Week 10: The End

When I first heard about the 23 Things assignment, I was very excited. I love learning new and cool things that can be done with the computer. I thought I would learn oodles of new things.

Okay, so some things I already knew about (I’ve probably spent waaaay too much time on YouTube the last couple of years), and some things I had only heard about that I hadn’t given a chance (I’d roll my eyes at the thought of blogging). And some things I know that I had a strong preference for that were not on the list (I prefer slides.com to flickr and I prefer linksagogo to del.icio.us). But that only goes to illustrate just how many useful tools that we have at our disposal, if we can find them.

I did come away with many sites that I can no longer live without. Zoho is one of the ones that I think I will get the most use out of one a professional level. It is a very handy tool for those who did not bring a disk or flash drive. LibraryThing is going to be tremendously helpful in keeping track of collections. The HCPL eBooks site and Librivox will be great to recommend to those looking for audio books.

On a personal level, I love the avatars and some of the other creative sites. Some of us have bounced around the idea of librarian trading cards.

Oh, and blogging and wikis have turned out to be more useful than I thought it would.

I was not disappointed in the number or cool new things I learned. I made sure to bookmark my favorites, and have been sharing them with anyone I thought would be interested.

It’s been great fun! I hope that we don’t stop learning though, and that we share any new noteworthy sites that we might stumble upon.

Thanks. :O)

Week 9: eBooks

I looked at Wowio, LibriVox and the HCPL eBooks section. LibriVox was by far my favorite.

Wowio does not allow for anonymous emails such as gmail, yahoo, or hotmail. For most people, these are the only options available to them. Otherwise you can scan in your driver's license or give a credit card number. Neither one of those options sit too well with me.

The HCPL eBooks section has a lot of materials. Check out is easy and how to download the things you need to run it are fairly explanatory. However, and this is my biggest complaint, there doesn't seem to be an option for Mac users. Though this is a wonderful option for audio books, it leaves out people like me who only have Mac computers at home.

LibriVox has nothing that needs downloading and doesn't seem that it requires you use a PC only. An interesting aspect of it is that anyone can be a reader. Of course the drawback is that all the books read there are all in the public domain, so there will be no current books.

Week 9: Podcasting

My podcast exploration mainly dealt with looking at music.

I've been using iTunes for years, and love it. Instead of buying an entire album, I buy only the two or three songs I like off of the album. Plus I often find hard to locate songs with it. You can store the songs on up to three computers. I've downloaded songs, videos, and even some free television show episodes. Since iTunes is already on my computer, I've never looked at anything else. However, it looks like Yahoo has a decent site for buying songs too. The look is different, but it essentially does the same job.



I checked out http://podcastalley.com/ and http://www.podcast.net/ as well. I have to say that podcast.net was more enjoyable (and easier) for me to use. The way that the page is arranged makes it more user friendly.

It was interesting to see just how many different types of podcasting there are.

Week 9: YouTube

Way back in September I added a couple of YouTube videos. One of a video of the Librarian song. Someone showed it to me, and even though it is slightly... um... on the creepy side, I really liked it. I laugh my head off each time I see it. The other video I had loaded was Shhhh. It featured the Sleestaks (green dudes) from "Land of the Lost" (a 70's tv show) and a cell phone.

Now, the Librarian song can still be viewed. However, the Shhhh video cannot. That is one of the things to keep in mind with YouTube, you don't know how long the video will be available.

I decided to include another video.

Several years ago a friend sent me the Sand Art video through email. I hadn't thought about it in years. Then something sparked the memory and I decided to see if I could find it on YouTube. Sure enough, several people had loaded this video. It is absolutely amazing!

Koalas

Thanks, Grace, for sending me the link to such a great site! At http://sketchcast.com/ I was able to create a sketch online and publish. Of course, working with a mouse is a bit awkward, but still loads of fun. As far as I can tell so far you can just sketch in different colors, not use block in huge areas with color.

Since I just used Animoto to sketch out koalas, I decided to use koalas as my test subject for this one as well.

Week 8: Animoto

Animoto was easy to use, but I was disappointed that I didn't have more control over the video. It took several remixes until I found one where you could see the pictures in the order I wanted them seen. I'm sure there are more options if you upgrade, though.

Week 8: Zoho and Away We Go

I went to Zoho and created an account. I played with some of the options, but wondered if I would actually use this in regular life since my computer at home and my computer at work both already have similar applications. I did think it was neat that you can email a link to your page to a friend (I emailed it to myself to test it out) so that they can look at your page. Again, I can already do something similar with the tools I already have and are easier (more familiar) to use.

