The 23rd Thing

I'm writing this on Sunday so my mind starting flying to the 23rd Psalm instead of the 23rd thing. And as my faith is a journey, this too has been a good journey for me. I didn't come into this afraid of technology, instead was truly eager to learn more about library 2.0 and the many things encompassed in that phrase.

I think I enjoyed playing with the Flickr applications the most simply because I like photography and seeing what creative things could be done with pictures I had taken was fun and appealing. To be creative, I need alot of guiding and the applications did that. For true usefulness, I was glad to be reminded of Google Docs and other applications. Timewise, I admit after first working with Delicious and Library Thing, I haven't been back to those websites and I don't explore my RSS feeds on Google Reader much. However, the RSS feeds that come into my Outlook mail get looked at on a regular basis. I also really like having the updates on my blog dashboard of the blogs I follow. Blogging is something I hope to continue and my favorite other blogs are right there on the sidebar of my blog. Learning to develop my blog, expanding the blogposts by adding pictures and video was the goal I set at the beginning of this program. Working through the things forced me to try some of that and I found it to be easy and fun. I think I will continue my blog with personal posts and pictures and use it and Facebook for my social networking.

Tackling the question of take-aways-wow, I feel more connected to other library people through reading their blogposts, profiles, etc. It's been especially great for those who I already know and I want to meet some of these bloggers that I only know through their blog names. How about a Nebraska Learns 2.0 mixer or talk session at NLA next year?

When starting this, I thought I could breeze through the lessons but found I would stop and be so busy exploring one thing that I was reluctant to move onto the next. It was often challenging to fit it all in at work and I spend several hours a day at my computer unlike some library staff. If you were to do it in the future, I think you might want to consider a topic a month for library staff that can't do it in a week.

I would definitely do another discovery program if you offer more. I like the ability to work on it at my own pace somewhat. Just another side note: As library funding gets tighter, we need this type of programs for those of us that can't get away from the library for training. It can be tough getting C.E. credits otherwise. We really appreciate NLC staff coming around the state to provide training too.

Thank you to all that put this together and for those that participated. Now I'm going to go back and read other participants blogs that I haven't had time to read before.

Wordy Podcasts

I explored several of the podcast directories and found one that appealed to me on podcast.com. I liked the dictionary.com Word Explorer. I copied the link to this below. I added the RSS feed to Google Reader. I also tried to add it to My Yahoo page but it only had old content there. Our family has always enjoyed exploring the origin of word meanings. At work, I'm not really able to do podcasts easily because my only desk is in a public area. I don't think I seem as approachable if I'm wearing headphones. I liked these podcasts because they only lasted about 2 minutes. I did share the podcast on my Facebook page.

I'm looking forward to listening to more podcasts in the future.

http://podcast.com/episode/33159339/19468/

YouTube brings back 80's cartoons

After watching an old What's my line episode featuring Sal Mineo, I switched to the 80's and watched a Popples cartoon. My kids had Popples and watched the cartoons as little kids. Karissa even had Popples sheets while Craig had Transformer sheets. The YouTube video is a great way to explain to today's kids what parents watched as kids themselves. I haven't personally uploaded anything to YouTube but my niece uploaded one of the little movies of her son that I made with my digital camera on movie mode. She then embedded it in her blog. Last fall I did watch a library training video produced and uploaded to YouTube by an applicant for a Nebraska library position. It did not enhance the resume and probably was a strong factor in not hiring the person. However, a good video could very easily have added points to getting a face-to-face interview. Just a thought.

Virtually Confused

I enjoyed exploring thing #20. I initially got sidetracked when exploring I'm Cooked under the food category after reading VC's blog post. I use Pandora all the time at home and find myself using that instead of playing CDs at home. You can't completely walk away from your computer when using Pandora because it will stop after awhile and post a little response window to make sure you are still listening. I exploring mapping applications for personal use but felt that besides offering little icons you could add to maps, the weddingplanner maps linked from Community Walk was more tutorial than anything else. I did send a link to that to my son's fiancee.



I wanted to find something that could be of use to people using our public computers for all of their computer needs. I decided to explore virtual computer applications under the category online desktop. The first choice, Zimdesk only opened to a development page for Version 2. I went to G.ho.st and created an account. The application moves pretty slowly. When I finally got to my desktop created by the program, I saw that it did have its own e-mail, links to zoho writer or google docs, google search and more. It seemed like a crowded and almost too colorful desktop, not my cup of tea. I couldn't see the value of the tool when you could access free applications for almost all of these things. Everything had slow response times-even figuring out how to calculator on the desktop was slow. I think I will pass on this tool!