Exploring - Week 1

So this first week has gone by very quickly. From the adjustments back to work and early mornings to the fact that now I’m a “tweeter”. It’s been an interesting journey so far. I was really overwhelmed the first day when I was trying to figure out what exactly needed to be done first. My head was spinning because I wanted to set everything up and didn’t know where to start. I think I’m getting the hang of it now and hope I’ll get into the groove of things more and more as we go on this Web 2.0 journey.

Last week brought about lots of new discoveries – I set up for a twitter account and to be honest felt a bit silly doing it – I just kept thinking to myself “who wants to hear me tweet?” But I had to remind myself that it wasn’t about me tweeting…I could use this as a way to get current information on anything/anyone I wanted. Hmm…maybe this won’t be so bad…so I’ll definitely give it a try and follow some people and tweet around!

As well, Facebooking is much the same for me…I’ve actually made it a point to avoid it…until now! Well, my friend had signed me up for an account in the summer but I rarely checked it and never wrote on my wall or anyone’s wall for that matter. But since discovering we needed to set one up for this course…I’m quite relieved I have it now!

And I wrote on my friend’s wall for the first time…I think it’s going to take some time getting used to the fact that everyone who’s a friend can read her wall and my message. Better yet, my comment to her goes on my wall too for all to see…hmm…I’m still trying to get comfortable with that idea…what’s the logic in that again?

But I have to say, I do love looking through my friend’s photo album – I mean once I got over that stalker feeling, it really is cool that people can share memories like that - especially with friends and families that live across the country.

I’ve built a shelf at Shelfari. My plans are to create a link to it on our school library web page. We have a silent reading program and a newly developed book review/discussion forum established online – so I thought the shelf would compliment both of these very well. It was a lot fun – my favorite part of this job is shopping for books and so in some ways, I get that same feeling as I’m stacking my virtual shelf with favorite titles.

The blogging was fun…I really enjoyed playing around with the different gadgets and seeing what I can add to make my blog…well, mine. It’s incredible all the different things you could add now…I remember setting up a blog for another course a few years ago and there have definitely been improvements to this process.

My biggest hurdle with all of these social networking sites is the issue of my privacy. I’m not 100% comfortable with putting my information, picture, and messages out there for everyone to see. It’s something I hope to work through as this course progresses.

But this has been a learning experience so far – I’ve discussed with another teacher how we could possibly use twitter for a project in the future, changed my facebook profile picture and wrote on a wall, created a blog (and posted a pic) and a shelf, and played around a bit with iGoogle and Google reader…very interesting tools…I really like both of these so far. I’ve set iGoogle as my Google home page now and again, I am loving the gadgets. I now get: my horoscope, daily weather forecast, a joke, and a famous quote greeting me every morning. Google reader is pretty cool too. I’ve subscribed to only one magazine so far but I plan to play on there some more.