(If you meant to donate but haven’t gotten to it, I’m a just shy of making my fundraising goal, and so I’d appreciate any help you can give.) Here’s a link:

Then, in December, I’m joining a group of NU student journalists on a trip to Namibia, where they will be interviewing refugees. More on that later … right now, it’s time to walk (and blog.) I’m a bit rusty.

I’m not alone in my negative reaction to this. See here, and here. Here’s the clip.

My role models are articulate, wise, thoughtful, quick-witted, brave and kind-hearted. Last week the YWCA of Evanston awarded leadership awards to three Evanston women for their achievements in empowering women and eliminating racism. They are role models. So are Sandra Day O’Connor, Melinda Gates and Condi Rice. Not, Sarah Palin.

There were many good things about ELL; here are my top 5:

- “In Plain English” Web 2.0 tutorials from Commoncraft. Did you know Commoncraft was only two people? With a flick of the paper and wave of the hand, they make techy stuff seem easy … and it usually is once you get over the “this is going to be really hard” feeling. Educators and parents: check out “Electing a U.S. President in Plain English.”

- My RSS feed on GoogleReader. Through it I’ve found news sources and blogs (particularly YA blogs and political blogs) I didn’t know existed. I have time to read them because GoogleReader makes it easy. It has changed the way I use the Internet. For good.

- Wiki’s and LibraryThing. Wikis could change the way Evanston librarians share information. LibraryThing could provide a social network for our patrons.

- Facebook and Pandora Radio. I’ve had an unused Facebook account for years. ELL got me to activate it, and I’m enjoying contact with friends from high school, college and law school, as well as my EPL coworkers and neighbors. It’s fun. Likewise, I’m having fun with my Pandora radio stations. As with Facebook, I knew this technology existed and I thought I’d like it, but I never took time to figure it out.

And, finally and most importantly …

- Blogging. I am grateful that ELL forced me to blog. I had wanted to learn, but was intimidated. It turns out that creating a site, getting it organized, and creating posts and pages is pretty simple. With some practice, the mechanics are second nature. On a side note, I’ve also learned LOTS about how tagging can bring the public to a blog. (You’d be surprised how many people search “Disney and sex” each day. Yeesh.)

I’m still too close to this blogging experience to know how and what will be useful in the future, although I do expect that it will part of my future in some way. Until I figure that out, I am going to keep this blog to further explore its capabilities. (So far, each post has brought a new challenge … here, uploading the dancing stickman was tough, so enjoy him. Although … it would be even cooler if he had music. Hmmm.)

There have been few downsides to this exceptional ELL experience. I can only think of two.

- First, it was time consuming and I did it all on my own time. Each week it took several hours to play around with each of the “things.” I made time for the project because I enjoyed it. If I hadn’t liked what I was doing, I know I would have resented the expectation that I spend personal time on a work initiative.

- Second, I now have little patience for websites that lack content and are poorly organized. With the wealth of available resources, those are problems that are easy to fix. (I know, I know, my impatience isn’t one of my more attractive personal traits; that’s why this is a “downside” of ELL!)

I hate to end with downsides but this post is already too long. Thank you, thank you Evanston Library Learns and particularly Heather for the chance to learn!

This doesn’t seem to be an Apple-friendly product, and there is no help on either the Media Mall or Apple websites. Also, there aren’t many downloadable books that will play on an iPod (my MP3 player), so it’s just not worth the hassle. I’ve been downloading audiobooks from Audible and iTunes for years. I pay for those, and was excited to try this, but I’ll wait for it to get more user-friendly.

On the positive side, while working on this, I’ve had the Bears game broadcasting from WBBM’s podcast, and Charles “Peanut” Tillman just intercepted ,,,, TOUCHDOWN BEARS. Bears lead 31 – 0. Who needs an audiobook.