Thing #30 Review Time

I would say that overall this has been a great experience for me. I do feel a sense of accomplishment and am proud of my new skills. I just wish I would have had more time to dwell on some of the lessons. I've always got work on my desk and sometimes I just need to go away from my office to a live training to be able to focus and get the full effect of new things. I'd love to have more in depth training provided live, like how to "pimp my blog" or "maximize my images." Or wait, maybe how to deal with techno stress!
I was surprised by how many options of each new "thing" were available. I can't imagine having enough hours in the day to explore everything and feel like it's all out there just waiting to be discovered - but there is constantly more being created.
I've often thought that I wish my buddy Mic were still here, because she would have loved this and would have created so many things that would have made me laugh!
Thank goodness we have someone out there like Cindy who is wading through things for us and bringing us the best of the best.
I would definitely do this again. I'll try to pace myself better next time!

Thing #29 Learning 2.0 Favs

I think my favorite new skills involve manipulating images. It is truly play, but sometimes productive. I enjoyed the image generators - they made me feel so proud of my little creations and I do believe I will actually use them again. I liked some of the Flickr mashups and feel confident I will use them for my personal benefit, but also on behalf of the library at some point. I am such a talker, and even though mine is rather pedantic, I have enjoyed adding items to my blog. It will probably eventually turn into some sort of UNC basketball rant area. I'm thrilled to find code available to copy and paste so that I can have videos clogging up the blogosphere just like everyone else these days!

This has forced me to learn things I've been promising to for a while. While I don't think I've got a solid base in everything, I certainly feel like I've had a good introduction and would like to learn more. My degree and knowledge was getting so rusty that I needed a tech update!

Guess I'll go bother Gale an Bryan and Diane on their blogs now!

Thing #28 Rollyo

Select...General MedicalSearch The Web

O.K. the little jellyroll thingie on Rollyo makes me hungry. Doesn't seem to matter when I'm looking at it...

Anyway, I created my Rollyo as a general medical search. Lots of fun, or depressing, depending on what you're searching for.

This is great for when you're working on the info desk assisting customers. Also for special projects if you have to do alot of research in a particular area. I bet the genealogists would love this!

Thing #27 Library Thing Continued

Thing #27 Library Thing

I first learned about Library Thing a couple of years ago from one of the CL volunteers. He maintained a large collection of books and loved this tool. When I created an account and added items I realized its time to weed my collection at home. I've met a number of customers over the years who would enjoy Library Thing. They can keep track of what they own but also see what others with similar tastes have read, or are currently reading.

Image Generators Are Golden

He's Been Warholized!

Thing #26 Image Generators

I couldn't resist the Warholizer at http://www.shadowfire.de/warholizer. I created a picture of my nephew, who is a Photoshop wizard (a professional) so I was thrilled to find an easy way to do something cool. I loved the lederhosen generator and laughed and laughed at it. I used Letter James at http://www.letterjames.com to create a golden egg with my blog name on it. What fun!

Thing #25 Library Podcasts

The library podcasts I heard/saw made me so jealous. Good work Cindy! I listened to a variety of story time providers read on the Denver Public site. I liked that they had a quick link to the books being read. If they were video, though, we would have had more of the story time experience. I remember working at a library that had "dial a story" and "dial a booktalk" by phone and we thought it was so cool in the early nineties to put out stuff on there for customers to enjoy. What a difference! I enjoyed the Charlotte podcasts and especially liked the teen scavenger hunt that could be printed or downloaded to an MP3 player. I'm sure there are more kids downloading than printing. Like anything else on the web, it is very important to ensure that links and downloads continue to work on a regular basis.

