Week10#23 Is This Really The End???

Wow!!!!!! What a journey we have traveled. From the very first click I was very unsure that I could even do the frist exercise. I relied on my friends to struggle through some of the challenges that laid ahead for me. I am so glad that I completed this exercise. There have been so many different ones that I loved. i really loved making my own mini me. Library Elf has to be one of my favorites. The way it is set up is great. Everything I need to know is there on one screen. It will even lets you know when you have something that is going to be late in the next few days. Getting to go through the the different websites for downloading music, books etc was a great adventure. At some point I would like to sit down and go through some of the different ones and really explore all they have to offer. Flickr was one of the most frustrating ones I did. It was so hard to do and I felt at times like giving up. hopefully, there will be a time when this program will be introduced again and we can take a ride through new technology together. Thank you to my friends that helped me through this journey.

Week 9 # 22 Downloadable Media

I loveeeeeeeeeeeeeeee the fact that you can download books right at the computer. I found so many I did a little surfing on Librivox. I found it pretty easy to access items but don't like the idea that you hav eto share personal info. So on to my next adventure. i then went to Wowio and stopped. I wanted to register to see what all they had. Several ways were to use a credit card(which stated that you would not be charged) or scan your driver's license. I will not be doing any of those choices. So on to my next stop. i went to Hcpl's site. I must site by fat my favorite. Very easy to access and on my lots of titles. I will spend more time in the next few days and download several titles to check out. As I was doing this exercise I thought how nice this is for those who do not drive or perhaps can not see very well. What better use of a computer than to download a book and listen at your convience through a computer. Yes thsi should be a site that everyone wants to keep going back to.

Week 9 #21 Podcasts, Smodcasts

I really enjoyed Podcasts. There are so many subjects to explore. It is like being at a conference without actually being there. After looking around for awhile I decided on the podcast Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul: The Real Deal Challenges. The young lady that was being interviewed was explaining about being published in the Chicken Soup series. How cool to hear how excited she was. Hopefully other teens will listen to this and be inspired to try their hand at writing. With so much exposurer of video games, it was refreshing to listen to a teen talk about her love for poems and how she hopes to get more published. We can only hope this will encourage other teens to pick up the book and read what she wrote.

Week 9 # 20 Discover You Tube & other video sharing sites

I decided to do a search of libraries. I found this really great site called Library of the Future. It is about the Stanford University Library. On it you will find all the latest technology that the library has to offer. Something I found incredible was that they had teamed up with Google. With the help of Google they were hoping to have over 8,000,000 books online to view. They also talked about with all the latest technology available at the library, they would be able to do research quicker. Along with that students would be able to access more sites than ever before. I did spend a little time looking at other videos. i must say that I am not surprised by what is there for all to view. All you have to do is pick a topic and there is a video waiting for you to view.

Week 8 #19 Web-based Apps

I checked out Zoho and Google. Since I had an account on Goggle I set up a mock spreadsheet and played around with changing fonts, colors etc. Pretty easy . What I liked about the feature on both was that others could go online and edit your work without having to have say Mircosoft Word. Very nice to go to any computer and pull up your work, send it to someone and have them put in their work and so forth. The more we do this exercise the more I discover what is out there. So many features with just a click of a button. Go techno seems the wave of the future. Now I can keep track and let others join me and put their info on a document I have created. Pretty clever.

Week 8 # 18 Social Networking

So all the craze right now seems to be if you can be found on MySpace or FaceBook. I decided to sign up for FaceBook. Very easy to do. I really liked that I could set my profile to be private. I tried to sign up for Myspace but got an error message. Two other sites I went to was www.infieldparking.com and www.dogster.com. Infield was all about nascar. Great place to talk to others with common interest. I found dogster pretty interesting. Now dogs can blog???? One other thought, I wonder how my son in college will feel knowing I can go to his facebook and see all his pics???

Week 7 # 17 Blog About Technology

After thinking for a bit about all the technology out there, I decided that I didn't really know that much about technology at all. Throughout this exercise so far I have learned that you can make an animated you, go to websites and edit what others have written and place pictures on websites for all to see. We sure have come a long way baby!! I must say even though I get frustrated at times learning all this new techno stuff, it has challenged me to beleive in myself that I can learn and put it to practical use in my everyday life. Thanks for bringing the 23 things for all of us to experience.

Week 7 #16

I looked at the library Wiki. I like the idea that there is a place to share ideas from other libraries. As others have stated with wikis others can edit, share ideas and also give opinions. This could present a problem with people getting their opinion out there and causing others to become offended. I don't know if letting just anyone have access to a website to do whatever they want with it. It seems like the website would be forever being edited The flip side is that there is so much info out there about differnet subjects for all to see. I like the idea of sharing ideas about a particular subject and having the website continually having updated materials on there. Also there is help from others with similar interest willing to put their research right there for all to look. Overall I like wikis for the vast info at a click of a button. Thruout this exercise I have found so many new technologies that I did not know existed, but I have very little time to really benefit from it. Maybe at a later date I can go back on my own time and really explore what the 23 things has to offer. I have found this to be time consuming at times and frustrating that I cannot take my time to really do all the exercises .

