Technology Adventure Unit Two

Unit two: Images
2/21-3/6

We take a lot of photos down here and we should show them off! The Library uploads photos to Flickr for people to look at, and photos will be great to share with patrons once we have Drupal running.

Play at Flickr: Check your e-mail for the login and password.

From this page, you can view our photostream, see what our contacts have uploaded and explore. There’s a lot you can do with Flickr, socially and sharing, but we’ll stick to the basics.

Click on “Your Photostream” to see all of the Library’s photos. Photo sets, specific albums, are along the right side. Explore! Use tags on individual photo pages to see more with the same tag. You can browse the Library’s collection like that, or the entire Flickr site. You can also explore groups, where people share their photos on a particular theme.

Now let’s practice uploading. Take a photo during a program or around the Library, or just choose one of our recent photos saved on the G drive. Click on the Flickr logo to get back home, then click on Upload Photos on the right side and select your photo.

All photos from our department are tagged opplfamily so that they appear on the Hi Kids page and all Library photos are tagged “oak park public library” (with quotes to keep the phrase together). Add other tags as necessary. Add the photo to the correct set. Give the photo a title and, optionally, a description. Click save and admire your work. (Optionally: Click the ticky box to make this photo private and viewable only to people logged into the OPPL account.)

Make your own book cover: Now try to make your own picture to upload at the blog. Pictures add interest to blog posts and should be used often. We’ll twist the internet album cover meme and turn it into a book cover.

Go to Wiki Random
The random Wikipedia article you get is your pseudonym.

Go to Quotations Page
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your book.

Go to Flickr Explore
From the drop down, select the month of your last birthday. Click on your birthday on the resulting calendar and click on the third image to be your cover image. Choose Actions, view all sizes. Right click on the image and save it to your computer. The Medium size is probably the easiest to work with. (If this photo is unavailable for download, you can choose another.)

Use a graphics program like Paint.net (on our computers) or Picnik (online program) to put it all together. In Paint, explore the tool descriptions to learn about all the options. Open the photo you want used. Crop it to be approximately book cover proportioned. Add text with the T on the sidebar, choose your font, click where you want to type, and enter it in. Use the compass like cursor under the text to move it around.

Picnik walks you through a lot of the options, plus gives fun extras you can add to your images and lets you save to the computer or your favorite social networking site. Crop your photo under Edit, and add text under Create. I find it more intuitive than Paint, but your mileage may vary. :)

Get creative! See samples at Flickr's Cover Meme tag.

Create a new post in blogger, upload your book cover and tell us about your adventures with images. Did you have any problems? Did you find anything cool at Flickr you want to share? How can we use Flickr more, or image generators and graphics programs like this? What about Flickr applications like Color Fields, You Gotta See This or Montagr? Any other neat ones you found?

Don’t forget to tag/label your post with unit two. You have two weeks, until March 6, to get your post up and comment on some other posts. Have fun!

You bloggin?

I must admit I generally only use sports blogs, although I have been visiting Graphic Novel Reporter lately. It has got a ton of content and has helped this graphic novel novice catch up on what’s new. My true passion is NBA basketball, and one of the best ball blogs is The Basketball Jones. It started as a humble podcast five years ago and has grown into an everyday videocast and blog. Another great one is Free Darko, a philosophy and sociology infused NBA blog that has produced two AMAZING books. The books are great to look at—regardless if you follow basketball—so let me know if you’d like to see them.

Keepin' it really small

There is only one blog (so far!) that I follow. Leslie told me about it when I wanted to start slowly adding on one blog at a time, it's called Kid's Lit. If you've ever gotten a request for a book from me it's probably because of something I read on this blog. I also get the SLJ electronic newsletter and will read Fuse 8 or Shelftalker if the entry looks interesting. Alright I'll add them! Anyone know of a good Cubs one to follow?

Bloggy Goodness

Unlike Gennie and Rory, I don't really use Google Reader. I do get a lot of site update pushes via twitter and/or facebook, though, so I know when to go looking for content at my favorites. Secondary blogs, I visit when I remember about them, and just play catch up. Perhaps not efficient, but it works.

Favorite Library World blogs:
Collecting Children's Books: Peter mostly deals with older books, plus trivia and trends, but he does so with a sense of humor and a dash of bitchiness.

American Indians in Children's Literature: Debbie is a polarizing person, and I don't always agree with what she has to say, but I always appreciate her point of view.

Mel's Desk: Melissa has great plans and ideas for the under 2 storytime crowd.

Storytime at Richmond Memorial Library: This one is pretty new to me, but I've been going through their archive and getting some nice storytime ideas.

SLJ and Horn Book blogs, including Fuse #8, Read Roger and Tea Cozy, which appears to be missing today.

Favorite Blogs:
Tom and Lorenzo/Project Rungay: Best Blog Ever? Quite possibly. For fans of Mad Men, Glee, and Project Runway, plus fashion in general, celebrities and costume design. (The Mad Men style posts are amazing.)

A Blog About History: Near daily pictures and updates on new archaeological and historical finds around the world.

Boots in the Oven: My cousin and her husband are pretty big food bloggers down in Austin, and their restaurant reviews are amazing. They are setting off on a 14 month trip around the world next month, and I can't wait to see what they eat.

Already Pretty: Fashion tips and tricks that are useful and positive.

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: Romance novel reviews and commentary.

I like blogs with snappy writing and great pictures, it seems!

Reader Rory

I use Google for SO many things now. For email, for to-do lists (their "task" bar in G-mail is great), for documents (both "Word"-like dox and spreadsheets), and for their RSS-feeder, Reader. So just about every blog I read is through Reader. Otherwise, like Gennie, I'd get overwhelmed and/or waste time checking blogs that might not have been updated.



