23rd thing

My favorite is thing #10 Play around with an online image generator. creating an avatar, manipulating picture and exploring the various generator blogs etc.
The most useful would be the last two, ebook and audiobook.
This program is just what I was hoping it to be,a training that shows me a lot of the "things" available in and from the internet that I would never explore on my own. I have done the exercises back and forth at home and at work. the faster internet line at the library made a big difference in some of the exercises.
I would certainly participate in another similar discovery program if offered in the future.

#22 Learn about Audiobooks-part 2

Project Gutenberg is new to me and really fascinating for me. On the day I was reading about it, I spent so much time investigating the online book catalog. searching titles from English to French to Chinese that I forgot all about the audio books part. I was very happy to find many Chinese Classic titles and wished that this site existed when my children were learning Chinese years ago. The computer generated reading part of the audio books are also fun to listen too. It is also the easiest to download.

#22 Learn about Audiobooks

This is another topics that I really want to investigate. I like listening to audio books while commuting to work and I found playaways very handy at home doing house work or while cooking. The ability to find and transfer titles to my laptop or any portable audio player is very appealing to me. Two weeks ago, I started reading about this exercise at the library when I can. I prepare to actually do some downloading by bringing my laptop to work during the assigned training hour. Even with the faster internet at Davis, it took a lot longer than I wish. It took me another day at home to establish an Overdrive and NetLibrary account and download all the required applications to finally explore titles and check out. I am happy to report that I was successful in downloading both:
ebooks
-Super Rx by Steven Pratt
-the graphic novel Hamlet by Shakespeare
and audiobook
-Being Nikki by Meg Cabot
to play on my laptop. The ebooks are harder to read but will be useful for browsing nonfiction titles. I certainly will continue to search for audio books with both Overdrive and Netlibrary. With the set up I have at home, I will probably just download and play on my laptop since transferring any of these to CD or MP3 will take too much time.

#21 Discover some useful tools for locating podcasts

Podcasts and podcasting are very new to me. I really wanted to find out more about this, so I took some time printing out the related articles to read them slowly. I've also gone to some of the the podcast directories listed and see if I can find a podcast that are interesting to me. My conclusion is that podcasts are like blogs and internet postings. you really have to know what you are looking for. I am happy to find one (NPR) hat I like and will keep bookmarked on my laptop to go back to and listen and maybe after a while add the RSS feed to my Bloglines account to hear updated post.
This is a url for listening to yeast cell from 2004.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3859762

#20 Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow you to upload video

I always like to explore Youtube, the challenge for this exercise would be to embed a video in this post. Copying and pasting will get this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OFoWEtZ3ag

Embedding will get this;



I chose this video because the Kaola cubs are adorable but more important because the clip is very short.


Youtube is very handy for sharing short videos quickly if you don't mind lots of people viewing your videos. I find it most useful when learning something that needs to be presented visually like some instructions for craft making. One of my colleague learned to knit with youtube. My uncle watched some favorite old Cantonese opera clips that were posted by some fans somewhere. I first saw clips of the earthquake in China also on Youtube.

Thing #19 Web 2.0 Awards

Going down the list of all the award winners, I found some that are familiar. Some that I actually have used: Flickr, Picasa, kayak, Facebook, Monster, ifoodTV, Craigslist etc..., some that sounds very interesting. I decided to bookmark this list for later reference.
The site that I choose to re-investigate is Rollyo. This time I was successful in making the desired search roll. Back in Thing#9, I was not able to create the search roll that I wanted: a grouping of sites that offers FREE knitting or crochet patterns. I actually bookmarked these sites on my laptop to save time every time I liked to look for a particular type of project. Now, my search roll will allow me to do a single search in all my favorite sites.
Here it is
http://www.rollyo.com/search.html?q=scarf&sid=598487

I've also used http://www.kayak.com/ to compare/book hotel accommodations last September for our Hong Kong trip and found the site very useful.

As for any applications for use in a library setting, I can see some that are actually used now: Mangoes, Google doc just to cite two examples.

Things 18 part2

This is my attempt to use Googledoc to make a spreadsheet.
I find this easier to use then Zohowriter.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tK_wVBcz3BXJhHksNIqxN5g&single=true&gid=1&output=html

#18 Take a look at some online productivity tools

The following is from an original ZOHOwriter document



This unit should prove useful and interesting. I have received a HPmini webbook as a birthday present and was curious if Googledoc would work there since the mini comes with nothing but web surfing capabilities. I am going to try both Zohowriter and Googledoc just to compare them. With both sites, I was able to save, copy and then print out documents. Both sites have plenty of tools, templates etc... to use. I probably will end up using Googledoc just because both my daughters use it. It will be easier for me to learn just one system.

