Week 9, Thing 23

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? Flickr (Week 3, Thing 5) was a visually inspiring website. The sunset mashup I found for Week 3, Thing 6 was really amazing--one little website could put everything in perspective for me.
I enjoyed the variety of the generators on Week 5, Thing 10.
Finding free movies and TV online in Week 6, Thing 13 was amazing!
Google docs in Week 8, Thing 18 definitely were a way to make distanced business, schools, people, whatever connect and be able to look at the same thing and share items in a convenient, painless way avoiding the faults of formatting issues.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
This program has definitely greatly improved my technology literacy and I feel more comfortable with all the technological lingo that is thrown around nowadays that I had no clue the meaning of previously. My lifelong learning goals have been affected in that I now know my learning must include technology, whether I like it or not.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I guess that overall I was surprised by the number of reading tools available online and through technology. With the increasing popularity of the internet and other "e" materials, it seems that books are of no exception to the rule--they must be allowed to evolve technologically as well.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
The biggest issue I had was having to join/register a bunch of different websites--it's just more to remember and some of the items would have been more convenient if we just had one user name and password as employees of the library--like a group password and user name.

Thank you so much for the opportunity and I'm glad I completed the 23 Things--it was a long but rewarding journey! Definitely worth it... :)

Week 9, Thing 22

So this week was not so successful for me...I tried the MyLibraryDV first, but the computer would not finish the installation because I was not logged on as an administrator. Next, I tried the OverDrive and thought that I had downloaded The Alchemist by Coehlo and The Pillars of Creation by Goodkind. However, the first was not yet available and even though the Goodkind novel was, the computer needed to install Overdrive software. I tried doing this, but the installation process kept being "interrupted" by a pop-up screen that said I needed Windows Media Player 9 or higher. Even after I downloaded Windows Media Player 11, the pop-up screen still came up and installation would not complete. So...I next turned to Tumblebooks and started a free trial. I'm not sure if it was my internet connection, or the site, but everything was very sloooowwww. What I found of interest was Grimm's Fairy Tales in audiobook form, which was played on the Tumblebook Audio Player--or so I was lead to believe...it did not play! This was pretty much par for the course, so I am going to stop while I'm ahead...of nothing...for the day. I'll try the Overdrive things on my home computer because maybe then I won't have the administrator and media player problems as on this library computer. At the moment, I wouldn't feel comfortable with patrons trying to use these applications because none of them worked correctly!