Thing #8

RSS seems like a very useful tool, and easy to use too. I added some of my feeds by using their suggested blogs list, which is arranged by subject--very convenient. I got some news feeds, animal lover feeds, and a few other ones,15 all together. Their list is a bit short though and does not have web addresses (at least I did not see it). It would be great for them to have a link to a more extensive organized list of blogs to choose from. Did I miss it?

Thing#7

One of the most useful things I found in Web searching is metaengines, such as dogpile.com I amquite amazed by the fact that these engines are not nearly as popular as google and yahoo. Dogpile, for instance, seems better at isolating the most relevant sites and gives some useful options, that are not readily available in other engines, such as bolding search terms. I wonder if the relevance filtering of this engine is not too heavy for some users. This might what turns them away. As for me, and I suspect for many others, the main problem with Google and Yahoo is that they return plenty of irrelevant stuff, so looking for what you need often feels like looking for a needle in a hay stack.

Thing #6

Here is the motivational card I created on one of Flickr's mashups, Flickr Toys. It also allows creating personalized letters to Santa, Badges, trading cards, and montages in the style of Warhol or Hockney. If you want to flatter your artistic ego for a few fractions of a second (I am no worse than Warhol!), this is the thing to do.

Thing # 5

This photo is by someone named Eva Cuca. This cat has one of those pensive looks that cats sometimes have: very still, dignified and puzzling. My roommate's cat has it once in a while when he gets tired running around and scratching all the surfaces in the appartment. The green eyes against the gray are a great touch.

Here is the link to the Flikr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/81956367@N00/358617624/

Learning Habits 2

Learning Habits 2:

I think that learning through play is as likely to be hard as easy. Most of the time I attempt to make a play out of learning it easily becomes much more play than learning. Some subjects are, however, so engaging that they turn learning into play without any special effort. I guess much of it depends on how you relate to what you are learning. And yes, age and experience matter too: the more learning you've done for credit, the harder it is to think of learning as play. Children have an advantage here.

Learning Habits 1

The most difficult to learn habit:
I found that taking responsibility for one's own learning can be rather challenging, more so than other habits suggested in the presentation (7.5 learning habits). Most people's education in the first 20-25 years of their lives seems to be structured by someone else. If there is room for choices, there is little guidance on how to make them. One is told what, when, and in what order to learn, and how exactly to pack one's brain with whatever facts and skills that need to be packed in it. Starting self-education may feel a little like for a domestic animal to find itself in the wild: many options and little idea of how to make them.

The easiest to learn habit:
Neither of these habits seems particularly easy, but using technology is fairly simple these days, at least for the basic tasks: finding an electronic book, locating a print one, listening to streaming media etc.