Avatars

I have heard the kids out on the computers and a few people into gaming talki about Avatars. I never looked anything up about them figuring I'd never use an online "alter ego". But.....you never know. It spent a little time at a couple of sites designing one. But did not save it. None seemed quite what I would want. It was pretty funny at the Simpson site playing with their avatar tools. I will play with avatar stuff some more some time.

Conclusion:Library 2.0

What was my favorite discovery....hmmmm, I had made a blog but had never subscribed to RSS. One could be at their computer 24/7 trying to keep up with what they'd subscribed to. And I had been to YOuTube and Facebook and played with Myfamily.com. I liked playing with LibraryThing. I had been to the site but had not actually started entering my own home collection. I showed it to a couple of local churches that have small libraries of resources. I learned the most on the tagging and social bookmarking. I hadn't known much about Del.icio.us. We have a lot of favorite help websites at the library and now we need to use tags and organize them. I want to do some book review podcasts...or I was thinking of using my movie camera to do live book reviews of the kids this summer and then post them on a library book review blog. And I thought I knew about wikis, but I have a much better understanding now. In fact, I think we are really going to use this one first. We had been going to make some additional webpages for some ongoing information spots...community education and a family resource center. I think we want wikis so all the collaborators can enter their own information. Although the first wiki, I think will be a one-stop Richland County. I was just at a community planning event on Friday and many people wanted one place to go for all kinds of information...kids summer recreation, any county education and training, organizations, etc.

I really liked the hands on. And I liked the time to do and play with each lesson. I liked the links to the webcast that taught the lesson and all the examples really helped. Yes, I would take a class like this again. Sometimes I ran into difficulty so it was good I had other staff that was taking the class., We could figure things out together. And I should have taken the trainers up on their help. I am not sure what could make it better....finding TIME. Or being able to have one of the trainers on staff (:

Lifelong learning is just that....I am going to be doing it the rest of my life....it did exercise my brain which will continue to keep me young!

Do I Wanna......Wiki?

Yes, I wanna wiki along with the rest. I found wonderful projects on many of the example sites. Having a staff wiki to eliminate all the e-mails and projects going on and who is working on what...sounds like a good idea. I had thought earlier that a blog might be the way to go but a wiki might be better. The wiki of the library with thir strategic plan posted so they could get community input and I really liked the Rochester one-stop information page wiki. It is just hard to plan the time and figure out where to start first. I also need to look more at which wiki software to use and whether to have it on our server so your library could have a little more control and more flexibility. I am glad we have all of this information on one spot about library 2.0 so I can go back anytime and review. We currently have a collaborative group working on a Famioly Resource Center and we were going to do a web page.....now I am thinking go with a wiki!

Lesson 8- A DEL.ICIO.US ACCOUNT

I got an account for Del.icio.us account and found a website I was looking at about podcasting. So I bookmarked it and found that over 200 other people had also bookmarked it. Tells you that it probably is a pretty good site. Maybe we could make just a library account and give the password to the account to the entire staff. Then the whole staff could bookmark good library sites. We could set up some agreed upon tags to start with. Then no matter what computer you were at you could access these library sites--one tag might be reference or you could tag by dewey.

LESSON 8 -TAGGING AND SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

I did some comparing between Del.icio.us and the Google bookmark feature. Google also lets you access your bookmarks from any computer. You are also able to give them tags, although Google calls them labels and you can list more than one label. You can also sort your bookmarks by a few different ways; by labels, newest to oldes,etc. Goggle also givce you a place for notes. The one thing it does not do which Del.icio.us does is to do the social part. It doesn't show you the numbers of other people with similar tags/labels or links to other similar websites. I haven't set up an account yet. But I'll probably play around with it later.

YOUTUBE AND OTHER VIDEO SITES

No wonder job productivity can be down....you could watch and watch videos. I agree..some are terrific and some are terrible. The Ninja Librarian ones are funny and did like the magnum PI one. We got a brainstorm for one here at the Library----if we ever get to it. I've thought about the possibilities. Most are the same as I saw of videos on YouTube;showing how to use the card catalog, a tour of the library, storytime, book reviews and clips of programs to be held. We just have to figure out how we are going to sandwich this in our goals and plans.

Someone had told me about the video I picked. So I found it on YouTube. I love it! And any of you moms with kids or grandkids will totally relate.