Week 6 #15 Library 2.0

It is amazing to see all the technology available to us. I chose to write about Away from the Iceburg. More and more of our patrons are coming to the library asking how to Flickr, or perhaps how to set up an email. In the old "days" a patron would come in to the library just to check out a book and be happy. Now we have reached the age where everyone is blogging, sending emails and looking up info via internet. What happened to the days when a child asked to look at an encyclopedia to do research. Now we place them in front of the computer and say click a button and there it is. You can even download music and "gasp" even a book. Will it come to be that books will be read online only. I do like to see all the different classes that libraries are offering now. We have moved away "from the iceage" into the era where everything is there at a touch of a button. I have an Mp3 player and still don't know what all it can do. The artcile i read also said that they are seeing at libraries a 55 percent decrease in circulation. Why?? Well it is due to the techno age of retriving info at home on a computer. We certainly have come a long way from the old card catalog files. With the trend leaning towards the new techno age, we still need people to show us how to do things, and that is where the libraries can be helpful with classes.

Week 6 # 14 Technorati

Ok so here is another tool to surf the internet. I looked at the most popular ones that everyone was looking at and realized this is really just another way to see what everyone else is looking at. No wonder people stay on the computer for hours and days at a time. I did like to see what others thought was the most popular sites. Of course there is myspace and face book which every teen is very familiar with. I did look around at the splash news on line and saw that there was 323, 778 hits for Britney Spears. Wow is that amazing. We are more interested in what a famous?? person is doing than maybe how to treat diseases or helping our world be a better place . Just a thought.I wish that I had more time to do this exercise. I would love to spend time putting in a topic and seeing all the info out there about it. I am finding that as we do each exercise more info is there for us, but I barely have time to do my homework. The pressure is on to finish before the next assignment is waiting. I did try to open up the most popular videos, but I could not get it to open. Does anybody find it weird that at a click of a button everything you have ever wondered about a subject is right there for you to see? Just remeber that you could become addicted and spend days sitting in front of a screen .

Week 6 # 13 Del.icio.us

I did look at the tutorial but it was a little hard to follow. I have decided not to set up an account, because I have so many now that I cannot keep track of one more. I went in to see what others had tagged and found a vast number of subjects. Very interesting. I put in ancestors to see what resources I would pull up and was surprised to see over 2,000 resources to use. Is was kinda cool to see what someone else has tagged that was not just about ancestors. You could spend hours just looking at what everyone has posted. The only resources I knew about were ancestory.com and heritagequest.com, so with del.cio.us, I will be able to find many more and look at what others are using.

Week5 # 12 The Library "ELF"

This was so easy to do. I really like the way it is set up. There is a calendar right there on the front page and below it your list of books. I like how it is broken up in different catagories. With just a quick glance I can see what may be overdue, how many holds I am waiting for etc. As you are looking at your account, you can also browse other lists such as amazon and book clubs. What a great set up. Very easy to read and all your information is right there in front of you. You don't have to go to different screens to see what books are overdue and what holds are not filled yet. As you can tell, I like the Library "ELF". Even on the calendar it tells you that you have late books, and on a particular day that you have items due. Very user friendly.

Meez

Week 5 # 11 A thing about Library Thing

I really liked this becasue there are so many books to choose from. Not only can we see what others are interested in, but we can also join a group to discuss our selections. I went to the talk page and saw all the different topics about books. It is amazing the different books people like to read. I really wish that I had more time to do this exercise, so I could explore all the books others have read. I am always looking for new authors to try out. Great exercise this week.

Week 5 # 10 Play around with Image Generators

This was so much fun. i did need a little help getting the pic to post, but wow was it alot of fun. I used the avatar. It was fun to try different looks and be able to see what it would look like before posting the pic. This will be one that I go back and explore more. http://avatars.yahoo.com/

Week 4 #9

How easy this was to do. I wish that I had more time to add different websites to look at. There are so many topics out there to choose from. I used topix and it was very good and extremely easy. When I have more I will go back and spend alot of time and seach thru more . I liked this exercise. One of the easiest ones so far.

Week 4 #8

So I did it all by myself. It was pretty easy to do and directions were easy to follow. I have 12 different ones to look at now. Yeah for me!

Challenges

I have noticed that since we have started this program we have some really great people at our branch helping each other out. How cool is that??? Throughout this program I beleive we will see even more of this. Thanks to everyone that is so willing to show us computer challenged people how to do things.

week 3 #7

samedit
Originally uploaded by harleybiker0326

Ok so here the edit version. A little easier but I must say I do not care for Flickr at all.

Week3 #6 More Flickr Fun

Lots of different ideas to try out. I really liked the one called Captioner. I think it would be fun to place pics on your blogs and be able to write funny little sayings about them. I also want to explore the ones that you can go in and play games. So far this project has been challenging and makes me realize how much is out there to use and how little I really know.

Week 3 # 5 Discover Flickr

Wow. Was this ever hard. The directions were not very clear on how to post your pics to your blog. This was very difficult to do and was very frustrating to me. However I can't wait to see what the next challenge is.

sam

sam
Originally uploaded by harleybiker0326

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Privacy Safety

I am very cautious about what I share on the internet. There are alot of ways to find out about someone if they want to. It is amazing all the myspace and facebook pages that have everything about someone on there.

Blogs

I finally got my blog done. With much help from a good friend it is completed. I am looking forward to seeing how much I can learn from this exercise. Lots of new tools for the computer that I have never used.