Priscilla is a small witch that I bought when my late husband and I travelled throughout the United Kingdom and Western Europe for six months. She came from Goslar, a beautiful town on the fairytale road in Germany.
Just as Captain Cook left to do way more than monitor the Transit of Venus, Priscilla was sent to do more than make friends with members of the Soul Food Community. She was given a secret mission. She left hoping that her hosts would be a whole lot savvier than her and that together they would enter the digital world. She had a list of things she wanted to learn. This list came from an article about 43 things to learn way back then.
The list included
1. Take a digital picture with a camera and/or phone and download it to your PC.
2. Register at Blogger and start a blog. Post every once in a while and add a photo.
3. Register at Bloglines and aggregate your blog and RSS subscriptions into one reader. Check out what other blogs align with your interests.
4. Look at Facebook and see the next generation of social networking.
5. Set up a Flickr account and post a few of digital photos online. Tag and annotate them.
6. Look at Squidoo and find out how you can earn a little bit of money online.
7. Make a Cafe Press store and order you own notebooks, magnets, tee shirts etc.
8. Register at MSN Photo Album and build an album to share with friends, family, or colleagues.
9. Check out Myspace and see how this service has become so huge globally.
10. Have some fun with the links on the Generator Blog.
11. Download Firefox and compare it to Explorer and Opera.
12. Research bookmarklets and try a few.
13. Revisit Yahoo! and remind yourself why it is visited more than Google.
14. Learn about iFILM and viral video.
15. Get a PubSub account and start searching the future.
16. Make a map of all the countries or states you’ve been to at Visited Countries.
17. Experiment with some sound and picture search engines like Podscope.
18. Try some new Web search engines like Exalead, Wink, Gravee, Clusty, Mooter, Kartoo, etc., or others you can find at Search Engine Watch’s list.
19. Learn more about visual display tools like Grokker.
20. Check out Google Base and see what the fuss is all about.
21. Register with NetFlix and rent a movie. Learn how to deal with streaming media.
22. Get a Del.icio.us account and play with social bookmarking and tags.
23. Play with Blinkx and learn about searching TV shows, video and podcasts.
24. Try MovieFlix too. There are plenty of free movies here to learn to do this.
25. Set up a Google Picasa account. Post a picture and then edit it.
26. Download an MP3 file to your PC, laptop or phone. Try iTunes, LimeWire, Kazaa, or eDonkey. Look for something that’s not music too.
27. Listen to a podcast. There are quite a few about library issues, too.
28. Find your home and your office on Google Maps.
29. Check out your local public library’s website. You’ll likely find some cool stuff like talking books for that long commute, or classical music collections, or eBooks.
30. Change your ringtone so you don’t jump when everyone else’s default ring goes off.
31. Visit the Google Labs site regularly.
32. Set up a personalized Google or My Yahoo! page
33. Play with JibJab.
34. Play with Wikipedia. Edit an entry, feel the network.
35. Play with Copernic and extend your searching.
Priscilla’s mission was a great success! While she was in Los Angeles she interviewed, blogger, Lori Gloyd!
Priscilla proved that we learn best through play and began passing on tips as newcomers came on board. The Wild Garden Advent Calendar, which was made in 2006, predates a lot of current technology, but it still provides valuable insight into the potential of the web.
So much has changed since then! Many of the things on the list Priscilla travelled with no longer exist! Have a wander and create a list of things that you need to learn now. For example, I want to learn how to use WhatsApp to set up a private group. Use the comment bar at the bottom, or via your favourite social media channel, to tell us what you have on your list and to share your favourite web tool.
Soul Food Cafe and The Wild Garden Advent calendar were so influential in those day, in helping me explore and come to use the computer while marveling at the creativity shown.
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A response to Day 2. https://wp.me/s2oI0M-tools
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Just a peek at some of my best loved and well used resources: https://animosbones.com/2017/12/05/for-the-record/
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