I signed up for a Bloglines account after staff day, and I was immediately hooked! I don’t know why I waited so long. I love that I can go to one place and keep up with almost all the sites I want to follow. I mostly use it to keep up with library news, but there are several general news and a couple personal blogs I can follow here as well. My Bloglines URL is: http://www.bloglines.com/public/gscronce
I have heard some good things about Google Reader, so I’m considering trying that platform instead of Bloglines. Jenny Levine was raving about Google Gears and how great it is for laptop users, because it lets you download feeds and read them even when you’re offline. That sounds pretty cool to me!
Quest 4: RSS feeds August 30, 2007
Quest 3: IM August 29, 2007
I’ve been using instant messaging for several years now, and while it can be a time-waster, it is also an easy, low-pressure way to communicate with people. I like that it is so quick, and you can have an in-depth conversation, but you can also just walk away from a chat when you need to go and it’s understood that that is fine. I mostly use my AIM account, although occasionally I use gmail chat with a few people. I chat less these days than I used to–most of the friends I chat with live far away now, and I don’t really like it for keeping up with long-distance friends. It feels both too immediate and too distant at the same time (I know that doesn’t make any sense!). For example, last night, I was about to go to bed when a friend IM’d me to invite me to play scrabble with her on Facebook. So I played scrabble with her and occasionally exchanged a chat message, and we never even did the “hey, how’s it going?” talk. At the same time, I was able to play scrabble with someone I haven’t seen in a month. The contradictions of the digital age…
Quest 2: Blogging August 29, 2007
Here is my blog. The name of my blog is a line from a poem by one of my favorite poets, Muriel Rukeyser (entitled “Poem”). She used the phrase to describe the mid-twentieth century, when world wars, telephones and the constant availability of news were changing people’s lives and mental states. Maybe the same could be said for some of today’s new technologies?
Quest 1: Lifelong Learning August 25, 2007
I decided shortly after college that I liked the idea of learning new skills, so I think I have already incorporated many lifelong learning habits into my life. Sometimes I am more active about learning than other times, but I generally enjoy learning new things and some of my choices reflect this: the decision to attend grad school, moving to South Carolina, teaching myself to knit, learning a martial art, etc. So I would say that I have confidence in myself as a learner. The hardest of these habits for me is probably play–I do have fun but I tend to take things pretty seriously.
