cwilliams11

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Archive for Blog

Endings and Beginnings

The end of another school year leads to thoughts of re-designing blogs, wikis, and websites. Naturally, there is the standard sprucing up; links to prune and backups to save.  Any school year brings changes and growth.

In anticipation that some sites fall to the wayside, this school year I’ve developed the habit to save content and alternative links to multiple online storage sites.  There’s been a burst of semantic tools and I am now a fan of grid design. Perhaps due to my aging Boomer cohorts, I am increasingly aware of accessibility issues. There are goals to improve my writing, posting and social networking skills, even as microblogging and more management of feeds and life streams comes to attention. There are new practices and techniques on others’ sites to test, implement and tweak.

Less concrete components also enter my end-of-school-year reflection regarding online presence. Trends, policies and discussions impacting the future of library service and knowledge work keep shifting.  Recognition of new roles and specialties for knowledge workers within the emerging collective cognitive network or eventual web4.0 has entered consideration; the need to develop work skills for enhancing global social intelligence and collaboration.

With thanks to input from so many online contacts that I value and appreciate, these and additional ideas will be incorporated into my mission, principles, goals and objectives for a fresh start next school year.

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WordPress Diigo Plugin

"Create New Post" page of the WordPr...

Image via Wikipedia

I have tried out a WordPress Diigo Plugin which automatically inserts my bookmarked sites from a Diigo group, via feed, into WordPress as a daily post.  It is a fine idea and works seamlessly, so why consider removing the service?

For me it is a style preference more than anything; the visual difference between the text blocks of blog posts and a feed’s long list of links. I have noticed that the post and feed combination (from Diigo or Twitter) makes it difficult for me to skim other blogs. I believe the combination creates the same readability problems in this blog.

One solution is to set all feeds into a separate column.

Another solution is to create a separate Diigo group to insert just a few daily top picks.  A feed that is a similiar length to blog posts, matching visibility style, could make it easier for readers to digest the combination of links and posts.

The third solution is a separate blog just for feeds, like the examples at Alltop or MoMB.

For the next week or two I will test out using a daily short list of top picks from my Diigo bookmarks in combination with posts.

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Semantic Links Turn Blog Into PLE Start Page

Illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith.

Image via Wikipedia

From EcontentMag.com, I took Ron Miller’s advice: “Want to get to know the inner workings of the EContent team members’ minds? Then check out their blogs, which are well worth bookmarking.”

I’ve inserted the list under the “Trend Watch” link heading.

With the help of the semantic links provided via Zemanta add-on, my WordPress blog site serves an added purpose of being a personal learning environment start page for select interests.

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