Item 23: Wrap-Up/Reflections

I didn't really have a "favorite discovery" or "exercise" in the Discovery 2.0, at least not as it relates to a particular tool or feature. I think the thing that sticks out the most are the great variety of tools "out there" and available that many people are using (whether I find them worth while or not!)

I think initially, excited about completing this program. Toward the end, after 'one more' exercise for a tool that I find no personal use from, it became more tediuos. Which is really strange, becuase I usually am very keen on using and learning new things. I don't think this program has necessarily affected my lifelong learning goals, with the exception that in the future, I will likely not try to do so much at once. Even with a 4 month time period to finish this (and it was mostly finished in a 2 month time period), it felt like a lot in a little amount of time.

One of the unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised me was that I reconnected with some of the tools I'd come across in the past and picked them up again. And, with others, I let them lie! One of the tools I began using again, was Pandora.com, the only music genome project.

If I was to suggest something to do differently for this program’s format would be to offer fewer hyperlinks explaining a topic. I think some people (not me) felt that all had to be read... rather than some. I tended to only read those that I was unfamiliar with, and after I read one hyperlink for a particular topic, I didn't read more unless I didn't feel like I totally understood the topic. Most of these were not new ideas to me (at least not conceptually) and I had a good grasp with many of the concepts to start with.

Overall, though this post tends to have a slightly negative bent, I think it was a good experience.

Item 22: Alternative Blogging

Initially, my impression of microbloggin was "does anyone really need this?" Personally, I think I can live without them. I don't think anyone really needs to see what I'm doing "right now"... if I'm taking the time to type something, really my "what I'm doing right now" would always be "typing on my computer on Twttr" (or other microblog).

I have seen Twitter in use (but didn't make my own account) and checked out Tumblr as well.

Trying to think outside the box, I'm trying to see other uses for this type of blogging. I think, like the list in David Lee King's blog about 10 ways to use it is forseeable -- if you have family & friends that you're IM'ing, emailing, or blogging with anyways, this might be a nice alternate option. Also, maybe if you were in networks that had a purpose (maybe there could be a librarians Twitter that posted quick Q & A's that people didn't need to research, but worked more as a have you heard of, or does this plot sound familiar? You know, for the patron who says "I'm trying to find a book I read 20 years ago -- it's got a picture of a horse and two kids on the front. I think it was a yellow book, and it was about growing up with horses" (or some such vague reference question... or hey, maybe reader's advisory for a topic you're not superfamiliar with and maybe you don't have access to any ready reference materials...

Overall, for me, it's just one more way to be over-communicated (like over-medicated).... a bit too much of a good thing.

Item 21: Audio/Video: Video

I've seen and used YouTube before, but I hadn't used any of the other video sites, so I tried blip.tv and MetaCafe. MetaCafe was nice becuase I could filter a search to a categories ( I searched "visiting Alaska" in the "travel & Outdoors category"). I ended up watching someone's home video of visiting Homer, AK. Blip.tv didn't have any categories to search in, so the same search, and I noticed under the screen pics of the videos, it showed the string of tags that my terms were found in... of course, not all were relevent, such as "visiting Buenos Aires"....

On Sciencehack, I scrolled through one of the categories "How is it made" and watched the first little bit of how they make firemens' helmets.

Maybe it's the connection at the library, but almost every video I watch paused every few seconds (well, every 10-15 seconds) as it loads or whatever it does.

I found a funny video on YouTube of babies laughing (yes, I have babies on the brain)...

I think there that video clips could be used to promote library activities, showing clips from similar type programs (showing how much fun a program is), and/or even doing something simple like having a YouTube "StoryTime" -- somethng like, "can't get enough of the X librarian at storytime? Visit her online and have her read books to you at home! Then having a link (or embeded video online) of someone doing a storytime. There are probably endless possibliities of using videos for marketing or promotion of past and future programs.

Item 20: Audio/Video - Podcasting

I checkedout out all three podcast sights and didn't enjoy searching on any of them! I was looking to see if there was a podcase on book reviews or new books.... I didn't find much. I ended up adding an RSS feed from http://podcastalley.com/ to my bloglines account.

When I started looking at some personal topics that were more relevent in my life, (in podcast alley) when I clicked to 'get podcast' there were intermediary steps to download a podcast agregator, then to get login name, then to listen... too many steps even for something I'm actually interested in (as I have alternate sources... if this was my only resource, I'd likely take the time to download and set up an account...)

