Week 9, Thing 23: Summary of Thoughts

Woo hoo: The last thing!! Didn't think I'd get here so soon. It has been quite an adventure: difficult and frustrating at times, but also fun, addicting, and interesting.
I think my favorite things that I learned during this experience were: creating the blog itself, flickr, rss feeds, Library Thing, and YouTube. These are all things I will definitely use again, and continue to use in the future. Things that I don't think I will have much use for are: Del.icio.us, Technorati, and Rollyo-although it was interesting to learn about what they are.This program has assisted me in my lifelong learning goals in many ways. I have learned about things out there on the internet that I had no idea existed. I now know how to use alot of these new, cool "things." I also have alot more confidence in performing many other skills on the computer that I wasn't very good at before, like copying and pasting urls from site to site. Going through this program has given me the confidence that I could go through another program online, and succeed at it. Maybe I'll decide to take a course or two online in the future.

As far as improving on this program, I think the content was very good, but almost too much to squeeze into 9 weeks. Starting out, we all had the impression that we would be able to finish each week's activity in 30 minutes to 1 hour a week. That turned out to be far from the truth-at least for me. I probably spent 1 hour or more on each thing-not on each week. And from what I've heard other people say, I think that is the going consensus. I ended up doing the majority of the work for my blog at home, mainly because there is not enough time to do it at work, and there have been bandwidth problems at work that made doing some of the exercises difficult. Therefore, I think the program could have easily run for 4-5 months.

If another program like this were offered in the future, I most likely would want to participate. It has really been a valuable learning experience, despite some of the frustrations and difficulties I had working by myself in a self-paced program. But I feel very accomplished, alot more knowledgeable of Web 2.0, and proud that I finished the program!

Week 9, Thing 22: Learn About Downloadable Books

I explored Overdrive for this exercise (I see that our library is going to be dropping Recording Books NetLibrary soon). There are a multitude of titles you can download: apparently over 2,000! I found that there are limited copies of each title, but you can go on a waiting list when your title isn't available. Our library has a 21 day loan period, and no fines: very good!
Overdrive is arranged in a manner that is easy to search. Categories are divided up into Browse collections, Browse Fiction, and Non-fiction, and Browse Video. I liked that under the category of Browse Collections, they list categories as "most popular" and "recently returned". I had no trouble locating most titles I searched for. They even have graphic novels available to download! I did find a few titles that I may be interested in downloading in the near future: The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly, and High Noon by Nora Roberts. It is an excellent site and a great service to offer to library customers.

Twiggy the Water Skiing Squirrel

Week 9, Thing 21: Locating Podcasts

There certainly are podcasts available on every topic imaginable! I checked out quite a few on Podcast.net, and some on Yahoo Podcasts. I subscribed to a few: Alternative Health Options Podcast (I like hearing and reading about current health topics), Canine Campus, and Hound TV: A Video Podcast for Dogs & Their Owners (as you can tell, I love dogs!) I also subscribed to The Library Channel as my library news site. These sites are all of interest to me, and I will enjoy checking them out. I really liked the "Ask a Ninja" podcast: very funny!

Super Squirrel to the rescue! Or not...

Week 9, Thing 20: YouTube

YouTube is really alot of fun! It wasn't too difficult to figure out how to upload a video-once I signed up my blog on the YouTube site. There are so many videos to choose from. I can't believe some of the things people post on that site: some are really just weird! I chose the squirrel video because I love feeding squirrels and watching their antics in our yard. They are quite the little comics! I think the producer of this video is quite creative, and spent alot of time filming her "actors." YouTube could be useful for library websites in a way similar to podcasts: used to teach various skills to patrons using the library databases, or just navigating through the catalog. A fun and interesting experience!

Squirrel Crime

A grape thief is caught while the other suspect is distracted with nuts!