Thing #24 Podcasts

I'd played with podcasts before because there are shows I listen to on NPR in my car but sometimes miss because I don't eat lunch at the right time or just have a busy week. I explored and conducted searches on Podcast.net, Podcastalley.com, and Yahoo. I liked the organization of first two better than Yahoo and felt my search results were precise on them. I also liked the way their categories were set up and the listings of popular items in each category, like Sports. I added a feed for the show Marketplace to my Google Reader account. I already had one in ITunes for Left Right and Center, which is a weekly political show featuring pundits from all three sides if the spectrum. The only caveat with me for these is that I am trying to clean up and organize my life and I'd really just as soon go find these when I have time to listen, not just have them delivered and it's one more thing I feel like I'm behind on. :(

Thing #23 YouTube

I like many things about YouTube. In addition to their easy links to favorites, highest rated, etc., you can quickly pull up your history of videos recently viewed. This was helpful while I was comparing and deciding which video(s) to post to my blog. I chose two UNC basketball videos, as it's that time of year. I also chose a Jamie Cullum video in hopes that you, Cindy, would take a few minutes to relax. Ha!

I did notice that video submitters can block the embedded code to keep others from posting. This is great for them, but was frustrating for me as the best video of Danny Green doing his pre game lucky dance was blocked. My other problem was that for some reason I could label my videos but the part of the box to type the comments in had that annoying little box with the x.

I see a variety of ways to use this in libraryland. Videos contest for teens, video tours of the library, clips from library programs to show people how fun they are, or training videos produced by library staff for customers.

Thing #22 Flickr Mashups/Tools, etc.

This was really fun! Lots of ways to bring out your creativity as well as super easy utility. I started with fd's Flickr Toys and still liked Magazine Cover, Jigsaw, and Badge Maker. I thought Colr Pickr was cool and could see how easy it would be to waste my late nights playing with it. The ocean photos in blue green were awesome. Flickr Uploadr seems like a great app. The people who develop these things are amazing.

Thing #21 Flickr and Tags

The tags used on Flikr allow you to organize your photos and allow others to find what they are looking for. Tags can lead you to people who share your interests (i.e. Jamie Cullum, musician), who live near you (I compared my photos of VB to those of others - guess who's were better, not mine!) and allow groups or institutions to show off their stuff together. I truly want to create some space to show off the WW library, including our history, a tour, info about our teen programs, etc. I am thrilled by the idea of photos as "digital conversation"!!!

Thing #20 Flickr

I already had a Flickr account when I began Learning 2.0 but I rarely used it. Now that I've been encouraged to explore more of the features I've found fun things I can do with my photos. I went through fd's Flickr toys and especially like the odeas of the badge maker, magazine cover, and the jigsaw creator. I'm thinking of making a WW library jigsaw to test it out this weekend.
I played with the Yahoo Trip Planner, and just like everything else so far, found myself interested in what other people were doing. Can't believe I read about someone's treasure hunting trip in TN and NC.

I have an image on my Flickr account of my niece and one of her friends - now a VBPL employeee by the way. I'm so amazed when I see these two young women standing side by side when I remember how cute they were as babies!

Thing #19 - Ning

Ning is a really cool tool that allows you to set up your own customized social networking site. It includes a search feature so you can see if there is already one similar to yours and just join it instead of making your own. I played with this a bit and found lots of sites with only one or two members, which was disappointing. Also, since they are so easy to create it seems like there are lots that haven't been updated in a while. I did see people from multiple countries interacting with each other and discussing books. There is a listing of popular networks and a directory of tags to help get you started. I can see that a library might use this for staff to communicate with each other about their interests or for customers in a book discussion group.

Thing #18 Technorati

One of the first things I noticed is that icanhascheezburger.com is in the list of most popular blogs along with of course the techie stuff and politics. I love all three of these topics - just wish I had more time to spend playing. Naturally the tag search is more precise than jsut the keyword search on here. One one test I found 1/6 of the items using a tag search than using keyword. I liked the fact that when I did a Blog Directory Search I could then ort my results by authority, freshness, and date. I could really get hooked on wathcning the videos. Yikes!

Thing #17 del.icio.us is indeed so

For months now I've watched colleagues use del.icio.us and ached to find the time to set up my account. Moving from desk to desk in the library is reason enough to use del.icio.us, with the added bonus of home use! I would have loved to have had this tool as a reference librarian. I can see using this with customers while assisting them on the desk, creating lists for customer use on the web, and managing my own personal research. Awesome!