Then on my way to work I started thinking about it, and realized that this would be perfect for the many many patrons who come in and have forgotten a disk or a flash drive and only have a few minutes left before their time on the computer runs out. Since you can't save directly on the desktop, Zoho would be perfect to copy and paste your document on so you can access it later.

This is definitely one site I plan on recommending to others.

Week 8: Social Networking

I went to several of the sites listed. Actually, I think I visited all of them, though only a few stood out to me.

My.Space is a site that I joined a long while back. My sister bullied me into getting an account since she and her daughter both had accounts, as well as my brothers kids. It's actually the only way she will write me. With great reluctance I made one. Since I live so far from my family, it was helpful for sharing photos in a slide show or just posting information. Since I have the security settings set pretty high on there, it is doubtful anyone other than family will see it.

Ning could be a great resource. However, I wasn't able to get it to work successfully at work. Ah well. Can't have everything.

RateMySpace was interesting, but I quickly grew bored looking at everyone's spaces. Though likely that is purely jealousy. I did think it was very neat how one person used one of his pieces of art as his space. Which brings out interesting questions of what your 'space' really is. Is it a physical place, or is it any place you create that is yours? Well now, that discussion could go on forever, so on to the next site...

The next one I liked was Catster. I didn't mean to like it. I thought that it would be silly and was ready to roll my eyes. But curiosity got the best of me, so I typed in diabetes in the search box and found places where other people had cats with diabetes were having a discussion. I thought it was great! When my cat was diagnosed with diabetes most people I told laughed, since it seemed so odd. It was wonderful seeing people helping each other with advice and encouragement.

I can't believe that I liked Catster the best, but I did.

Happy Halloween

For all those who like to celebrate it:

Happy Halloween!

Week 7: Technology, oh how I love thee

Email is the first time technology made a significant impact on me. I used to write my best friend often, but as time went by the letters became fewer. However, with email we may email anywhere from three times a week to three times a day. It has allowed me to stay in contact even though we are separated by over a thousand miles. Then came playing online games where we could play cribbage or hearts together. It enabled us to have real time communication.

Ah, but then came other online games where I began playing with people from all over the world. Some of these people I’ve played with for over five years now.

And paying bills online! How fantastic is that? No more writing checks. Online chat help. Email alerts. Online movie times, news, fanfiction, shopping, book reviews, and information galore! An iPhone that lets me have access to the Internet ALL THE TIME! Including maps so I never get lost again!

Oh, and um, yeah, lots of information valuable for work related stuff, too.

Week 7: Playing in the Wiki Sandbox

Wiki's can be a good tool. However, the thing that makes it beneficial (anyone can go in and edit) can also be a negative (anyone can go in and edit). Although Wikipedia CAN be a good source, too many people use it as the ONLY source.

Wiki's can be a good resource sharing tool. I can see how a group of children's librarians could get together and form a wiki to share favorite websites, music, or books that they use for storytimes. However, something like that would work best if lots of people participated instead of just one or two. Or a group of writers get together to share resources and tips.

I posted to several areas to the iHCPL Sandbox wiki. It was easy. It didn't take long to figure out how to make the links work. I did notice that not many people made any comments on the links that they chose. It would have been interesting to hear why it was a favorite book or what was great about the food at the restaurant.

Wiki's can work, but it takes a group effort to make it work well.

Week 6: Technorati and Beatboxing

I went to Technorati and did a tag search for Learning 2.0. When I did a keyword search to show all posts that contain ALL the words Learning 2.0 and searching in all blogs, I cam up with 6,885 results. When I did a tag search for Learning 2.0, I had 666 results. A Blog Directory search came up with 683 results.

I did a popular search and looked around the Top Favorited Blogs, Top Searches, Top Blogs, Top Videos, Top Movies, and Top News. There was a wide varitey, which I thought was interesting, but not unexpected.

I did, however, find this really cool video of the Sesame Street song with a beatboxing flutist.

Week 6: Del.icio.us

I was using a program called Linkagogo that is very similar to Del.icio.us to store bookmarks to sites online. It was wonderful because I could keep my same bookmarks from computer to computer. I could bookmark sites from home to use at work. I set up a Del.icio.us account as well. At first I was disappointed because I much preferred the folder system that Linkagogo has. But after learning to bundle the tags, I liked it better.

On a personal level it is great because I never have to worry about losing my bookmarks. On a professional level, it is great because... well... I don't have to worry about losing my bookmarks. I can link all the sites I like to use best for research.

The first video was a little fuzzy, but the second video with the two sisters was absolutely wonderful! Besides being cute, it also gave a nice simple explanation of tagging.

Week 5: Library Elf

Library Elf was easy to set up an account with. I can see how this would be very helpful for people who have more than one library account. I chose to not have notifications sent to my phone, but it's nice that it is an option.

