Week 9 Thing 23 My thoughts on 23 things

I enjoyed looking through flickr the most, because I am a big camera buff. I think library customers would enjoy it as well.

I have learned a lot from the 23 things, but it was extremely time consuming. An unexpected outcome from the class was that I decided to teach a class to the public about what I learned. Even though I am not an expert, I thought the public might want to learn about some of these new tools. I am curious to see how many people will attend my class.

The one thing I would change in the 23 things would be to remove rollyo training. I liked google custom search engine better.
I think I would participate again if the program was a little shorter. I did a lot of my work on the 23 things at home, because I couldn't squeeze it into my work day.

Some of the tools we learned about were really interesting and I hope to use it and share it with others. I revised my igoogle page in the process, hopefully making it a very useful tool

Week 9 Thing 22 audiobooks

World ebook Fair ws incredibly impressive for $8.95 a year for both ebook and audiobooks. It contained 500,000 books with audio, tech, classic, adult, children's and sci fi. Admittedly, a lot of it was governement or free, but it was nice to gain access to it all in one place.

I've known about Project Gutenberg for quite a few years, but I've mostly looked at their ebooks. It was interesting to note that they now have sheet music, science fiction, ways to download huge portions of their collection to CD and lots of languages. There seemed to be a huge amount of computer generated works, maybe more than human. I'm not sure I could listen that long to a computer voice!

I've used Overdrive quite a few times, so I didn't look at it much. Recently I got a fast cable connection at home which enabled me to download audio items. I plan to use it more now. I even downloaded a video of Archie and Mahitabel, an old favorite story of my mother-in-law!

Week 9 Thing 21 Podcasting

I decided to try to subscribe to a yahoo podcast. I ended up trying to download Yahoo jukebox. This seemed HUGE and I didn't figure out how it worked anyway. I think my Windows XP kept blocking the subscription I was trying to download. I haven't removed the Yahoo jukebox software yet. It might come in handy for music downloads.

I listened to a 15 minute podcast called 2nd life library. It was about the health info island. In second life, they were building the land to create a place where people could learn about surgeries and hospitals. The "customer" could virtually sit down and have discussion about health issues, what surgery or a hospital might be like. I thought this would be a really cool way to alleviate someones fears and prepare for a hospital visit.

I added a subscription to bloglines called Talk with Talis about current library technology issues, things like libary 2.0. While playing around looking for podcasts I got off track and added a few new widgets to my igoogle page about popular books and Amazon's top items. They should be useful later.

Week 9 Thing 20 YouTube

I downloaded a youtube widget to my igoogle page with you tube on it. I placed it on the second page in case it took a while to download all of those pictures. I notice when I pull up the page, a video immediately started playing with load Indian dance music. Fortunately, the video was quite professionally done, probably a movie scene. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the search feature in the widget to work. Nothing happens when I click search. I tried downloading small videos and they didn't seem to work either. On the regular youtube page, I just loved watching libary dominoes. I love to watch humorous films as long as they are in good taste. Funny films about injuries are not funny to me. I had to share the dominoes with my husband. We were amazed to see that many books of a similar size! This could be addicting! Being a big photography buff, I chose to logon and upload a video. I picked a video of Tropical Storm Ernesto when we were evacuated. It's not too exciting, but it is somewhat interesting driving through the water on the road. I could see using youtube with teen programs or to share some computer or photography training.


This video was embedded directly from my computer.

Week 8 Thing 19 Web 2.0 awards

I tried out eventful.com. I've been looking for a scrapbooking conference nearby for a while. I found 2 workshops in Delaware. I also found Silver Spring Camera Club, where you could add an RSS feed for their events. There were various different ways of looking at events, calendars, performers or a search box. I didn't find too much, but some of the events were fairly local. There were events on the Northern Neck of Virginia. You could find people near you that were using the service. A few were listed in Hollywood, MD, not too far away.

Eventful might be a useful tool to find local events for customers if we lived in a bigger city, but I think given our location it would be sort of hit and miss.

Week 8 Thing 18 Workd productivity tools Google docs

Two of us examined google docs and spreadsheets. It seemed like it would be a very useful way for creating documents if you were traveling and couldn't access your home computer. Most of the features were fairly comparable to MS Word, but there were some quirky things.

The symbols look similar to gmail. I added a quote. It makes a special box to put the quote in. But then, it didn't put it in the box. The minute I started typing it the text popped out of the box.