Item 19: Audio/Video - Music and other Audio

It was funny; while working on this section, I had already previously opened up Pandora and was listening to it as I worked. I've known about Pandora (and have used it) for the past year or so. I really like it, becuase I'll just put it on in the background and it keeps playing songs it thinks I'll like basede on the "station" I've selected. I really like Josh Groban, have this artist as the "station" I listen to most often, and usually like the artists that they play on this station. When I don't, I simply rate it with a thumbs down symbol and it skips over the song. Yeah!

Last.fm was neat too -- comparatively, for my purposes, it was a little overloaded with more things to do -- watch videos, listen to a couple tracks of the artist I input(and offer to purchase them), see who is currently also listening, listen to the "station" for the artist, see artistst they list as being similar, etc... see the top listeners for the past week (who really cares about this?!?!?)

Anyways, it may be due to experience, but I preferred Pandora over last.fm.

I also went out to the Gutenberg.org's Audio Book collection and Mango Languages websties. I'd heard of the GAB collection and come across it a couple time to meet patrons needs at the reference desk. Personally, I don't care to read 'for fun books' online... I could download some of the audio books in MP3 format, but the one I did look at (Jane Austens' Pride and Prejudice) was so big, it'd probably take up half of my 2 GB MP3 player. Maybe if I was at home, I'd download them and update them to my player on the weekends. I usuaully only listen to books on my MP3 player when I'm traveling... well, I am traveling in the next two weeks, so maybe this weekened I'll download a good chunk of the book.

As for the Mango Languages website, it sure started of simple! But, sometimes that's all a person needs. It would be neat for kids who are leaning about another culture and want to learn how to say a few basics, like "hello, how are you?" I briefly looked at the first quarter of the first spanish language. Mostly basics, but easy enough to follow along. I also took a peek at the Japanese and Greek ones; becuase the tutorial shows the text of the foregin lang in the alphabet of the culture, I think it would be a lot harder to learn these ones.

I think libraries could definitely make use of these resources. Project Gutenberg could be used when a student needs to read (or listen) to a book and we don' thave any copies left in the system (of course, they'd have to have a computer and the internet at home.)

As for whether CDs are dead, I think that eventually they will go the way of tapes and whatever came before tapes... Tapes are still around some (hey, I still have a tape player in my car and listen to boooks on tape), but, like VHS tapes, no one really buys them anymore... With technology moving as fast as it is, it seems that no media type is safe from extinction.

Item 18: Online Applications/Tools: Google Docs

I really liked google docs; however, in my personal life, I don't have much use for them at this point. I can see how they would be very helpful for students at almost any age. When I was in college, there was something similar (a way to collaborate) but it was more of a posting a file online to a mailbox and then the other team members would download, edit, and repost. This didn't eliminate multiple copies, but it was a way to collaborate without sending millions of emails.

I made a sample presentation and "published" it, but couldn't get the frame to appear below (an error popped up with eBlogger), so here's the URL:

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dcsrfz5g_1fxhnhqg4

Item 17: Cool Stuff

So, I entered my blog URL into the The Blog Readability Test and I just found out that the reading level of my blog is "high school reading level." Hmmm... Interesting. Not sure how useful that is to most people, but, interesting.

I attempted to register for a login for Scrabulous but never got the reply email that contained my password.

Moving on (actaully, while waiting for the password) I went to Yahoo.answers, set up a profile, and got hooked. I think it's the librarian in me... I'd find a question and just wanted to answer it! I started off easy, answering a survey type question (how many pets to I have) for a student who needed to ask the question of 20 people and graph the responses... I moved on to another question about a high school student who was interested in becoming a pharmacist, wanted to know about the employment forcast, potential income, and courses she should focus on. My most difficult question was from a parent who was trying to help their child do research on a paper. Supposedly, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had made some contributions to the field of mathmatics and the daughter was supposed to write two pages on it. After researching the topic on our online databases (biography databases) as well as googling some terms, I began to wonder if the daughter misinterpreted the assignment! I posted what I found (only confirming that IF it was true, there wasn't anything listed in the several biographies I came across)... I questioned whether it was not the poet, but maybe another Longfellow....

Overall, the Yahoo answers was fun (from the perspective of a librarian) but when I was scrolling through the homework help, I got the feeeling that a lot of kids were using it to get out of doing their own reserach!

Item 16: Wikis

I watched the Wikis In Plain English video. After having seen a couple of videos by this guy, I really like his style of explaining complex ideas in the manner he does!

I looked through many of the Wiki's linked to the Web 2.0 Blog (the IS wiki, the building projects wiki, etc).

