#12 Rollyo

I've created two search rolls so far using Rollyo. The first is a recipe search. I actually like browsing through my many cook books or bulging recipe folder for inspiration- when I have the time. However, sometimes it's handy to be able to search for a recipe with just a few clicks rather jumping from book to book, index to index. Rollyo worked well for me for this topic because it meant I could limit the search to just a few good Australian sites, avoiding unknown American terms for ingredients and that pesky imperial measurement system. I also created a search roll related to speech pathology, which I studied recently. I'm in two minds as to whether I would want to use this when actually studying. By carefully choosing sites that you believe to be well researched and reliable you could be saving yourself the time that it takes to filter through a general google search. However, there is the possibility that you might also miss out on valuable information if you create too narrow a search roll. Also with a clinical science such as speech pathology, it is valuable to be exposed to the personal as well as academic texts that are available on the internet (perhaps not to complete a 2000 word assignment on the anatomy and physiology of the vocal tract, but in order to understand the experiences of your clients and their families).

#11 LibraryThing

I enjoyed this activity. While I've only really done the minimum at this stage (I've only added five books so far) I think I will continue to use this in my own time. I may even be tempted to upgrade to a paid membership so that I can add all of my books when I have the time. I think I really need to have a bit of a play before I can say much more about the various features. The next step is to try and add one of the widgets to this blog.

#10 Play around with image generators

This warning label (which I created using http://www.warninglabelgenerator.com/) illustrates my current feelings towards learning 2.0. Actually, I am enjoying it on the whole but got frustrated with the image generator task as it ended up taking me forever. First of all, there were just too many different things to choose from. I looked at quite a few of the links from the Generator Blog but I wasn't particularly taken with any of them. I created an avatar using http://www.doppelme.com/create/step2.asp but I didn't like the result. I'll have to play around to make it a bit more exciting. I tried the bonsai story generator http://www.critters.org/bonsai.html but it wasn't what I expected. I know this was meant to be a fun exercise but it turned out to be more frustrating than fun for me tonight.

#9 Finding feeds

As soon as a I set up my bloglines account I found myself checking websites for the RSS symbol that would indicate possible feeds to subscribe to. I subscribed to some feeds from the ABC website after browsing through their many possibilities. Already I've noticed that some seem to be updated much more frequently than others. I found a couple more feeds that interested me by viewing bloglines 200 most popular feeds list. One of these was BBC world news, which I quickly unsubscribed from when I found more than 120 items awaiting my attention after a weekend. I've just subscribed to a couple of feeds from The Age website but I don't know how long that will last either. I like reading the paper while I eat breakfast. Although I could use my laptop to check my bloglines account in the morning it's just not the same as flicking through the paper and I couldn't find feeds for some of my favourite supplements like Epicure (not to mention the fact that coffee spills might have more serious consequences for a laptop than for a newspaper). I had a quick look at a couple of the suggested search tools such as Feedster and Technorati, but by this stage I'd already subscribed to more than 20 feeds on a range of topics and didn't feel inclined to increase my reading load. I might go back to these tools if I get bored with my current feeds and want to find some new ones.

#8 RSS

I've set up a bloglines account. I subscribed to a couple of their suggested blogs on knitting, libraries and vegetarian cooking when I set up the account. I then added a couple of other feeds suggested as part of the discovery exercise as well as blogs that my friends write. I can see the advantage of using a newsreader to keep up to date with blogs and other websites that I check on a regular basis. Using bloglines means that I don't have to check the individual sites on a regular basis to see if they've been updated.