The party's over...

Learning 2.0 has concluded, and I finished over a week ago. Have I utilized any of the things I learned since then? I can't think of anything. I do think, however, that I will go back and practice some more with some of the tools. Heck, I noticed that the only entry for "David Hardy" in Wikipedia is for David A. Hardy, a space artist in England, and there is no entry for David W. Hardy, a realist artist in Oakland, CA, and my uncle, so I think I may just have to add an entry to Wikipedia.

#23 (Week 9)

Well, thank you, folks, for making this experience possible for all of us. It required way too much of our time, impacting our job performances, and leaving some here at my branch frustrated because they're so far behind, but it was fun and enlightening, and has expanded my internet repertoire.

What things did I especially like about it? I'm glad I was exposed to blogging. I don't know that I'll continue to blog on a regular basis - it's hard enough for me just to keep a journal that only I will read - but I'm glad to have some idea of what blogging is all about, and how it's done. I really enjoy Flickr, and that actually led to me connecting with a relative I've heard about but never talked to, because she has photos on Flickr, and I contacted her about them. I'm not yet entirely sold on RSS feeds. I simply don't spend enough time on the 'net, but I can see how they would be helpful, and now that I know about them I might start utilizing them at a future date. I really enjoyed Flickr mashups and image generators, but I'm not sure how they can be applied to library work - I'm sure there are lots of clever library employees who will figure out ways to use these tools for the library. The Web Awards list was interesting, but again I'm not yet sure how to apply that technology to work. Rollyo might prove useful, once I get in the habit of using it. Del.icio.us, Technorati and Library Thing are all interesting, but I'm not sure how much I'll use the first two. Library Thing I'll probably return to from time to time. Wikis - now wikis are cool. They have some drawbacks, but they have a lot of pluses. I can definitely see uses for wikis at libraries. Actually, I have already used Wikipedia any number of times, so I already knew a little about wikis, but now I understand them a lot more. The online productivity tools are a really great idea, though I'm not yet sure how well they work, but I definitely like the idea of being able to access my data no matter what computer I'm on, or share that data with others who are at other locations. YouTube is a blast, but also a major potential time waster. Still, it's a great resource. Lastly, podcasts and ebooks are both wonderful technologies, and in the future I definitely expect to make use of them, but right now we have too few terminals here at my branch for me to spend time at work making use of them, and since I only have a dial-up modem at home using them is very frustrating.

So...would I participate in a program like this again? Yes. Many parts of it were a lot of fun, and I do feel like I better understand, now, what some of our patrons are doing on our computers, and with our resources. I also feel like I now have some new tools at my disposal. However, in future it would work much better to present smaller segments that don't take so much time, or schedule more time for each participant.

Anyway, thank you to all of the members of the committee that put this together. On the whole I definitely felt it was worthwhile, and I feel like it is a way of further empowering us employees.

#22 (Week 9)

I've been interested in eBooks for awhile, but I have no mp3 player, and between my husband spending a fair amount of time on the only computer at home, combined with having a dial-up modem, I haven't really found them to be very useful for me. Still, I really like the idea, and I am definitely going to turn my husband on to World EBook Fair, so he can search out all things Honor Harrington (he loves that series by David Weber). At some point I think I would like to try ebooks for studying Spanish. I definitely think that ebooks are a wonderful addition to the services that libraries offer their users.

#20, part deux

Here's another amusing YouTube video. It's a little slower than the other one, but for fans of March of the Penquins and/or other nature videos, it's quite amusing:

#21 (Week 9)

I went to Yahoo, and tried to listen to several NPR podcasts, including NPR: All Songs Considered, NPR: Story of the Day, and Science Friday, because I can't listen to NPR while I'm at work, usually. Unfortunately, every time I tried to access a podcast, I got an error window with the following message: "The audio codec identified by the format tag 55 is required to play this file> To determine if this codec is available to download from the web, click Web Help. Click the Play button to try to reconnect to this stream". Unfortunately, every time I closed that window and tried to click the Play button the chosen podcast would change and the error message window would open up again.

I've been wanting to try streaming audio and podcasts for some time now, but at home we still have a dial-up modem, which can be very frustrating.

#20 (Week 9)

Yahoo! No - wait - I mean YouTube! I found my all time favorite scene from a Simpsons episode: Homer's Mystical Journey, from the chili cook-off episode. I also found this interesting video from the Williams College Libraries.

Thing 19 (Week 8)

I really like LibraryThing! In looking at what tags other people used to describe the books in my LibraryThing catalog, I also found suggestions of other books I might like, given what I am listing, and I noticed that several of the suggested books are already on my mental list of "books I might like to read". Some of the titles in my catalog where recommended to me by friends, and one I discovered in a publication put out by "Independent Book Stores". LibraryThing is clearly a great way to augment my other sources for learning about books I might like.

Obviously libraries could apply this feature of LibraryThing to make use of it as a Reader's Advisory.
http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=InquiringMind
(I was having trouble linking my LibraryThing catalog - when I had the bracketing around it, it wouldn't show up in my blog)