Ta Da!!!!!

Well, I made it. Rather proud of myself too!

I have already had instances when Learning 2.0 helped me. Just this morning I needed to try to explain blogging to a patron. Not only could I explain what they were for, but I could show her mine, how to do a post, and other examples thanks to my blogroll! I could even tell her about technorati and explain how people find blogs.

The two biggest challenges have been time, and myself. Time, or lack thereof, is obvious. Myself meaning I got obsessive about some things. Like not being able to add an animation to a post. But I kept at it. I do believe that some of the tasks could use some FAQs, to help people troubleshoot.

My favorite activity was mashups.

The greatest benefit is that I am much more comfortable with web 2.0 tools, and will be utilizing and exploring them further. I look forward to helping others find their way with these tools, and finding applications for them. I will definitely keep blogging, I may even have a jewelry blog. And there wasn't that much I could find surprisingly about children and technology. Need to fill that niche.

I am thrilled to have been a part of the "original" learning 2.0, and happy it is being copied in so many other places. Thanks for the learning opportunities, and the opened doors.

Audiobooks

I have had a netLibrary account for a long time., I even helped with the initial audiobook FAQs. But this was the first time I actually downloaded a title successfully. I found a small file, selected radio quality, and downloaded it. It was strange that there was nothing to track the download, it notified me when it was starting, and automatically opened WMP when it was done. It only took 10 minutes (56K modem), and it played fine! I chose a book of Emily Dickinson poems. Only problem was that there is no way to select only parts of it to listen to, such as specific poems. For a novel that you are going to listen all the way through this would not be an issue.

Gee, one more entry into my blog, and I will be able to download and transfer audiobooks to my MP3 player!!!!!!

Finite to fail, but infinite to venture. - Emily Dickinson

Podcasting

I was surprised how easy it was to find podcasts, and to subscribe to them. I subscribed to Library Geeks. Time did not permit me to make my own, but I look forward to experiencing that. I found training sessions, and one podcast that Matt did about DOPA (Talking with Talis). I am sure it would also be easy to find podcasts from other PLCMC staff, and teens. The power of audio has been tapped with audio books, and of course has long been utilized with radio broadcasts from War of the Worlds to sattelite radio. Podcasting lets anyone share their thoughts and knowledge. I have seen products that join the power of podcasting with screencaptures, these are a great tool for step by step tutorials that meet the needs of visual and audio learners.

Library 2.0 Gang discusses DOPA

YouTube

Lots of crazy videos out there! One, Troy Story, was made in Studio i @ ImaginOn! Here is a cute one of a kitty and computer. Thought I would just go for something fun with this one!

Web 2.0 Tools - BaseCamp

I should have picked games. But instead I selected Basecamp, a Business, Money and eCommerce tool. Project management. Overall very impressive. Free and online, but some tools are only available in the paid subscription plans, such as time tracking. Great for to do lists and collaborative task overviews. It looks fairly simple and straightforward. No Gannt charts, but who needs 'em? We are using our Wiki for SSP, I would like to compare the capabilities of this tool to that. Project management is a tricky thing, some are too simple, some have too much. I wonder if this might be the one that's "just right"?

Zoho: I wrote a poem!

I created an account with Zoho. At first it would not let me log in to my new account. So I used the guest account (kinda like a sandbox)to play with the features. The buttons for special characters and emoticons were not visible, but I was able to display and use them. Today I was able to log in to my Zoho account. I wrote a poem. I was unable to use the publish feature to put it in a post, either due to operator error, or because I am using Beta Blogger (sounds like something your computer needs to prevent heart attacks, or at least the blue screen of death). Couldn't export as html either. So I tried copying it, but lost all my cool formatting. So, like all the rest of what we have learned, I need to continue working with it to understand its idiosyncrasies (there's one for spell check). Well, here is the poem anyway:

With Learning 2.0

We're learning new stuff

All web-based and current,

It's not really tough.



Web 2.0 tools,

They are so much fun

Create silly poems

As bad as this one.



From pictures and docs

To downloadable books

We know that its not

As hard as it looks.



Our MP3 player

Will be really handy

This Learning 2.0

Is really quite dandy!

Wiki favorites

Ok. This is the second time I have done this entry. After trying to post for over 5 minutes, it timed out and DELETED my post. I played with the wiki, and added my blog t0 the favorites. I had created an account, but am not quite sure why that is needed when there is a generic PLCMC account. I also added a comment and animal to the favorite animals page.

Wiki Wiki Wahoo!

I have become familiar recently with Wiki's through PLCMC's use of them for Core Competencies, SSP, and most recently tech programming for youth. I had not realized until this discovery exercise however the many interesting ways that Wiki's are currently being used by libraries. The SJCPL subject guide wiki was great, and I can see how much easier it would make a collaborative effort to gather and update info. It linked seemlessly with the catalog and authentication for online resources. I especially liked the tip sheets being near the description.

I also liked the journeys that the wikis led to. An explanation about wiki's led to conference wikis which led to the Internet Librarian 2006 Conference wiki which led to Flickr pictures, including Helene Blowers and Matt Gullett (photos by David King)! Sorry they spelled your name wrong Ms. Bowers.

