Week 1: Done. I am not sure about the learning contract (See below). Quite often you will not know what is involved in learning something new until you wade into it. And so you could spend as much time refining your learning contract as learning.


The last link for week 1 is pretty cool: lots of interesting articles under 'categories' on the rhs.


Week 2: Well I have gone ahead and set up a blog already as I am away next week. Its as dull as ditch water at the moment; but watch it grow! (this link only works in firefox).

Flaming Trolls: an explanation is due. Please see these links (1) (2)

Week 3: I have so much catching up to do. I just spent the last while looking at everybody elses work. I am stunned by the creativity!


Reading about wikis was interesting. I was already quite au fait with the concept by using wikipedia, but the variety of wikis is impressive. I do wonder if creating them is just duplicating sources of information already on websites in many cases.

Well, i am been playing around with twitter and at the moment i don't see it as a tool that is really doing anything that can not be done with other web 2.0 tools already. And as Mandy says people are giving alot away about themselves as well - (a librarian at the IIUG conference in Blanchardstown last week speculating on Irish 'lovemaking').

Week 4: I didn't do too much for this as I have been using flickr for a couple of years already, as a way of sharing photos with friends and family.

Week 5: I don't see much relevance to many of these image generators except for idling away part of the day.



The Latin motto generator was fun (for a nerd): "Scientia et verbum" or "Ex pulchritudine gaudium"


I took a look through the best 200 website list and I didn't recognise as many as I thought i would - but none really engaged me.

I have signed up to Rollyo but I haven't played with it yet...
Ok it looks like it could be a useful way of interrogating all your favourite websites in one fell swoop but then again Google does a similar type of job.

Week 6: RSS feeds. I came across this article which debates if RSS is going to be superseded by Twitter. I liked the explanation in 23 things about RSS feeds - particularly the way podcasts were shown work like an RSS feed - a 'oh yeah' moment for me - I had never thought of iTunes as an aggregator before.

The RSS and blog search tools did not impress me. They didn't return the kind of the focused results that I have become used to with Google. But I have started adding blogs to my RSS reader and I am being converted - it is a nice way of seeing new entries rather than going to the blogs themselves.

Week 7: http://del.icio.us/
It looks like two ideas melded together: web-based bookmarks and websearch. The first is fine and useful if you move a lot from computer to computer. I am not sure I understand the second- isn't it just another way of finding the same pages you would get by using google? - just using different algorithms to determine page ranking.

Technorati
I looked around and added my blog to it, tried a few searches as well. But just on a short quick look around it will not replace the way I find sites I like - which is a kind of electronic word of mouth. A site I like recommends another, and I go take a look at it. For example I found this a while back by just that process and I have got lots of interesting podcasts on a whole range of subjects from it. The links on the right are excellent. So much of the hits I am getting on Technorati look like chaff in comparsion. That is not to say that with more time on my part of with further advances in technorati that it couldn't be a useful tool.

Week 8: ZoHo is really nice. But It is one of those tools whose depth would only be fully realised with hours of use.

Librarything.

And for the obsessive compulsive lister

Week 9: nearly there now!