Week 5: Library Thing

Using Library Thing was very easy. I decided to start adding some of the children's books I have at home (it was done from memory... so it's a short list). I started with just a couple of my favorite authors and will add more later.

On the right side of the screen it will show a random book from my Library Thing account.

Food for Thought

From http://preview.text2logo.com/3.htm I was able to change my text and make it a little more interesting.

Use It Wisely

I went to http://monolpoly.game.cards.txt2png.com/ and created my own Monopoly card. Of course I HAD to use the Get Out Of Jail Free card since it was my favorite.

I played around with the message a little bit. Making the message too long is a big mistake. You either have to make the words very small (which loses aesthetic value) or part of it is cut off.

Week 5: Avatars

The avatars have been the hardest topic to date.

It was too difficult to decide which one to use! And far too difficult to stop once I started. Choosing just one was an absolutely impossible task. So I did a couple. This one is the tarot card I made from the following site:

http://tarot.card.reading.txt2pic.com/

Maybe if I hadn't gone to http://www.imagegenerator.org/ and started going through that long list it might not have been so difficult to decide.

Oh, I also have a weeme (from weeworld.com) on the right hand side of the screen. You may have to scroll a bit to see her... er... me.

Marian the Librarian

Week 4: Feedster

I checked out Feedster, Technorati, Syndic8, and Topix. I liked Feedster (located on the right with wii information) and Topix. I liked Feedster for posting a link to my blog to keep me up to date on my topic (and the newest video game information is so vital!), but I liked Topix best for browsing.

Week 4: Bloglines

I went to Bloglines to choose RSS feeds. There were many interesting things to look at on many different topics, so it wasn't difficult finding ones I wanted. I also added the iHCPL Bloglines search to one of my feeds.

I put a few of them on this blog (look to the right). It took a little bit of searching to find the Feed URL.

Week 3: Snipshot

I used Snipshot to play with one of the photos I had on Flickr. It was easy to use. I uploaded several photos of the same fairy (different colors and rotated), to create a sort of a flip book using slide.com. If you can imagine it going a whole lot faster, you would see a fairy spinning and changing colors.

Originally it had music that went along with it, but I took it off in case it got annoying.

Week 3: Trip Planner

I used Trip Planner to plan a trip that a friend of mine is making to Houston in October. I clicked on several of the places I thought would be fun, and sent her a link so we could decide what we wanted to do. I also imported photos from Flickr to dress it up a little bit.

Since the photos I had were all of the StoryTime mural, I decided to name my trip Once Upon a Trip to Texas.

Week 3: Flickr

I used http://www.slide.com/ to create a slide show. You can upload your photos from http://www.flicker.com/ to it. However, you need to be careful about the type of slide show you create. Sure floating hearts and flowers are cute, but after about three photos it really starts to lose it's charm.

www.flickr.com More of novelthoughts' photos

StoryTime Mural

Mural Pictures

There are oodles of picture sharing programs online. I used slide.com for my slide show of the mural in the StoryTime room. It was fun putting together!

Shhhhhh

Online Safety

Now, not everyone you meet online is a potential murderer/stalker/molester. There are people I’ve played card games with online for years. I’ve never met them, but we are friends just the same. I do, however, have a separate email account that has very little personal data in it for playing games.

When my nephew decided he wanted to start using the Internet several years ago, I had to sit down and really think about Internet safety.

I was not willing to take any chances with his safety. So, in order for him to go online, he had to agree to follow my simple rules:

1. Never give anyone your full name. First name only.
2. Never give out the name of the city you live in. You can, however, mention the state.
3. Never give out numbers. No phone numbers, birth date, address, zip code, credit card, social security...
4. If anyone says anything that makes you uncomfortable, block them.

Now he’s older and shares his entire life on MySpace. I like to think, however, that he still remembers to be safe.

Librarian

Week 2: Blogs

Week 2 we are learning how to set up blogs. Setting up the blog was easier than I thought it would be. My blog isn't nearly as interesting as my cats' blog, but I don't have nearly as much time as they do.

Writing things down is the best way for me to remember things. Just the act of writing it down helps burn it in my brain. Of course, in the past I've always written things down with pen and paper, so we'll see how well typing it up will work. With it being on a blog, however, it is less likely that I will forget where I put my notes.

Now all I have to do is remember my log in...

The hardest part will be finding the time to do all the exploring I would like to do.

And not obsessing. That will be difficult too.

Week 1: We Begin

The iHCPL Learning 2.0 Program was designed to encourage the library staff to explore the 23 new technologies that they felt we should know in order to better serve our community. The first week we watched the tutorial, then read and signed a contract.