Week 15 – Gaming and Virtual Worlds

This was fun to do and a bit dangerous as I was unaware of all the games available on-line to play!  I enjoyed trying out Yahoo Crosswords and Word Sense. The Euchre intrigues me and I will go back and try it out. I also checked out Second Life briefly and I am amazed at all you can do there but concerned at the money you can spend buying real estate etc. to enhance your on-line experience.  Like anything else I’m sure it’s great for some while others get addicted and spend far too much of their time and money on these things. 

Online Applications and Productivity Tools

I think it’s great that all these tools are available online for free.  The “in plain English” videos available on YouTube are great for explaining all these new applications – I watched Google Docs in Plain English.  I created a quick 4 page PowerPoint just to try it out and I didn’t find it as easy to edit as using PowerPoint at home, but it was surprisingly easy to find and start and use.  Sharing the document was easy as well-  http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dcsnvcnf_0dv2d62gw - I sent it to one of my colleagues and they will take a look at it as soon as they remember their Google account password!  These tools would make it very easy to share documents and edit as a group.

Week 13 Podcasts and Video

YouTube is something that I have been exposed to quite often at home with the kids calling me over to watch various videos. That Google is paying one million dollars a day for bandwidth to accommodate all these videos is mind boggling.  I watched the Evolution of Dance video and it was entertaining! I can see why it has spawned so many copycats and won awards!

I didn’t find the podcast directories particularly helpful.  I tried All Podcasts and it timed out doing my searches. Contentious Women in Podcasting also turned out to be unhelpful and not nearly as interesting as the name promised it might be. I ended up just doing a Google search for podcasts on a subject I was interested in and ended up with this link for a podcast talking about spring gardening!

http://northcountrypublicradio.net/news/archive.php?id=5486   

                                        My garden last summer!

OverDrive Music and Video

I was impressed with the Cleveland Public Library’s digital library when checking out their site for this weeks assignment.  They have OverDrive Video and OverDrive Music available.  This is probably where we are headed as well!  I thought the video aspect would be a great way to get more educational videos out there for our students and teachers… just a thought.

Week 12 E-books and E-Audio books

I’m so excited! I can finally say “Yes, I have downloaded an audio book” to patrons!  If I can do it anyone can.  It was a bit confusing but really all you have to do is take your time and follow the directions. I created my NetLibrary account and listened to Beloved by Toni Morrison.  In Overdrive, I downloaded and started listening to 101 Ways to Transform Your Life by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

Week 11 Electronic Databases and RSS

This was an interesting topic to complete.  Firstly, I had to remember where I had stashed my RSS feeds! Once I found my Google Reader and the feeds I realized I had a lot of interesting reading to catch up on.  The whole process of doing a search and creating the search alerts was fairly straight forward. I did a search on gardening in Canadian Reference Centre which brought back tons of information while my search on Home Renovation in Gale’s Academic didn’t bring back nearly as many results. Both are topics I’m interested in so it will be interesting to see how often there are new updates in my Google Account/RRS Reader for gardening and my e-mail account for home renovation. This would be a great way for students, librarians, business executives… to all stay abreast of any changes/new information on any topics they are interested in or working with.  Trying to explain the service to patrons would depend on how tech savy they are for the most part, but it is something we should all keep in mind going forward.

Facebook and Library Learning 2.0 Social Network

I enjoyed creating a Library 2.0 account. I now have 2 friends and have requested more! I have a Facebook account already so I am already familiar with Facebook.  My kids have all agreed to be friends with me on Facebook which was surprising but they tolerate my “lurking” to a degree!!

Hailey and I in Paris March Break 2008

Hailey and I on her Grade 12 Europe Trip to Italy and Paris. Good times and great memories!

Week 6 Playtime/Trading Card

I enjoyed creating a trading card this week.  It was easy to create but I haven’t been able to upload it to my blog yet.  I will try again as I would love to upload some pictures as well.  I do it in facebook all the time so I will figure it out eventually!

Week 4 WIKIS

I find I use Wikipedia quite often, so it was good to read up on it and see that it is fairly reliable. I checked out the You Tube Book Trailers after reading about them on the “Library Success: Best Practices Wiki”. I didn’t find the ones I watched particularly useful. I did like the Blogging Libraries List as I checked out some of the Public Libraries that were listed and found some good Readers Advisory links. Hennepin County Library Bookspace looked promising as did the Huntington Public Library Book Hunt space – they go by HPL as well!