Removing extra blank lines is an interesting feature. You won't get extra blank pages sent to a printer.
Google docs would be easy to share with others. Tables were a little weird. If nothing was in the box, the box didn't show up.

You can upload from your computer or a disk.

Week 7 Thing 16 Wikis

St. Mary's County chose not to try out wiki's in a big way. I have recently seen some potential uses for one. We could use a wiki to keep track of local procedures. I have a procedures page that seems like it needs updating about every few weeks. We could include a section on resources for those hot questions we repeatedly receive.

We could also use it for collecting information on troubleshooting computers as long as it has limited access and couldn't be seen by customers.

The Library 2.0 in 15 minutes a day blew me away. Someone has put an awful lot of work into creating this wiki. (too much for me)

I find wikis interesting, but I'm still a little cautious about using them.

Week 6 Thing 15 Library 2.0

The library 2.0 concept is fascinating because it seems like we are opening a whole new way of looking at libraries. I think customers would love to be able to get RSS feeds about new items added to our collection, especially on their favorite author or topic. I am wondering if tagging will help customers find what they want or if there will be lots of irrelevant tags that will cause lots of false "hits" for information.

I think in St. Mary's County, or at my library anyway, I've already felt the impact of being in "perpetual beta". Although it is sometimes exhausting, we are rarely bored with all of the new technology we keep learning about.

I am happy to be involved with the new Technology plan we are working on.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for our library vendors, such as Sirsi to make new software available that can handle some of these new technologies like tagging, RSS and participatory users.

Week 6 Thing 14 Technorati

I was somewhat confused about Technorati searching until I found the advanced search page at:

http://technorati.com/search?advanced .

I tried a keyword search which yielded 3522 results under "learning 2.0". I noted that using quotes works best for phrases. I got 201 blogs in the tag search, at least 1 in german, 1 french and a lot from Maryland. The directory search got similar results at 214 blogs. I thought it was interesting that blogging seems to be an international experience. I was surprised to note that the 3rd top favorited blog was China Travel, again showing that the whole world is blogging.

I noted that one of the top searches was the word blogs. Why would you search the word "blogs" under a blog finding tool? Maybe people enter something like "blogs about ..." This seemed odd. I also learned that I am not the only person who doesn't remember how to spell utube (youtube).

Some of the top blogs were the same as the top favorited blogs such as Boing Boing and Tech crunch and Engadget.

Week 6 Thing 13 Tagging and del.icio.us

Del.icio.us was an interesting alternative to bookmarking web-sites. I wondered if it would take longer to use than plain bookmarking, because you would have to sign in to use it. In the past I heavily bookmarked items. Unfortunately, over the years, I've lost some of the bookmarks by upgrading computers and the website locations keep moving.

I think the tags might be helpful to customers using our website. I think tagging our catalog and databases might be an alternative way of finding information, but we might have to find software that allows this.

I didn't sign up for an account. I think the concept would become a little clearer to me if I "played" with it a little more.

Week 5 Thing 12 Rollyo

Rollyo was interesting. I tried to make up a search engine that would search a lot of good reference sources. I thought I could use it when I'm signed in to MDAskUsNow or on the reference desk. I have a feeling that the search engines will work better if they are on a narrower topic. Just for fun, I also made up a search engine of scrapbooking websites. I'll be able to see which type of search engine works better.

I also noticed there is something similar to rollyo on my igoogle page. It might work better and would be fewer clicks when I'm on the reference desk.

I managed to add a link to some of the things we've been learning to my igoogle page by adding bookmarks. Apparently it is a little quirky. I'll have to see if the links keep working, or if I have to remove them later in frustration.

I am having a frustrating time signing in the this blog. It doesn't like my password. It seems to let me in if I right click and open it in a new window! Very bizarre!

Week 5 Thing 11 Library Thing

Library thing was fun. This would be a great resource, sort of like a free novelist. Our library could use it as a simple way to publicize popular new titles from our home page too.

Week 5 Thing 9 Image Generator

The wave was really interesting. Ellen and I enjoyed image chef a lot. James Letters didn't work well at all.

Week 4 Thing 9 Merlin

I really liked Topix. It was neat to see blogs about local information. I tried finding scrapbooking blogs in Syndic8, but found very little. I added a nice blog on the Palm Treo I recently purchased.

I have explored Merlin a little bit before. I'd like to find time to explore 2nd life more. I did the Thompson Learning classes from Merlin a while ago. They were excellent, but time consuming. The learning link is most interesting to me.

