ask an Avian search tool I did a quick dive into my preferred wild and pet bird websites to seize tips on the most nourishing meal for a stressed avian. Better not mention what I found until I've eaten it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