I didn't use Google/Blogger to create RAWR!, my own personal blog because I preferred Typepad's templates and services.

On my Google Reader--also like Gennie--I've divided my blogs up into categories:

• Friends, like (I wish more of my friends had blogs!)
• Home, like Young House Love and The Pioneer Woman
  
• Library, like EarlyWord and Book Nut
  
• News & Perspectives, like Jezebel and Chicagoist
  
• Popzikkle (these are celebrity gossip and crazy-stuff-on-Internet blogs I read both out of morbid, unrelenting interest and to write my own weekly e-newsletter about that stuff, which you should sign up for!), like Just Jared and dlisted
  
• Sauce (which are blogs which don't fit into any other category and just generally make my life more fun), like Chicago Hearts Trivia and I Think You're Sauceome

And thanks for this task, Shelley, because it made me tidy up my Reader a bit, unsubscribe to a few blogs. I follow the basic rule of "am I semi-excited when I see new posts from this blog?" to decide whether or not they stay. Like anything, if you let your device for organization and access get too cluttered...it just ain't a device for organization and access anymore!

Blogs, Blogs, and More Blogs

Hi all!

I try and follow several library blogs on a regular basis. My all-time favorite is the Library Link of the Day. It prevents me from having to scour the web for the latest library news articles. In order to stay on top of the latest tech trends, I usually visit Wired Top Stories or Pew Internet Rss Feed: Reports. As far as children’s blogs, I like SLJ’s A Fuse #8 Production and Booklist Online's Bookends. Since I am trying to become familiar with graphic novels, I’ll also scan Graphic Novel Reporter on occasion.

Like Gennie, I have quite a big list of blogs. Mine are not organized in any fashion. In Blogger, can you group your blogs into categories? Several others feeds that I like are: Annoyed Librarian, Critical Mass, GalleyCat, Guys Read, Nancy Pearl, NYT> Children’s Books, Oldhag, Remaining Relevant, Through the Looking Glass, and The Shifted Librarian.

Hope this helps,

Anne

Unit One Ahoy!

Looks like I'm going first. Big thanks to Shelley for putting this together, too.

My Google Reader is probably over-populated and I break it down into Blogs, Friends, Crafty, Food and Library. What I really need in there is a good Children's Reader's Advisory blog; is there such a thing? Here is an example of an adult one I've found very easy to keep up with (and, yes, it is written by my current professor, but I promise I'm not just sucking up. She doesn't know I'm writing this. Sheesh.) I want something that's not just reviews of new titles, but old as well and makes links between titles. And makes coffee.

I'm also a faithful reader of Regretsy, New Dress a Day, Mimi Smartypants, Angry Chicken and Smitten Kitchen, just to name a few. I like a snarky sense of humor and yummy looking food that I might actually make myself. For my own quality of life, I've chosen not to read blogs by those so totally taken with their own greatness, fame and big house that I want to vomit or blogs by people who make me feel crappy about myself/my housekeeping/my parenting just by being so damn zen.

And now you know (and knowing is half the battle!)

Technology Adventure, Unit One

Welcome to our spring project! Every unit, you’ll be posting a new blog entry and commenting on other peoples'. If you need help or have questions, I’m always available, and you can take advantage of your desk partners’ knowledge as well. Some units will have more assignments than others, and some will be easier for you than others. Feel free to challenge yourself past what is listed, and share what you learn!

Unit one: Basics
2/14-2/20

Create blogger/gmail account:
We use Blogger to create posts on our staff blog, http://opplchildrens.blogspot.com/. In order to have access to posting on it, you need to create a google account. If you already have one (via gmail), you are set. If not, or you want a separate work account, set up a gmail address. You will use this for posting as well as later for activities.

Once you have a gmail address, visit blogger.com and log in. From this page, your Blogger Dashboard, you will be able to create a new post, edit posts you already wrote, and see posts from blogs you follow. (We’ll talk about this in a later unit.)

Creating a Google account with blogger does give you the option to create your very own Blogger Blog. If you want to use this blog for your Technology Adventure, that’s fine. Follow the “Create your blog now!” directions.

Get access to our dept blog: Once you have your google account set up, let me know what your e-mail address is so I can add you to our blog authors. When you’ve been added, Keeping it Small at OPPL will appear on the blogger dashboard you see when you log in. If you choose to use your own blog, please still make a post on our blog linking to your entry.

Review blog writing guidelines and HTML hand out: When you’re posting on Blogger (or Drupal when we have our new site), there is a toolbar similar to Word’s that allows you to create links, bold or underline words, etc. However, you can also use HTML codes to tell the website how you want it to look. This can make going back to edit posts much simpler. You can keep the cheat sheet handy for easy copying and reference.
Guidelines and Cheat Sheet

Make a post: Write a post and share your favorite blogs with us – use HTML to create links and let us know why you like it. (Fun or professional or both!) What are good sites we should be reading? We have a few blogs linked from our sidebar if you want to explore some new ones or get some ideas. Do this by next Sunday, February 20.

To create a post, click on the blue “New Post” button on your Blogger Dashboard. Add a link by clicking on the chainlink icon below the title box. Hint: when you’re writing a post, roll your mouse over images in the toolbar to see what it does.

Potential topics to discuss: How do you find blogs? Do you stick with blogs for content, writing style, or both? What makes you ditch a blog? What are you looking forward to trying in our adventure?

Be sure to tag this post (Blogger calls it labeling), giving it keywords that will make it easier to find later. One tag should be unit one. This is useful because clicking on the tag “unit one” will bring up a page showing all the posts with that tag - much easier to go back and find specific information later.