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!

Week 9, Thing 21

First of all, I didn't create a Bloglines account, I just used Google Reader. I searched for podcasts using PodcastDirectory.com and decided to search for Alaska. I found an Iditarod Podcast, and I added the subscription to Google Reader--here's the website: http://www.digitalpodcast.com/podcastnews/, which is actually not about the Iditarod at all. Thus, there's not really an Iditarod Podcast website even though the directory website said so. The website I was sent to originally was actually just another directory site. Therefore, I'm not sure I would endorse PodcastDirectory.com as very reliable. So, I then went to podcastalley.com and searched for Jane Eyre, where I didn't find a lot of related materials, but I found one of interest. "The Sci-Fi and Fantasy Geek" podcast is now in my subscriptions. (http://recordings.talkshoe.com/rss22770.xml)

In conclusion, I didn't have a lot of luck finding library-related literary podcasts, but maybe you just need to know the right kind of thing to search for.

Week 9, Thing 20

Being given free license to explore YouTube is a pretty wonderful thing haha. I, like most people, could get lost for days searching and viewing videos on the site. There's truly something for everyone and even though I know people who are not technologically saavy, I bet they still have seen a YouTube video through emails or other family members showing them the latest YouTube fad video. And the amazing this is that while there are plenty of funny, fan-related, or outrageous videos, there are still serious videos--like religious-themed, politically-inspired, or philosophical in nature.

On that note...the video I am choosing to upload is a beagle howling video because we have a beagle at home and I am partial to their wonderful bugle barking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeYnX9NwB1k

What I like about the site is the accessibility to all types of videos, and when you're searching a search history box comes up that helps with things you are unsure of the titles for.

As far as library use, book club discussions or author interview videos to me seem to be the most applicable, and something that libraries could utilize to introduce media into their resources. Also, book recommendations would have a greater personal appeal if librarians were in person recommending a book on a YouTube that could be linked to the library's website. Or, librarians could have personal staff pages on each library's website where their own linked YouTube recommendations are found.

Week 8, Thing 19

I chose to search the Recipe for Success site, which seemed mainly including blogging or other library/technology websites. One caught my attention, however, called "Literature-Map." It is a website where you enter the author's name and a conglomerate of related authors come up. Obviously, this has great applications to the library for people who are seeking similar authors. I searched Charlotte Bronte, and then clicked on Wilkie Collins from there since I am writing a paper incorporating his work. I then searched for a relatively unknown fantasy author that I like, Kristen Britain, and yet there were still relevant authors attributed to her ilk of writing. It would be difficult to do a search like this for book titles, as the floating nature of the results would be obscured with long titles. I suppose that is why the creators of this website chose to do author searches instead of book searches. Here's a link if you're interested:

http://www.literature-map.com/

Week 8, Thing 18

So this week I became familiar with Google Docs (since I have other google accounts it was simple to set-up). At first I was skeptical, but I became a believer with the ease of publishing and sharing documents/presentations/forms, etc. As you can see, I published both a test document and a test presentation in posts previous to this one. The presentation I had to manually enter the code in the "Edit Html" section of posting--but since the code was provided for me by Google, it was pretty easy. I can see where this would eliminate the different formatting errors that occur with differing editions of Word, Powerpoint, etc. But, I did notice that the document application didn't allow me to use accents which are often the cause of formatting errors, so that should be resolved for it to be truly internationally relevant.