Thing #23

I'm finished and I did it! I'm just a little excited! It's hard to say what my favorite things were because most everything was new to me except YouTube. I am just still amazed at all the things that are out there. Doing these exercises really made me realize that I'm not dumb and that I can learn about new technology. A person just has to sit down and take the time to try things. And yes I would do this again but hopefully we can have it during months that are not so busy like January and February.

Thing #6

Flickr is huge, so many different things. I played the games Fastr and TagMan. They were pretty cool. The Flickr album maker was also pretty neat. Trulia was pretty awesome. I wonder if this is what the city uses to figure out how to lay out housing developments. Crimespotting reminded me of the maps they use on the television show "Numbers". I thought the best was Mappr. It reminded me of the projects we did on ourselves for the display case. I took a United States map and taped photos to it of some touristy thing we did in each state we visited. They use the computer and it looks much nicer than mine did. And you can put more than one photo on each state.

Thing #9

I would have to say my favorite search tool on this assignment was Topix.net. I love news. I can't get enough news. But boy could all these feeds be dangerous because I'd get hooked on reading them and I wouldn't accomplish anything else during the day. Syndic8.com and Technorati were interesting and relatively easy to use. I researched libraries and parenting. There were alot more interesting feeds for parenting than libraries.

Thing #8

I can't believe I forgot to blog about this one. I added my 10 newsfeeds then and I just added my new one I did today for Thing #21. Some of the 10 that I subscribed to were About Animals, Cats, Bloglines News, Books, Cooking for Engineers, New York Times and USA Today. I don't know where people find the time to read all this information. It's great but I could get seriously hooked and not do anything else.

Thing #22

Carolyn and I did this one together also. It was easy. We downloaded the Velveteen Rabbit and listened to some dramatic woman read it. She was a bit too dramatic for my taste. We also listened to a duo of father-daughter (I'm guessing) read The Night Before Christmas. Oh, is it cute! We tried Little Black Sambo but that didn't come up. It's really too bad that they can't do books after 1923. I think this is a great idea and that every book should be public domain.

Thing #21

Carolyn and I worked on this one together. The first thing I say for this assignment is "Wow". I had no idea how much is out there. My favorite was Podfeed.net. I created an account and found a Podcast I liked. I subscribed to the SoonerThought Podcast. Podcastalley.com was good and so was Podcast Directory but holy palooza was there some smut on Podcast Directory. There were alot of podcasts from different libraries. I could sit and listen all day if I had the time.

Thing #20

For my YouTube video I watched the "Oregon Lighthouses: the silent sentinels". Actually I watched about 20 different videos on lighthouses but this was my favorite. It's on Yaquina Head Lighthouse and Yaquina Bay Lighthouses in Oregon. We saw both of them on our trip in August 2006. I liked this video because it was professionally made. After looking at so many videos on YouTube I really do not care for the ones that people have made on their vacations. Some of them are really boring and drug out. I like to watch the videos that are informative and done in a tasteful manner. I like a narrator that has a nice calm voice and the background music fits what you are watching. I think it would be interesting to make a video of our library and put it on YouTube but it should be professionally done. Not just pictures of us smiling and waving at the camera.

Thing #19

The directions say to select one site. I had to contain my self to looking at 9 sites and then I had to stop. I could spend all day looking at the different sites. Two that I liked were for parents: MothersClick and Minti. They had areas where parents could pose questions and then people would answer. MothersClick had recipes that I found were useful but the site was mostly for mothers with young children. Minti had advice about older children also so I found that more helpful.

There was another site that was good called DonorsChoose.org. It's a site where teachers all over the United States can put in a request for an item for their classroom and the dollar amount and anyone can give money towards that item. It shows the total cost, how much has been given, and how much is needed. It also tells if it's a poverty level area or moderate poverty level. I found this helpful to teachers who are teaching in poverty level areas.

I also looked at Craig's List. I've heard of it but had never looked at it before. In North Dakota it's only for the Fargo-Moorhead area. I think they need to get Bismarck added. This is a very helpful site and it's amazing at how much it contains.

Thing #18

Wow, this is so easy to use. Why aren't we all using this instead of Microsoft Office. It's free and we'd all be using the same version. I imported two documents and I was able to make the same changes that I would normally make using Microsoft Office. If I understand it correctly, I could work on stuff at work and post it to this and then work on it at home. Brilliant!

Thing #17

I found this one to be a little difficult. It took me a while to figure out but it is pretty cool.