Big Think was pretty interesting,too. Also there is another video spot called Godtube.com for Christian topics.

"THE MOM" to the WILLIAM TELL OVERTURE

PODCASTING

I subscribed to Nancy Pearl's Monday book reviews that she does on the Seattle radio. Really brought back memories of her time at MLA last year. I just finished listening to her book reviews of two books and I took notes to add then to my book order list.

I see possibilities for use in a library, particularly getting feeds for book review podcasts such as Nancy Pearl's and posting them on a library book review blog. It would be fun to be able to get the equipmrnt and make your own book review podcasts.

I know many of us have talked over the years of doing podcasts for storytime, but that we couldn't because of copyright issues. We'd have to tell our own original stories.

I did have a bit of trouble. I wanted to put the podcast in my bloglines account...but there was no link to really copy and paste. But all I had to do was hit subscribe and it put Pear podcast in my Internet explorer blogs. So I do have to look two places to keep up with my podcasts. Well, not really....when I open Internet exployer, my Internet blogs and podcasts are automatically shown in a window on the left hand side.

Uploading a Picture

I took this picture of my daughter near Missoula in September. I haven't been able to get my trading card to upload though.

Library Thing Again

The search box for my library at Library Thing doesn't seem to work, So here is the link.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/rgoss

Librarything

I have been to Library Thing before. Briefly looked around. Really thought it was cool so I am glad to get back and begin to use it. Here is beginning of my library.

Fun Image/Text Generator

Following is a link to a site that lets you play around with script.
http://interactimage.com/

I couldn't think up great stuff to put on my trading card. But you could spend way too much time fiddling with creating really fun ones.

Web Apps and Flickr Toys

Holy Cow! Are there enough widgets and gadgets to fiddle with. One toy allows you to put comic strip bubbles on either Flickr photos or you can upload some. I got to thinking about using that for some family reunion photos. Then there was one that you could pick a news feed and it would assign Flickr photos to the latest words in the news-----strange. But one I am going to come back to lets you make CD or DVD covers. We're re-recording old family videos to DVD and this sounds like a great tool to make customized labels for them. I liked the page that you could either make badges or posters etc. Mostly, I need to get some pictures from my camera uploaded to my computer so that I can play some more.

Jaws or Snorkeling

8 - Xel-Ha (01)
Originally uploaded by mattmeyers

I love to swim so plan on snorkeling on my trip to Mexico. The problem is that I have read to many "Jaws" stories and have a phobia for sharks!

Rivera Maya I

Rivera Maya I
Originally uploaded by Xispie

I plan on going to see a site like this ziggurat the first week of March. As a celebration of my sister finishing chemo and radiation treatment, we are(my husband, sister and her husband) are going to Mexico,

RSS and Feed Readers

It is harder and harder to try and keep up with the information and websites you want. Being able to subscribe to sites using RSS will save a lot of my time. Both personally and professionally. Except that it wn't be long(because their are so many great sites) that I'll soon have more subscriptions than I'll be able to keep up with. My sister has been fighting breast cancer and so I have been reading a lot on breast cancer research. Using RSS I subscribed to some research sites and keep up a lot more easily when new reports,etc come out. For work, I got to thinking that I might set up an internal staff blog. All staff could subscribe to it. When there was a change in procedures or announcements,information for staff it could be posted on the blog. All staff could check their feedreader each time they started work. This would keep from filling up and or saving e-mails. I can see where we'd want to offer RSS feeds to our new book lists or calendar of events so that customers could subscribe.

7 and 1/2 Habits

We're all independent lifelone learners. It just depends on how much liflong learning you are doing. Some do lifelong learning from the couch and the TV is their teacher. There are things to be learned from a TV but books and research add another level. But actually doing the learning is best. I would love to be able to go to all the places I have read about and see them first hand. I like to experience the learning so this class is good for me as it is making me do the lesson. I have to have an end goal in sight most of the time. A reason for doing it as it makes me set aside the time needed. The other problem of time,for me, is that I tend to go off on tangents while learning it..For example in setting up the blog. I kept reading about all the things you could do, looked at other online blogs and really digressed before finally coming back and actually starting my blog. I need to stay focused.

January 6- Finally got my e-mail accounts and blog set up.