#17 Add an entry into the Sandbox Wiki created with PB Wiki

PB Wiki Tour -
PBWiki Video Gallery - both these two resources are Not Found. My attempts to log in to the Sandbox Wiki is also not successful. I tried all the combination of the provided password with no success.

#16 Learn about wikis

and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them

When I tried to start this unit last week, the amount of information from the first resource reading (Lamb, Brian. "Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not." Educause Review. Sept/Oct 2004.) was so much that I decided to print everything out and read them on paper a little at a time. Later, when I was ready to read them, I somehow started with "A Wiki as a Research Guide" by Chad Boeninger, which is much easier to understand and made reading the other three articles easier to follow. I found the best explanation and instructions to set up or use any wiki in the Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki site. I used to think of Wiki as an open chat room type bulletin board but now think that they could be very handy tools. Use in libraries could be for : subject guides, annotating catalog, community wiki, FOL wiki. More specifically, we can have a branch wiki, circulation problems wiki ( media problem, even supplies sharing), troubleshooting equipment wiki etc... of course all should be password protected. Of the exemples shown, the SJCPL Subject Guides,the OCLC Open WorldCat at http://www.oclc.org/productworks/wcwiki.htm are all very interesting

#15 Library 2.0 - It's many things to many people. What does it mean to you?

Where will the next generation Web take libraries?

This unit takes some pondering. After reading the five different perspectives on Web.2 and Library.2, I tend to agree with the last commenter, Dr Wendy Schultz. her view that " Libraries represent a resource base, contributing to educating the labour force, to supporting innovation processes fueling growth, and to informing the present and the future—whether in the neighborhood, in academia, or in business." in the past and that in the future "with the characteristics of our emerging information infrastructure: the library is everywhere, barrier-free, and participatory." and future librarians as virtual tour guide to a 3DLibrary is what I'd imagine what we are slowly changing into. MCPL is also slowly trying to change. I can see the increase in Hold placed in MCPL as a sign that instead of going to a local branch to browse our patrons are browsing from their computer and "ordering" their choices there. I am hoping that when Kindles or some other ebooks replaces a printed book, Library can become " knowledge spa" and "a retreat from technohustle, with comfortable chairs, quiet, good light, coffee and single malt" like Dr. Schultz preditcs.

#14 Discover Technorati and learn how tags work with blogs

how does a person get their blog listed as part of the blogosphere and how can you tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search?

Doing the recommended exercises, I did a keyword search for “Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. The first search yielded 1100 results, the second and third gave me an equivalent of an error message. Not wanting to give up I tried "Montgomery county" which yielded 62 results in both Blog posts and Tags. I then tried "23things" which gives 201 blogs in both places and they seem to be identical. I expected to find something with the 23things search since a lot of participants of this training have embedded the word in their blog name. If I am looking to find out more opinions on our training outside of MCPL this should be a good way to go about it.

As far as tagging my posts or my blog, I think I'll pass. When I am searching for something on the internet, the hits that irritate me most are random posts from nowhere blogs. I am counting my blog as one of those so tagging them will only irritate someone somewhere looking for more relevant information.

#13 Tagging and Discover Del.icio.us

1. Took a look around Del.icio.us using the PLCMCL2 account
2. The tutorial video is no longer available.
   
3. Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark. Cannot see any comments. May be doing this wrong.
   

#12 Roll your own search tool with Rollyo

I started this yesterday but did not have enough time to complete the exercise. I am trying again today with not much luck. I was prepared to make my own search tool with Rollyo. I even had the subject picked out and websites ready but when I try to create the search roll it failed three times.
I decided to give this an incomplete and move on; so, not Rollyo for me.

#12 Roll your own search tool with Rollyo

Just reading through all these:
Public Domain e-Books Search
Rare Book Library Search
Free Photos
Quick Quotes

Things 11 Catalog my favorite books

Created an account on Librarythings.

http://www.librarything.com/home/sun2009c

to set up my true library of books read will take a long time, so I randomly put in about 20 books that I've read recently or otherwise.
The most fun part is trying to input some Chinese books that I like and found out that I can actually find some of them in the Hong Kong University library. I know Amazon.com carries Chinese books and may have some of the books that I've read but since the Chinese books that I like are not academic ones I did not think that HKU has them.
I'd like to suggest to some of our patrons to use LibraryThings to keep track of what they've read instead of asking us about books that they returned and are no longer in our records.

bicycle ecard

http://www.letterjames.com/show_ecard.php?tan=1Ub2OmQb9s409e5m6k2VEZ8l5fwGa8yT1Xss5g0U.

Thing 10/part 3

My Academy Awards Speech
Thank you so much. But really, it's just an honor to be nominated alongside so many other powerful actors. I want to thank my agent, who stuck with me after I was found burning that sea. I'd like to also thank my smooth family, and bright hallway. I better stop now before I say something mysterious. Thank you, and majestic!

Thing 10/ part 2