Week 9, Thing 23

This is the final assignment and post for the 23Things. I think the best way to handle this without writing too much is to simply answer the 6 sample questions in the discovery exercise.
1. My favorite discoveries were Flickr, Delicious, and Zoho. These are "things" that I was not aware of and will use these the most.
2. This program has affected my lifelong learning goals by reaffirming the goal of taking responsiblity for my own learning. Even though this program was technical and somewhat fearful....I still had to be responsible to at least try. It is easier to take the challenges in small steps.
3. An unexpected surprise from the program was the ability to stay on track and actually take in this new knowledge. It was easier than I thought it would be.
4. The only thing I can recommend for this program is to slow it down a bit. This would allow more time for the participants to take in the information and retain it without rushing.
5. I would definitely take another discovery program like this one.
6. I would describe this learning experience by saying that it gave the participants an overview of some of the latest technology available, along with hands on experience. This will enable me to be more knowledgeable on the Reference Desk while working with patrons. I will be able to recommend some of this technology, and now be able to discuss it.

Week 9, Thing 22

Net Library and Overdrive

This assignment was familiar to me, as I have to be familiar with downloadable audiobooks in order to help patrons with their questions about them. I personally do not download them, don't have a portable device and don't want to have to sit at the computer to listen to them.

I found the tutorials helpful - the Net Library one was easier to follow, not so many technical steps.

Project Gutenberg was interesting. There were many more titles and categories than I thought - I thought it was mainly classic literature only.

I had a journey with this assignment - First I watched the tutorials and did some searching by title and browsing around. I remembered the book titled "Beans" from the Net Library Tutorial. It looked interesting. I searched it in the Net Library Catalog and read the details on it. I then went to Amazon and found it in book format, offering an excerpt. This I read and liked, so I searched the FCPL Catalog by the author and found the book. We do own it. I had to place a hold on it, as it was checked out and has one person waiting for it. This sounds like a very interesting book, written in a down to earth fashion. Even though it is considered business subject, it reads in an easy to understand format.

This was an unexpected journey through the Net Library!

Can't wait to read the book!

Week 9, Thing 21

Podcasts

Spent some time exploring all of the links to this assignment. I had better success with the Yahoo Podcasts and the Podcast.net. When I tried to subscribe to some podcasts from the Yahoo site - it would not work. However, I switched to the Podcast.net and was able to subscribe to 2 more RSS feeds. One was with the Dog Whisperer (Cesar Milan, dog genius) and the other was a pshchology and self help book club. The link will be http://psychjourneybookclub.libsyn.com/rss. (I will need this after this week!!) Anyway, the assignment turned out to be successful and now I can enjoy the 2 more feeds.

Week 9, Thing 20

You Tube

This was a fun assignment. I spent a lot of time looking around....mostly libraries and dogs. Some videos were really cute. The one I really liked and would like to post in the blog is a Library Book Cart Drill Team performance from the U. of Pitt. This was at the ALA Conference in Chicago. The link would be: http://www.youtube.com/watch?V=RFtjnxm_wiQ. It is really cute.

While I think this is a great tool - great technology for the younger people especially - I wouldn't want to spend too much time watching the videos. One can really loose time in this site.

Week 9, Thing 19

For this exercise, I chose the "retail" category from the Web 2.0 Awards list. From that list, I chose to explore a site called "Etsy". It is referred to as "Your Place To Buy And Sell All Things Handmade". What luck - some on line shopping for an assignment! No problem navigating the site at all - it was very well constructed. Most of the work was to select a category, then click on the photo image. Product details displayed, along with price and payment methods accepted. Mostly point and click. The items for sale were quite nice - some very unique - and all handmade. There were a lot of categories - ranging from accessories to candles to handbags to ceramics and much more. I thought of going the extra mile for the assignment and ordering something, but decided not to.

The sad news is that I did not see any applications for its use in a library setting!

Week 8, Thing 18

These free tools are amazing! I can see them being beneficial from an individual standpoint to a small business standpoint. I did create a simple document in Zoho - it was mainly playing around with the font size, different colors, and test driving some of the options...there was no official document created. I did look at the templates - I tried to download the recipe one to submit a recipe and upload it into this blog. Still need to work on this one - can't figure out how to get the template to open up. I will come back to this after week 9.

Revisited the recipe template today. Did get it uploaded into my document account, however it still had the sample recipe in it and I could not clear it out to put my own recipe in it. Came up with another idea. I created a simple document that is a list of all of the "23 Things" account user names and passwords. This is helpful and I will use it. I printed out 2 copies. Will not upload this into the blog because it is full of password information. I used the Zoho Writer Document with this - very similar to Microsoft Word. Easy to do. Will probable delete the document after this posting.

Week 7, Thing 17

Sandbox Wiki -
Had no difficulties at all this week!! There was no problem creating an account or adding my blog to the Favorite Blogs page.

I also went into the pb wiki and added 2 items to the "favorites" lists - added "biscuits and sausage gravy!" to the favorite foods; and "puppies" to the favorite things list.

This week was not too difficult.