I once made a wiki (just to try it out) and created one that contained links to sites I wanted to remember (think: Deli.cio.us but a page for each topical area). After starting it, I never really stuck with it.

Way back when, when I had initially heard of them, I though "it's crazy, anyone can edit them? How can you trust the information you find there?" However, I've since learned that there are limits to who can edit some wikis, and that as a collaborative tool, they're actually pretty darn neat.

Personally, I frequently use wikipedia to either get some base knowledge on a topic I know nothing about (and don't care much about the quality of the data).

Item 15: Tagging and Folksonomies - LibraryThing and Goodreads

These two sites have been my favorite sites thus far. My bookclub already had a group on Library Thing (but I dind't have an account) so I made one there first. I also made an account on Good Reads. I think I like Good reads better; I liked the ability to make a list of books I want to read (my "to read" bookshelf) and then sort it by other peoples ratings of the books (this can help prioritize which books to read next). I didn't like that LibraryThing is only free for the first 200 books; I can easily see that filling up very fast! I dind't see and fees for good reads, but maybe I just haven't come across it yet!

My profile on Good reads is: http://www.goodreads.com/profile/Librarian-JessieK

My profile on Library Thing is: http://www.librarything.com/profile/Jessiekovis

Item 14: Tagging & Folksonomies - Technorati

So far, Technorati is the thing I had the least bit of preconcieved knowlege about. I clicked on the link to the Tech. Tour, and I didn't think it was much of a 'tour'. After reading the page, I googled it to find out more about it. Wikipedia had a good article on it, essentially comparing it to a search engine like Goolge, but that it's searching blogs, versus the entire web. I wonder how much this is used?!?! Do people really care what the top blogs are? I guess it's a way to find interesting blogs... if lots of others are viewers of it, it must be somewhat interesting.

I then went to the Popular and Percolator features. Essentially, it's a quick place to see linke to those most read / hit / downloaded / linked blogs.

I did a keyword search for "Learning 2.0" in Blog Posts and in Tags (never could find out how to search the Blog Directory). I would've guessed that there would've been fewer hits under the tags than in blog posts, becuase posts would've only been tagged "Learning 2.0" if it was a major component of the blog post. There were 1100 or so in the tags; there were 1400 or so that came up in the blog post search. The first couple hits seemed to be the same in each.

I guess this is useful to others... but I have a feeling I'll never be back!!

I tend to look for resources that are qulified and credible, not socially interesting... maybe that's just the nature of a librarian? I guess this might be a good way to see what's going on in a particular field or for a particular topic and then network via the writers behind the blogs..

Item 13: Tagging & Folksonomies - del.icio.us

I watched the Social Bookmarking in Plain English video and thought it did a very good idea of explaining the idea of del.icio.us, tagging, and social bookmarks in general. I also like the way the video was made (not sure what it's called, but was cute!)

I viewed the del.icio.us tutorials Us.ef.ul: A beginners guide to del.icio.us, scanning it mostly, becuase I already have a del.icio.us account, and know about how it works. I also peeked around the isdesk account to see it (saw it months ago at a supervisor or branch day demonstration).

I created my own account at the time I did (Nov. 06) after a "keeping it up" workshop on technology. I had imported my bookmarks from my work desktop and after tagging most of them, haven't used it all that much. When I set it up, I thought of it's usefulness being more due to the ease of having access to all your links from whichever computer you are on. Since most of my 'work' work is done at the same computer, it was just plain easier to make bookmarks! Maybe coming back to it now, I'll find more use...

Item 12: Play! Image Generators/Catchup/Review

The street sign generator "Add Letters" was ok, but a little unpolished. The text of the street sign was a bit boring, and just looked like typewriter text typed over the sign area. The second time I tried it with longer text, and instead of shrinking the text, the text just overflowed on either end of the sign and looked dorky. Oh, well.

I thought Reflectionmaker sounded like a neat idea, but I never got pictures to appear; both with trying to use a file I uploaded and a file that was currently on the web.

The Billboard creator and medical preseciption drug generators were similar to the add letters idea -- have a space that's filled in with custom graphics to make it look like your own bill board / prescription. To me, I'd never think of going online for something like this -- my first thought would be to use Photoshop or similar product. I guess though for those that don't have the desire to learn a graphics program, or don't want to pay for one, these were cute ideas. So was the fortune cookie creator (see graphic). Same idea -- limited space for text to appear on pre-made graphic.

