Monday, November 26, 2007

Parting is such sweet sorrow

It is with a mix of emotions that I post Thing 23. I am excited to have finished these exercises, sqeaking in just under the deadline.

These are a few of my favorite things: flickr and You Tube. Specifically, I enjoyed learning how to put photos and videos into a blog.

I also feel a great sense of accomplishment. Before I started 23 Things, I thought that many tools and resources that are "out there" were for other people who are obviously more tech-savvy than myself. Through going through these exercises I have learned that I can do more than I gave myself credit for and that many of the latest technologies are easily accessible to anyone who will take a few moments to learn about them.

For those of you who happen to have found yourself at this blog, its purpose was to document a journey through 23 Things, an initiative through which many Maryland libraries, including Howard County Library, encouraged their employees to participate to learn more about available technologies. You can find more information about 23 Things here: http://marylandlibrarieslearning2.blogspot.com/
And more information about Howard County Library here: http://www.hclibrary.org/

Maybe if you take the time, you can learn a thing or two yourself.

Audiobooks


Speaker Drivers
Originally uploaded by DeclanTM

Call me old fashioned, but I would rather hold a book in my hands and turn the pages. I am also a very visual person and need to look at something instead of hear it. I drive everyone crazy when they read something to me and then I take it out of their hands and read it myself.

With all my baggage, I still tried to look at audiobooks without prejudice. I signed up for a NetLibrary account, which seems to be a great resource for students and teachers.

I then went to vist Project Gutenberg, which is a free audiobook resource. I visited their "Top 100" downloads, and they do have some great books, most of which seem to be classic literature. This would be a great site for people who are home-bound, are visually impaired, or are better at multi-tasking than I am.

As for me, I'll be curled up at home with my book.

Podcasts

Today I took a look at podcasts. Of course I knew about podcasting, but this exercise enabled me to learn more about what is out there as well as resources to locate and use what I want. I also went to several library web sites to see what others are doing with podcasts.

As part of Thing 21, I was supposed to pull an RSS feed into my Bloglines account. For some reason, Bloglines does not like me and I never received the verification email from them. I tried a second time today, but still did not get the needed email. I did put the RSS feed for wamu.org's community minute on to my Yahoo! account though, but I was surprised to see that most of the available podcasts were weeks old - kind of diminishes the impact of having immediate availability.

Last but not least, I visited the itunes site, so I have some ideas on where to go to put things on my new MP3 player.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Thing 20: You Tube

I already love and use You Tube, but I took a closer look at it today.
I think that You Tube is great when there is something specific that
you are looking for, or if someone sends you a clip. If you are going
on You Tube just to look around though, I think it is hard to get
beyond "most discussed" or "most viewed," which can be a little
problematic.
You Tube could be great for sharing events that take place at the
library. I could definitely see putting up clips of classes to share as
well.
I am going to attempt to add a You Tube video and we'll see what
happens. Happy Thanksgiving!

Thing 19: The Web 2.0 Awards List


The Treble Trophies
Originally uploaded by darkdevil2222

For this exercise, I took a look at some of the sites from the Web 2.0 awards list: http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/#cat_43

I have been getting emails from my husband about joining his LinkedIn network, and frankly I didn't know why he kept pestering me. Don't we connect enough at home? So I joined LinkedIn and I'll see how that goes. Will anyone besides my husband want to be in my network?

I also looked at zillow, which troubles me a little bit. I do see the value in knowing how much your home is worth. But does everyone who knows your address need to have that information so readily at their fingertips? At least in the old days, you had to be beyond mildly curious to make a trek to dig up some records. I know the values are not absolute, but still...

Thing 18: Online Productivity


office (The Cubes)
Originally uploaded by Mickey Mouse_

I just went on to Google Docs and created an account. With people working in a variety of locations and wanting to have more flexibility, I love the idea of sharing documents on the web. I can think of tons of ways and times that I will be able to use such applications.

The Virtual Sandbox


Sandbox Sculpture
Originally uploaded by Chip Poutine

To further my wiki knowledge, I got into the virtual sandbox today and added a link to my blog on the Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki.

I have to admit that it took a few tries for me to get the link on the site. Firefox crashed on me the first time through. On my second attempt, I didn't quite get how to do it and I added the text manually on the site and then connected to the link - the result was that only my text showed up, with no link.

The third time was the charm, and it was so easy that even I could do it. I easily edited my previous attempt, and added the link to the "Favorite Blogs." The trick was to only add the text and link through the box that comes up when you click on the "insert/edit link" button, and then of course click "save", which I almost forgot to do.