Thing #16

Wikis are pretty cool. They allow libraries to share information with each other and their patrons. My favorite was the Book Lovers Wiki. If I'm looking for a book to read for pleasure, reading what an average everyday person thought about a book is much more important to me than reading professional book reviews. I think we should do this at BSC Library. We could create the Wiki and then have any employees that want to do a review of the book they just read or do a review of their most favorite book. That way, if we pick their book to read we know who we can contact after we're finished if we'd like to discuss the book.

Thing #15

I read all of them but I liked what Michael Stephens had to say about technolust. We should not invest in technology for the sake of coolness and status. What good is technology if the students do not know how to use it. I think we need to find out where our students are at and then we know what we will need. For libraries to keep up with the changing world I think it is going to cost a lot of money. I don't think any of it is going to come cheap. Above all, we need to keep the librarians educated on all the new stuff so we need to spend money on staff development. I think it's great how libraries are working together and sharing resources. All these changes seem positive and that we're moving in the right direction. What the patron needs is what we need to provide.

Thing #14

Technorati rocks! Wow, I could sit all day and look at other blogs. I went from searching for Learning 2.0 to parenting to recipes. I checked out the popular blogs but I'd rather search by using the tags and come across just the average joe blogging about a topic that I'm interested in. I'm definitely going back to visit some of these again. My favorite was the "5 minutes for Mom" blog. They talked about banning books and then I went to a blog with a lady who lost 200 pounds on Weight Watchers and then I got on a blog post that was giving away a t-shirts that say "My husband rocks". That last one was cool because it listed the people who were reading it live and it said Bismarck, North Dakota and then listed how we found the post. There were only 8 of us reading it and everybody else was from other parts of the United States. I did it by using the tags and the Blog Directory.

Thing #13

With help from Liz I now understand this sight. It's a really handy tool. This could be great for not only faculty but students writing a term paper. We could also use this at the reference desk. When we help a student with a certain topic at the reference desk we could have bookmarked sites for us to go to on that topic. It's really neat that we can access those sites from any computer.

Thing #12

http://rollyo.com/lighthouselover/lighthouse_bb/ Liz said to use this address to get into my Rollyo. This is neat. I'm going to keep using this even after our project is done.

Thing #12

http://www.rollyo.com/search.html?q=lighthouse+bb&sid=462098

This is really handy. I want to set up another one of these when I have time with the websites for each state's tourism department. Whenever we take a vacation we do a search of the official tourism department websites for each state we will visit. I could have them all in one with this.

Thing #11

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=lghthouselover&deepsearch=

This was a really neat exercise. I would like to use this to keep a list of the books that I would like to read in the future.

Thing #10

This is cool. I would have to say It would be hard for me to pick a favorite because they all were amazing. Being able to make your own "for dummies" book was awesome too.

DVR

We subscribed to a new piece of technology (new for us anyway) from our local cable company. It's called DVR and it's pretty awesome. We never miss a show because we can pause live TV and come back to it and it starts at where we paused it. We then can catch up to the live broadcast as we fast forward through the commercials. No more having to jump up during the commercials to get that evening snack.

Sturgeon Bay Pierhead

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leviathor/111595681/

We saw this lighthouse when we were in Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin. We walked out on the pier to get as close as we could. With waves coming up on both sides of the pier it was very scary. I made it about 3/4 of the way because the pier narrowed considerably and you felt like you were in the middle of the ocean with very little land beneath your feet.

7 1/2 lLifelong Learning Habits

The easiest habit for me is Habit #1: begin with the end in mind. I'm not sure if I'm thinking correctly but to me the end is getting an I-pod. I realy want one and so I really want to finish this whole project. I know I will be learning along the way and that's what is supposed to be the imprtant thing.
The toughest habit for me is Habit #4: have confidence in your self as a competent effective learner. I am so dumb when it comes to technology so it's hard for me to have confidence in myself during this whole project. I was so scared to get back into the swing of this after being gone for so long that it took me five days before I even started looking for my password for my blog. But I know when I do finish this whole thing I will feel a strong sense of self worth. I still remember how good it felt when I created a blog. :-)

Voki

While exploring some Flicki mashups and 3rd party sites I came across a website on how to make my own Voki Speaking Avatar. I created an Avatar and some of the things I was able to choose were:, skin and mouth color; hair color; and background scenery. The only thing I did not do was give it my voice. I sent the Avatar to my e-mail address. This was alot of fun and I could really get into the Avatar world. But it does amaze me how much time goes by while you are doing it. Now I have a greater understanding as to why my son sits in front of the computer all day.

#3

I cannot believe it, I have a blog! I am so techonology illiterate it hurts. Now, I guess, I can't use the words technology illiterate anymore since I have a blog. I will just refer to myself as technology challenged, since I still have so much to learn.