WEEK 9 THING 23

As my grandson says to me, "Yippee, Nana". So many young people have blogs and now I have one too!!!!!
My favorite sites were Avatar, Flickr, LibraryThing, and YouTube.
I found Rollyo, Technorati and Del.icio.us to be more difficult but, through the kindness of my coworkers, I got help with the more complex steps of putting some of the site information into my blog.
The exercises were entertaining for sure, but mostly I furthered my professional knowledge in a big way. Thank you BCPL for giving me the opportunity to be exposed to what's out there in the world of new technological advances. I can now speak with more confidence to customers who are interested in these tools. Libraries are certainly relying less and less on print material. My future years working here will be easier knowing how to navigate electronically for information.

WEEK 9 THING 22

I learned a lot from browsing sites about e-books. Overdrive.com helped me to give better customer service when people come to the library asking for directions on how to download e titles from our BCPL collection.
The most amazing thing about Project Gutenberg was how many books were available in foreign languages. I even found a book titled "Hinemoa", translator Henry Fletcher. This particular book is written in MAORI, the language of the native people of Australia!!!

WEEK 9 THING 21

From my reading, I learned that a Podcast is a "non-musical audio or video broadcast that is distributed over the Internet. The podcast's method of delivery is often done automatically through RSS." I-tunes by Apple is a downloadable application that plays songs on an i-pod.
However, users do not need an i-pod for podcasts since most of them are downloadable audio files.
I did listen to 3 search tools for locating podcasts. Podcast.net was interesting since it featured talk radio shows. The show I chose from podcastalley.com was called "Nobody Likes Onions" and was really foolish and silly. My favorite search tool was yahoo podcast because I love listening to NPR episodes.
Libraries could utilize podcasts for book talks, stories for children, staff training, etc.

WEEK 9 THING 20

Out of all the 100 million video views on YouTube, I chose to upload and share the video called Kittens' First Steps----This video is a perfect example of how libraries are broadening their abilities to bring information to people. Print information on newborn kittens would never do justice to this visualization.!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WdmIdgBj6A

When the democratic candidates debated on television a few weeks ago, YouTube made it possible for people all over the world to see the debate, and even play reruns of it if they so desired.

WEEK 8 THING 19

Now this was loads of fun. If I could have, I would have sat at the computer all day looking at these amazing Web 2.0 awards list. The most wonderful site for me was under Games-Arcaplay-Puzzles-Quick Pic. This game is like a version of Concentration. It is very addictive and good for people who have those Senior moments.

WEEK 8 THING 18

I looked at Zoho writer and Google docs. Both of these tools make it unnecessary to use floppy discs. They can be used for creating and editing documents, and then the work can be saved online. Party lists are great because you will always have the names ,addresses, and phone numbers saved for future reference.

WEEK 7 THING 17

Sandbox wikis are really good tools for librarians. I would want to set up an area of the website at work for favorite authors, and I would love to share conversations and viewpoints with other librarians.
If I had the time at home, my personal preference would be for favorite recipes and have people all over the world chime in with their ideas.

WEEK 7 THING 16

From my reading, I see that WIKI is a Hawaiian phrase used to indicate something fast--wiki wiki. Thus , a wiki is a "quick to build, easy-to-edit website on which all information can be edited, changed, or rewritten by the users of the site". The largest wiki in the world is Wikipedia and I know that I have gone to this site many times for a quick explanation if a customer asks about a subject or word definition.
In most cases teachers will not let students use Wikipedia as an information source since so many of the entries are subjective and influenced by a person's opinion. I just read a newspaper article in the Baltimore Sun where a new site called WikiScanner can check where changes in editing an article can be traced to the computer where the person made the changes.
The article deals with corporate revisions where the writer made his company look more favorable; for example, someone at EXXON MOBIL made changes to downplay the environmental damage the Valdez oil spill made in Alaska.
For libraries, I see many positives of using wikis. Applications of wikis would be good for books, films, music and library instruction resources, especially when introducing new data bases.