badge it! --- playing make believe

What a fun little exercise for the second part of Flickr week for the Montana Library 2.0 Challenge! Can you guess what construction site I'm overseeing? This is one of my favorite "professional" pictures, circa 2006. Make your own badge!

flickr and libraries

Week four of the Montana Library 2.0 Challenge asks participants to explore and discover Flickr, the ever popular photo sharing site.

I use Flickr for many purposes, from sharing family photos with distant grandparents, to promoting libraries through the 365 Library Days Project, to creating presentations like the Making of a Day in the Life of a Youth Services Librarian. Flickr has quickly become a part of my life every day, both professionally and personally.

Last week I traveled to Missoula, MT to give a Connecting to Spanish Speakers @ Your Library Workshop to local librarians in the area and then attend the Montana Library Association's annual Offline conference. I was away from my toddler for a few days and missed viewing the recent lunar eclipse with him and my husband. Later that night, back at the hotel I could quickly view the photos my husband had taken of my son pointing out the disappearing moon on Flickr. For my son's grandparents, being able to see updated photos almost instantly keeps them closely connected even from 1,000 miles away.

The 365 Library Days Project is also very much worth your time to check out and explore. Michael Porter (the Library Man) from WebJunction, I believe, hatched this idea and is even in the process of creating a Press kit for libraries to use to promote themselves and the project.

RSS Feeds

This is week 3 of the Montana Library 2.0 Challenge (at least it is for me). This week we discuss and explore RSS feeds and readers. Before today I had only used the reader on IE but today I set up Google Reader. So now dear readers you can not only read what I'm blogging about, you can also see what I'm reading about. On the right side of the blog is a What am I reading about? feed as well as a What am I blogging about? list of tags.

Some of my favorite feeds are:
365 Days Library Days Project Photo Pool
A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette
Worldchanging
The Dispersal of Darwin
What are some of your favorite feeds? Post in the comments, please.

montana library 2.0 challenge

I accepted the Montana Library 2.0 Challenge weeks ago and today I finally begin. It is a self-paced guide to learning about web 2.0 for Montana librarians. I think there are about 70 librarians signed up and working through the course right now. The second week of the course asks us to set up a blog and use it to post thoughts about what we learn. I've decided to post my reflections here at the green librarian instead of creating a new account. Hopefully this work will inspire me to be a more active and engaging blogger.

7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners

1. Begin with the end in mind.
2. Accept responsibility for your own learning.
3. View problems as challenges.
4. Have confidence in yourself as a competent and effective learner.
5. Create your own learning toolbox.
6. Use technology to your advantage.
7. Teach and mentor others.

7 1/2 PLAY!!!

For me the hardest habit to stick to is Begin with the end in mind. I have well thought out goals in my life but I often am involved with so many things that the end, the actual goal, gets lost in the shuffle of trying to meet all of my obligations. I have the vague hope that after I finish up my MLIS I can better define the boundaries in my life and stick to this lifelong learning habit.

The easiest habit and one I won't soon break is Use technology to your advantage. I've always been comfortable with technology and ready to use it to make things easier, better, more efficient, more effective, and hopefully more enjoyable.

The habit I'm most interested in developing right now is Teach and mentor others. I'm in the middle of my first real experience with group teaching (Connecting to Spanish Speakers @ Your Library workshops). I shine in mentoring and one-on-one situations but have much to learn about group teaching. I enjoy sharing my knowledge, experiences, and passion with others and want to hone this skill in the future.

My goals from the Montana Library 2.0 Challenge are to 1) further explore web 2.0 technologies and fill any gaps in my knowledge and 2) practice and learn strategies to teach others to use these technologies in all types of situations.