Item #11 - MySpace

I've set up an account at MySpace and added a few friends from high school. I think something like MySpace is easier for me to add into my life, becuase you set it up once, and if anyone ever comes 'trolling along' and wants to be my friend, or wants to add comments to my profile or my pics, then I will get an email telling me. In this way, I don't have to login until I have a reason to.

I can imagine that it would be easy to spend hours looking for people you know or have known, reading about what they're doing and, maybe contacting them to be your "friend."

I've set my profile to private as well as any pictures I add to private, becuase I really don't want just anyone looking over my profile, as I've put some personal information in there about where I work now and past jobs, as well as where I grew up and went to school.

Item #10: Social Networking

I think it's a great idea for libraries to take part in social networking sites, especially as it relates to teens; I do wonder how much teens access them though. I wonder if there's ever been a study done assessing the impact they have on teens (either to attend programs or read more, or...), but maybe it's just too hard to measure.

Personally, I like the idea of myspace/facebook for keeping in contact with friends you see rarely or past co-workers... even my own family. As long as one is smart about the information the post and who they let see it, I see it as harmless.

Item #9: Instant Messaging - Meebo

From what I understand, the MeeboMe program does not allow you to see when someone else is online, so if the library had the widget on their homepage, people wouldn't know if someone was really available. If the homepage listed hours that a staff person was available to read their IM, there still may be times that the staff person may be helping someone else and is not availalbe. A person trying to IM them may not want to wait, or they may not understand that the library staff is helping someone else.

In the past, I've used IM when I had an AOL account in college. It was nice to see what friends were online and I could chat with them. My stepson has an IM account with MySpace, so he can see when his myspace friends are online. I think that, as adult that doesn't spend much of my free time at home on the computer/Internet, I don't have much use with IM software for social reasons. However, I am a big fan of the IM software in the work environment as alternative communication resource (and trying to pin someone down to talk to them!)

RSS & Newsreaders - Find Some Feeds

Since I already had a few blogs in my feed reader, I decided not to add any more at this time (well, i tried to add one blog URL, but there was no feed for it). I also went to ala.org and checked out their feeds (http://wikis.ala.org/readwriteconnect/index.php/ALA_blogs) on blogs, but didn't see ones that I already didn't have and wanted to include.

To me, it's easier to come across a site and then try to add it to a blog reader, vs. searching out site that might have feeds and that I'd be interested in. I tried the google blog search and was looking for something crafty (card making, specifically) and did't care for any of the blogs I came across.

I think libraries could use RSS fees to push out new services, new books, and programs offered by the library. I think avid readers may be interested in our library collection and finding new books that we have, as well as people might be interested in seeing the different types of programs we offer (without having to come to our webpage to find out what they are).

RSS & Bloglines

I signed up for a bloglines account in November of 2006... and I hardly use it... Maybe it's just me, but it seems like there are SO many web 2.0 neat tools, that there's almost too many. You have to find out what works for you and what doesn't. Honestly, I think the things I use the most are pushed at me -- and sent to my email. Maybe if bloglines sent a weekly or monthly email to me, I'd be more likely to use it. As it is, I don't use it so much. When I get around to logging on, I find that some of the blogs I subscribed to have 200+ entries. Becuase that's just overwhelming, I go straight to those with the fewest new posts...

I supposed if you allocated part of your work day/week to catching up on this kind of stuff, it'd be useful.

FlickR Mashups

I looked at all the flickR mashups listed on the Discover 2.0 page and I liked the "Spell with FlickF" and the "RetrievR" ones the best. Both intrigued me with the ability of the program to find both colors, words, or patterns within pictures. I played around a bit "spelling" my name (and other words) with the spelling one, and kept having it 'redo' it until I liked the graphics found.

FlickR

Being the library stats girl that I am, I thought, "hmmm... do many people tag their photos with the word "Statistics"? It turns out, a search of "Statistics" returned 6,853 photo results today. My favorite one was the following, showing percentages by actually using a real pie:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiinateaspoon/307647193/

Comments about 7 habits of lifelong learners...

After viewing the slide presentation, I found it hard to identify an 'easiest' and a 'hardest' habit. If I had to choose one of each, I'd say that the easiest is the last one "PLAY" -- really, how hard is that! The hardest one is likely seeing problems as challenges. I'm recently facing some current problems in my pursuit to buy my first home and it's really hard to see the problems that have come up as 'challenges' -- really they're just pains in the ....

FVRL Discover 2.0 -- Item 3: Blogging - Create a Blog

Well, welcome to my blog. This isn't the first blog I've ever created, but I've found I really don't have the time or desire to maintain a personal blog. Maybe in the future I'll find my niche for the topic.