Last Post

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?* I liked most all of them, especially wikis and Youtube. I really like the awards list, and will continue to explore and discover the tools and features therein.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?* Brought me up to speed on what the current trends are in communication, social networking, etc. Makes me want to learn more.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?* I had high expectations for the program, and I am pleased to say that it met them. Of course, there were things I learned that were unexpected; they are legion.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?And last but not least…* Well, I know that most of the folks who participated were either rushed to complete the components, if they were even able to; myself included. At the same time, I'm glad that the pressure is off now (almost), and that I'll have more time to assume my other duties.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again choose to participate? Absolutely!

Podcasting

is one of those technologies that would be cool if I had more time for it. I love the idea, but never really found time to either listen or create them. I guess in the right setting, like the way Helen Blowers used it for 2.0 works great; but I doubt I'll be subscribing to any in the near future.
I can see that it also works well for listening to things that I may have missed, like NPR shows. I found some interesting ones on that website, e.g. "What would Rob do?" How apt.

Overdrive

I was lucky enough to have Sara present an Overdrive training for us last week, so I got a pretty thorough look into Overdrive. Yes, this is the way of the future. It's very convenient and, even if the titles are currently limited, there's still some great content on there; and it won't be long before you can download or stream most anything you want.
Besides some popular titles we saw interesting IMAX documentaries and cool vintage cartoons. The area that appears most limited to me at this juncture is music.
Wait and see...

The Old Grey Whistle Test

I love You Tube. It's amazing all the great stuff you can watch for free! This site, for me, shows the freedom and immediate power of the internet. You Tube is so addictive that once I start watching I inevitably lose 3 or 4 hours without noticing. I can't think of anything critical to say about it.

I chose this video entitled "Keith Richards interview from 1974" because I just love Keith's persona and vulnerablity here. You gotta see this. It's from a British tv show called "The Old Grey Whistle Test" Now I will try to embed it here within...

short list

the short list of Web 2.0 awards winners is fabulous!

I bookmarked this webpage because I would like to go back to it from time to time to explore many of these interesting sites. This was a very valuable component of our 2.o training for me.

Checked out 'Omnidrive' and the other online storage servers. This is a revolutionary (to me) idea. Looked at the Lists and Polls category, but altho it sounded promising, I didn't have much luck with it :*( I was only allowed on one of the Music sites (others being blocked), and that proved disappointing too: Just selling downloads, and they didn't even have Billy Preston :^O
Was surprised to see that Flickr took the top award for Photos; is there sth I missed?! 'Yahoo answers' did yield some choice nuggets for me, in terms of some content that I'd been longing for : ) I tried 'Farecast', the 1st place in Travel, which worked nicely.

So all in all, yes, this was one of the best modules of the training for me: Thanx TACkies, and congratulations on your SPL award!

week 8: online apps

One of the advantages of GoogleDocs and Web-based applications in general is that they're stored on a server, so you don't have to worry about losing them if your drive crashes, etc.

Of course for that same reason, you may feel you have less control of your documents, because for all intents and purposes, your documents are not exactly (or completely) yours. This one I'm writing now, for example, belongs to GoogleDocs, not to me. If you read the fine print under Google's terms, they retain the rights to all of your account missives; so at least in that regard MS Office retains an edge.

I like wikis

Yes, wikis are cool. They're fun, easy (theoretically!) to use, and well, useful. As we learned in week 7, "Because it can be edited by anyone, patrons can add to the collection of useful resources and can prune away the dead links. The librarian can moderate the wiki and decide what websites can stay in the guide, or he or she can let everyone contribute freely....Adding wiki functionality to the catalog would allow users to post synopses and reviews for books they’ve already read. We can capitalize on the reading experiences of our patrons in order to help them make informed reading decisions from the library catalog.....What about making the library’s website the online hub of the community? Libraries could create a community wiki that would be a one-stop-shop for community information. With the input of the entire community, it could become whatever the community needs it to be. Want to know who the best mechanic is for fixing old Toyotas? Check the automotive reviews on the wiki."

In fact, one of the libraries that was already doing these things had their wiki set-up, run, and maintained by a patron, er, 'customer'(!). Here's what she posts:
" This wiki is not sponsored by nor associated with the library system, it is maintained by one library patron.
If this wiki does not meet with your expectations, please feel free to not use it."
Gotta love it!

Anyway, I'm off to post my favorites on the SPL2.0 wiki ;*/