Week 4 Thing 8 RSS feeds and Bloglines

Finding RSS feeds was like opening a whole new world. I think it will be helpful to have a place to gather Library news fast. Hopefully, it will hep me keep more up to date. Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with a way to link my page to my Igoogle site. This would make it one stop shop so to speak. Has anybody done this, connect my blogline to igoogle?

I hope we could offer some RSS feeds from our library website, especially a way to send new title lists to customers, or this months library events.

I was totally frustrated trying to add a blog roll to this blog. The share tab they alluded to got moved to another place. I asked for help from Amy. This is what she came up with:

Click or do the following:
feeds
options
Blog settings
yes-publish my blogroll
save
A link at the bottom of the feeds section on the left, click share
generate html
copy the script language

Go to your blog on the dashboard of blogger
layout
add a page element
html jave script
add
paste under content
save changes

This was not at all intuitive!

Week 3 Thing 5 what I learned

For help sending a flickr photo to your blog for the first time go to this page:http://flickr.com/help/blogging
Click "do that here" if you need to set up a connection between your flickr account and your blog.
You'll need to sign in if you aren't already signed in

Week 3 Thing 7 Technology interest

I decided to use the 23 things for a computer class I'm teaching in October to the public. I will take the things I've learned and share it in a class called Blogs, Flickr and More on October 23. I thought I would explain what the new technologies are, where to find them on the web and what Parent's might want to know about them. I was orginally thinking of calling it "Hot Technologies your teens already know about", but the title was too long.

There is no better way to learn something new than by teaching and sharing it with someone else. I hope I will get a good turn out. We've never taught anything similar.

Week 3 thing 6 Flickr mashups

I experimented with Flickr by making a magazine cover of my boss on Library Journal's cover and making this calendar with a photo I took at the Mayaland Resort next to Chichen Ixtza. The peacocks roamed all over the resort grounds.

The cover was cool too. I might print it up for fun.

Week 3 Thing 5 Lexington Park Library

Lexington Park Library
Originally uploaded by jimjomac

Lexington Park Library has all sorts of cool stuff for the visitor or member. We have loads of computers to use, playaways, books, CD books, computer classes, downloadable books, databases and more. Stop in and visit our friendly staff. We are always available to help you!

Delicate Arch 1

Delicate Arch 1
Originally uploaded by bryan chang

My husband visited this arch via a narrow steep trail and took a picture of an eclipse behind the arch.

Week 2 thing 2 Blog setup

I had a terrible time getting into this blog. I wrote down my password wrong and Amy helped me get back in. I wondered if I already had a blog from making the igoogle page. I think I might have 2 accounts now. I didn't realize at first that blogspot was a google product.

After I set up my blog, I could get to the webpage, but there was no entries. It turned out that I made a draft page and not an accepted post.

I was very happy that Amy helped me figure out what was happening wrong. I suppose one way to learn is learn by doing it wrong the first time!

Joanna

Week 2 Blog 1

I think our library blog has been very helpful to the staff. I hesitate to put items that only my department needs to view on the blog. I hesitate to start an adult services blog, because it would be one more thing staff would have to check. I'm still not always sure about when I want to use the blog and when I want to use email. Sometimes even the intranet would be a better place to locate information, especially documents.

Joanna

Week 1 thing 2 7 1/2 habits comments

I think I have the most difficulty taking the time to be a learner. We live such busy lives and get interupted so often, that it is hard to make time. I really want to stay more on top of library literature, but don't read fast enough to look at much. This is why I tried to attach some litbrary links to my igoogle page. Maybe technology can help me.

On a daily basis, I think I love to view reference questions as challenges. That is why I like to do reference. The satisfaction of overcoming a challenge is something I enjoy.

I view computer problems more as problems. I think I tend to want to "fix" every computer challenge for the customer, but I don't have the expertise to do so. (and I need to let the experts fix computer problems for me.) I want to satisfy the customer, but it is not always possible. This probably causes me more stress than necessary.

Joanna

Starting out

Week 1 Thing 1

I plan to use this blog to look at things I'm learning about the 23 things. I'm hoping I learned a little bit already. A few weeks ago I made up my own igoogle page to learn about adding rss feeds and have a way to store my emails from gmail.



Now my emails don't disappear when I download my email to outlook! I can always find old emails on gmail. Yeah!! Plus I got to personalize my page with cool stuff like Unshelved, the library cartoon, photos from Hawaii and digital photo links. I have linked to a number of items to help me keep current with library technology.



I learned that I can't get an RSS feed from the New York Times best sellers list, only book topics.



Joanna