Euphemia Dorcas Crail Upper IV H : Half Term Report

Somewhat surprisingly, Crail has worked moderately hard these last few weeks, with varying degrees of success. Crail has responded reasonably well to being prompted to explore things she should have explored of her own volition. She has found the detailed instructions given in the classroom most conducive to her own somewhat sheep-like learning style.
Google Calendar telling her nicely by e-mail that she has the day off etc, and the realisation that she could have the same, tabbed, iGoogle home page [instead of the previous three different ones on different computers] has helped her time management considerably, although e-mails reminding her of PE classes have unfortunately not elicited any response.
She has enjoyed blogging but needs to be more concise and less irascible in her comments. She has found the blogs of other pupils most useful and entertaining, and has populated her Delicious account with numerous leads to be followed up next half term.
She appears to have found the tagging exercise helpful, but has still to learn the discipline and self-control of cataloguing as a necessary component of her education.
She spent far too much time on non-productive activities on Flickr, and has yet to submit her report on Slideshare.
She unfortunately failed miserably on the Twitter assignment, and must complete her detention for failing to come up to expectations on this before the term finishes. The detention task is to tweet 100 times in 100 ways 'I love Twitter really & I am just about to go to bed after a nice cup of tasty and very reasonably priced Tanqueray gin Good night everybody' [140 characters nota bene].
She is still working on her term project - dropping RSS feeds of blogs into web pages, which she has found more difficult than she expected. She needs to persevere and apply herself to this more diligently, and refrain from calling computers names entirely inappropriate for the learning environment.
Crail has pledged to work harder in the next few weeks, but sadly we have heard that promise on numerous previous occasions.
General comment: Could try [a bloody sight] harder.
Mildred Pierce, Form Mistress
St Vitus' Academy [Motto: Apropos Nullae, Carpe Ginevram]

Marks so far:
iGoogle, Google calendar: A
Delicious: A
RSS feeds: A-
Blogging: A-
Flickr: B
Doodle: B
Tagging: B
Slideshare: C
Twitter: Fail
PE: Crail has not attended a single lesson this term and therefore has no mark

Twitter - But that's next week!!

Getting an e-mail saying someone is following one of Miss Crail's alter-egos on Twitter has prompted another Cam23 Crisis. OMG haven't tweeted for days! [Actually Miss C doesn't think 'OMG', more likely an expletive]. She may not be the worst offender, but it feels as if a sizeable part of the web is being littered, polluted even, with begun-and-though-with-the-best-intentions-quickly-abandoned Projects [major and minor]
It is great that Cam23 is making the picking up of all the loose ends imperative, but how many balls can one juggle? it all started when Miss Crail tried to set up her blog for this course [under another alter-ego] and found she already had one. When did that happen? No idea!
The Tweets? Hopefully nobody is missing out on life waiting for the next gem from Weaslette [and what a disappointment it will be]. But how is one to DO all these things?
And how is one to comply with Thumper's [slightly altered] dictum 'If you ain't got nothing to say, don't say nothing at all', especially as one has just said pretty much ... nothing at all. Am I allowed to call it 'Blogshite' or will I get into trouble for that?

Stuck on Thing 3, and nobody's on the pull

OK, the rest of the Cam23 gang is diving enthusiastically into Thing 5 [worryingly, some are blogging about mysteries such as Thing 16 and the like...] and Miss Crail is still agonising over Thing 3.
Blogging is helpful for making contacts and forming communities, right? But part of the reason for this task is to get us to consider using it for our libraries, correct?
So here's a problem. Web 2.0 is moving us away from having to accept the information pushed at us to information we choose to pull in. Ergo blog followers are interested, so fine for that community-forming thing. However, one of our major functions is to reach out to those who aren't interested / don't know what we offer / don't know we can help /etc.
I've set up blogs for both the Genetics and Plant Scis Libraries [thank goodness for those multiple e-mail addresses as I couldn't use the same one, annoyingly] but I really haven't anything much to say, same as the Facebook pages. At this time of year, what might I say? To the Part IIs - could you rummage around in your rooms before you leave and make sure you haven't got any library books to return. I could say that, but who would see it? On the other hand, I could send out a message to the generic Part II e-mail address - and they would all get it! Targeted, and none of the other dept members would be complaining about spam. Or I could put a message on the home page of their Camtools site - or get Camtools to e-mail a message. Perfect, job done. In October I might need to tell the postgrads that they can always ask me stuff if they miss the resources talk. Targeted e-mail to all postgrads, fine. Poster, badge, t-shirt - quaint but probably works. Blog - er?
Even within this Cam23 community I am having problems with the blogging concept. Another example - I would like to connect with other Cam23ers around the Downing Site area and I happen to know a couple of them, but a connection via blogs is not necessarily the easiest way. However, were I to put out a message on LIB-LIST, I bet I'd get replies almost immediately.
So I guess I am thinking at the moment is that for a big library where lots might be happening, a blog could be fine, but, for small ones, followers might have graduated and given birth a couple of times before the next bit of news.
Correct me if I'm wrong. PLEASE correct me because I'm feeling old and unwillingly Luddite. That IS off the statute books as a capital offence by the way, isn't it?
And by the way, how to schedule a meeting on Doodle when Miss Crail is Billy No Mates? Ah, I know - e-mail. Oh STOP it

At the back of the pack, as always

Gawd, I'm EXHAUSTED reading all these blogs. How does anyone except Phil Bradley find time to do all these things? Now I understand that Bing ad on the teevee. Too much information?..or too flippin' old?

Thing 3

What do I expect to get from 23 Things?
By exploring and actually using to a certain level some of the current easily available tools, I hope to decide which are most appropriate for the 2 very small libraries I work in [probably only some are]. It is sometimes helpful to be 'encouraged' to try things one otherwise thinks there isn't time to mess with.
Plus if we all sing from the same hymn sheet there might be more consistency across the libraries, and we might meet the web expectations of users better.
Lucky it's almost vacation time, though, or it would be hard to find time to do all this...
What is my experience of Web 2.0? Absolutely zilch, darling, still get told off for thumbing the HTML manual. Lead me into the garden, Maud.....

Cat's cradle already

The memory is not what it once was. In attempting to create a blog, found out I already HAD one I'd completely forgotten about. Lucky there were no followers...
Seem to have more than one Google accounts, about 10 e-mail addresses, three Facebook pages etc etc. Well, those are the ones I remember...