Relax and Reflect

All in all I enjoyed exploring and revisiting Web 2.0.

I thought it was a very worthwhile experience and it drove home how deep and wide and useful the web can be, and also how confusing! I feel as though I've only scratched the surface of some of the amazing features available and will definitely go back and explore some of the areas. Wiki's and Blogging were the topics I found most useful.

As a part-time children's librarian I found it difficult to squeeze in the time to work on Web 2.0 until summer reading got under way. I enjoyed reading other people's comments on the process. I'd definitely like to participate in other trainings similar to this one.

Gaming

My daughter is a big fan of all the free online games, from crossword puzzles to MahJong she's explored them all. I asked her to give me a tour of some of her favorites and quickly got hooked on MahJong...

I found some of the games to be annoying and some to be oddly satisfying, MahJong is my particular fav, very relaxing and when I win I love the tidiness of it all!

Google Earth

I'm one of those folks who loves maps. Google Earth is fascinating. I used it to "look around" Quebec city and was amazed at how much I could "see." I like the photo feature and also the fact that I could plug in the address of the hotel I'm staying in and get a feel for how to navigate the city from that point.

I also looked for my house and others in my family. It was interesting that I was unable to zoom in closely to my father's house. He lives in a rural area rather off the beaten track, all other family members, who live in more populated areas, were easy to see.

Avatars & Second Life

Hey...this was kinda fun! I've heard about Second Life but I've never visited before. Much more complex than I ever imagined! Including information services! Wow! I see the appeal, very creative, but not for me. I've already got enough of a second life with family, a new career...

Whew! Where do the folks who are doing this find the time?

I loved the idea of using Google earth to make a virtual world. Not sure I really understood the whole process as presented in the VBH video, but it sounded interesting.

Online Applications & Tools

Google Docs is great! I used it while I was a student at the UW and it is a great time saver and organizer when working on group papers. I've also used it at work when putting together booktalks or bibliographies, I can go to Google from any computer I'm on and chip away at whatever it is I'm currently putting together.
I like the large Google Doc format better than ZoHo. The text area is bigger and easier to work with, other than that they both seemed about the same.

Search Engines

It was good to go back into essentials of a Google search and look around, I haven't really had time to do that in the last year. It reminded me of a few things I can do to make my searches more effective and it also prompted me to add a few of the search features.

Finding a search engine you like for most people is probably all in what you get used to. I've been using Google almost exclusively and I like it because I know how to use it, am familiar with the format and pretty fast getting to what I want. The other search engines I tried all seemed clunky in one way or another, but that is no doubt due to my inexperience with the format.
I do go to other search engines to use specific search features from time to time.

I know my kids prefer Yahoo, for whatever reason, perhaps because it's the one they used first when learning websearch in school and now they just feel the most comfortable with it.

Podcasting

I listened to some booktalk podcasts I found using the Library Sucess Wiki :

• Nancy Keane's Booktalks -- Quick and Simple Booktalker's new daily podcasts
• Pierce County Library Podcast Blog Good Reads for 8-10 Year Olds

Listening to rather than reading the text of a booktalk is much more useful for me. I'd like to see Sno-Isle Libraries take a stab at creating something like this, reader's advisory for all ages seems like a great area to develop.

I love to listen to podcasts of KUOW programming when I'm cleaning the house, even more so than audio books. Offering our customers a link from our webpage to podcasts from radio stations and other organizations would be a nice feature.

Although I haven't created an "official" podcast I have digitally recorded some of my storytelling sessions and uploaded them to a website.

Online Image Generators

Well this was fun! I could loose a lot of time here...
Looking forward to playing around more with all of these in the future!

OverDrive

Getting started, downloading and installing, is a bit of a process. I think it is important when recommending OverDrive to try and assess the customer's level of experience and comfort with technology and to let them know where they can find help if they get stuck... by phone through, "Ask a Librarian," during library business hours. Looking forward to the material being made available to iPod users.
This was also a reminder to suggest OverDrive to students who are looking for the audio book format of an assigned reading.
I was pleasantly surprised by the number of children's videos available for download.

Del.icio.us

Ahh, this is great! Now I can eliminate all the folders on my desktops that have links to all my favorite websites and just go to Del.icio.us.
A very useful tool for keeping all your fav links accessible from anywhere.
Searching Del.icio.us I've found many of my fav sites, and happily some new ones!

Libraries can easily create lists of recommended sites on different topics, parenting for instance, to share with library users and other librarians world wide. Tagging adds value to the Internet by showing others looking for the same information what has been useful, a path through the quagmire.

Tagging also helps rank pages, showing how many others found the site useful enough to save. The only caution I would give is to, as always, consider the source whenever possible. I also think exclusively depending on what others have found can be limiting, so always broaden a search into other areas before deciding you've found it all.

Wiki Wiki Fun!

This was relatively new territory for me. I've run across a few library wikis while searching around for programing inspiration so this topic helped fill in the gaps for me. I was very interested to see how wikis are created.

The SJCPL Subject Guides wiki was very inspiring. What a great way to clear the back shelf of the reference desk of binders. Especially community services info, since 99.9% of the contact information for these organizations is now online.

The ALA Conference wiki shows what a great help wikis can be in distributing handouts and creating greater access to workshops/lectures through Podcasting, because it always feels like the 2 workshops you want to attend are being held at the same time!

My most recent find in the land of wikis is from the ALSC wiki:
Great Technology Programs for Children
http://wikis.ala.org/alsc/index.php/Great_Technology_Programs_for_Children

YouTube, Hulu,and Fancast

My kids first turned me on to online streaming video.
You Tube first, because I heard them chuckling to themselves while they watched some pretty ridiculous "home videos" and I came over to see what was so funny. Searching on YouTube is so incredibly easy, great social tagging going on.
I used a YouTube video of Mr. Bean in the library for one of my school group presentations (5th Graders) as a segue into how to treat library materials. It was a big hit!



Using Fancast I've caught up with a few missed episodes of The Office on my laptop. It was great to be able to catch up on a few Lost episodes using: ABC.com Full Episode Player
And I know my kids use it a lot to "watch TV."
Feels like you have so much control!

Facebook, MySpace aka Friend Networks

I started a Facebook account shortly after I finished library school as a way to stay in touch with my cohort. It's been a great way to keep in touch. It's made it really easy to see who landed the job of their dreams, who's getting married and to pass along ideas. I've played around with MySpace and decided Facebook is really more to my liking, although I do like visiting some of the MySpace band pages. I discovered these while trying to find a friend of mine who was part of a band back in Boston:
www.tribeonline.info

Features I like: Being able to keep up with people, creating my own page, adding features such as WorldCat and Librarything so it's all in one place, and having friends contact me. I just added a friend I hadn't heard from in a long time , it was great to get back in touch!

Features I like not so much: Wading through all of the random newsfeeds.
Why are they popular? MySpace - a way for folks to creatively express themselves virtually. Some of the pages are really amazing in their intricacy. Facebook-more straight forward format seems to appeal to those looking for a less involved way to keep in touch.
And, as mentioned earlier, it's just a great way for people to connect and reconnect!