It sure has taken me a while to complete this course, but it was such great fun to learn all of this.  Some of my favorite “discoveries” were social bookmarking, librarything, RSS feeds, and the online productivity tools. 

I am a lifelong learner, I love to learn new things – I like the challenge and the excitment of discovery!  One thing that surprised me was how much time was required to complete the course – someone had told me 10 or 20 minutes a week, but it does take a bit longer depending on how familiar one may be with some of the web 2.0 technology and terms.

I am using the library news RSS feeds, and Del.ici.ous, and have found out how to manage a blog and add pictures, etc to the blog.

I liked the way this course was structured.  I appreciated the “go at my own pace” approach as it is difficult sometimes to find large pieces of time to devote to exploring technology.

If another program like this was offered I would absolutely participate!

wordsabunch

I knew a little about podcasts, as our Children’s Librarian, Cheryl Cox is using them on our library blog in the Children’s Room section.  We will be doing a poetry podcast project this fall as part of Vermont READS together  with a class from the Riverside Middle School which should be great fun.

I loved the library news podcast and have added that to my feedreader.  I love the podcast idea and have finally purchased an MP3 player, so I should be able to download some of the things I’ve been missing.

The library could have book reviews, library news, hot titles….I can think of many ways podcasts could be used and could be very helpful to anyone who is visually impaired.

Well, I made an account (yet another account) on YouTube and registered by blog, found a great video, clicked on the appropriate buttons to post to my blog, then when I go to the blog, the title is there, but no video…..I can cut and paste the link I guess, but that sort of defeats the purpose of the excercise.

The Secret Origins of BATGIRL

I tried this once and it didn’t work…trying again…

I have been on youtube a couple of times in the past, but never really played around with the site.  Lots of fun.  I searched for some library videos and found some very funny ones as you can see.

This would be a great marketing tool to reach young adults and even older adult patrons who may have stayed away from the library.  Making a fun, lively – tour of the library type of video would bring some folks in who may have an old “picture” of the library in their head.

I went to Lulu first, but needed to download Adobe acrobat and wasn’t able to do that from this computer.  Next, I tried biblio.com, created an account and started to have way too much fun.  I liked that they are using part of their profits to build libraries in South America.  I can create a wish list, and buy and/or sell.  Very fun for the book lover!  And a little dangerous.

I tried out both zoho writer and google docs.  Google docs seems bare bones, very simple and easy to use.  Zoho writer has  a lot more doo dads, but has the potential for being very useful and a lot of fun.  I wrote a little something, saved it, came back today and posted it to my blog.  Am feeling very techno-proud-of-myself right at this moment!

I also watched the slideshow and tried www.jott.com.  That was quite fun, but I don’t think I would use it for business.  I just don’t think voice recognition software is dependable enough.  But for messages to myself or friends and family it might be fun.

On to Thing 20….I’m seeing the finish line ahead!

I’m going to type a short article to experiment with zoho writer the online beta writer tool.  So far, so good.  Now I’ll try to do some of the things I normally do within a document.  Like Bold, Italicize and Underline.  Now I’ll change the font and font size.
Not as many choices for fonts and font sizes, but still very workable.  My blog (just entered a web link) that was pretty sassy. There seems to be all kinds of doo-dads  !

Now how to save this, publish to my blog, etc.

I visited the 23 Things wiki on Mediawiki and Wetpaint and posted my blog under favorite blogs and added some favorite books and restaurants.  Kind of fun once you get the hang of it.  It took me a little bit to figure out how to post my blog (forgot to high light before I clicked on the globe/link icon) and then forgot to “SAVE”, but figured it out.

Dipping my toes in so to speak is fun, but I am starting to feel some information overload – how much information do we really need?  Why do we feel we need it?  Is it to exert some illusion of control in a world that seems out of control most of the time?  When we spend a lot of our time blogging about things and places and thoughts we are removing ourselves from the experiences of life and replacing those experiences with a very controlled experience on the computer.  Hmm..I’m sure other folks have pondered and written about this in a much more cogent fashion.

So…wikis are sort of a combination blog/web page?  They look more like a web page, but folks can add info (sometimes).   I did think wikis used for sharing info/best practices among staff of a library or other workplace would be very useful.  The Simpsons wiki was very cool and I could see hobbyists or collectors using a wiki to compile and exchange information in one place.

However, if I were doing research of any kind, I might get a lead or two from a wiki, but I don’t think I would trust the info without some back checking.