I look forward to working more with Wikis, and watching what PLCMC can do with them!

Library 2.0-Resistance is Futile

From reading some of the perspectives, both listed and from the Wikipedia article, its seems that individuals who "oppose" the Library 2.0 concept are exactly the ones who might be, or perhaps need to be, left behind. It has always been argued that libraries cannot be all things to all people. This attitude is reflected in the Wikipedia entry by the views of Walt Crawford, who argues that Library 2.0 is old ideas and and "incorrectly places libraries as the appropriate source for all users to gather all information"[1].

I prefer the view of Dr. Wendy Schultz and her growth of libraries into an experience. Traditional libraries, you know--the kind with books--will always have a place in the libraryland of the future, it will simply be absorbed into something new. Great, so now libraries are amoebas! The future library being more and more experiential, she describes physical libraries as storefronts, kind of a starting place, that will be one aspect of libraries, in combinations with virtual retrieval of virtual information formats. This helps to make libraries suitable for, and accessible to, more and more people for more reasons--closer and closer to being all things for all people. I particularly like her concept of the knowledge spa: meditation, relaxation, immersion in a luxury of ideas and thought. We seem to rush so now, putting out fires and moving onto the next, the idea of relaxing with information is inspiring. Maybe as people adjust to limiting and refining the growing amount of info we need to sconstantly sort through, there will actually be less information overload even with more information.

Whether you consider Library 2.0 new or old, libraries are changing rapidly and dramatically. Resistance is futile.

Technorati

Technorati is well organized, and it was easy to find entries on all kinds of things, including a new one on my hobby. In popular links under technology I found a blog entry about optimizing your blog, which talked about not using default templates and keeping it readable by using small sections and well thought out layout. I found this by using the discover tab, and then the tech tab. It was under "Design-top blog posts". Beyond learning 2.0 I would like to develop a blog, or more than one, both work and hobby, so I am interested in the look and feel as well as functionality.

One surpise I found was a broken link. It was for the most popular keyword searches, yet there were no posts! Go figure.

De.lic.ious

Explored tagging with de.lic.ious, and the plcmc learning 2.0 links. I also explored the lists used for the SSP project. I look forward to making my own lists and being able to access them anywhere. I also plan on using it for my SSP wiki page when I update it. Some of the utilization and capabilities of de.lic.ious will be clearer as I use it more, but just as a link list that can be shared its great. It is easy to use, and I like the way it organizes itself for you. Note: At the time of this entry there were 122 links with teh PLCMCL2 tag.

Rolly Polly Searches

Great concept and a logical extension of bookmarks. Similar to WebFeat. It was very easy to set up. I rolled a search for Old Jewelry research . However, I was disappointed to find that it searches by domain level, not by the specific pages I put in. For my purpose with this search that was very limiting, since many jewelry info pages are second (or more) level pages. One of the best ones is a personal page inside comcast .net. So it was searching a huge number of pages having no relation to my search. Similarly, searches of sites that are primarily sales sites brought up many items for sale as opposed to just info on a specific designer or type of jewelry. Now that I understand it better I will keep to sites that are not seated within a larger site, unless the entire site is appropriate for the roll. Truly I am not trying to be negative, this is a wonderful tool! Just getting spoiled by how much some of the other tools do (such as the ease of getting detailed info in Library Thing) that my expectations are higher.

Click the Rollyo icon to go to the Rollyo site, and click the link above to visit my Search Roll.

Library Thang

Yep, I spelled it right. Well, the way I wanted to spell it. Created my library bookshelf in Library Thing. I added books I use for my ebay vintage jewelry hobby, a romance novel, 2 YA novels by the author I get to drive around in a few weeks, Libba Bray, and the two Dexter novels. If you are not familiar with Dexter, he is a serial killer who only kills "deserving" victims, and his day job is a CSI expert with the Miami police. It has just been turned into a Showtime series. So, I am eclectic in my reading. This is a great tool. I did not have the books in front of me, and searching isn't easy if the keywords are too common, but most of my items I found readily. It is also neat to see how many people have the same item in there bookshelf.

Love of Learning

OK, I just HAD to make a romance novel cover... available at Glass Giant

Lightning 2.0

I used the image generator at Glass Giant to create this shocking pic. It should be an animated gif, but couldn't figure out how to post it that way.

I also created an avatar...

Don't I wish I looked that good! This was created with Portrait Illustration Maker

This had more options than other avatar generators I found.

Fun Fun Fun!!!!

Finding Feeds

It was fun exploring the tools for finding feeds. I was most comfortable with Technorati, even found some staff blogs there! Topix was useful, found some intresting comments about DOPA, including someone questioning if the recent Foley scandal will fuel the DOPA fire, or make people reconsider, since the speaker is one of the sponsors. Enough politics. I also found the YALSA site and added it to my feeds. Syndic8 didn't work really well for me, I was confused as to exactly what it was searching, topics or site or blog titles? The bloglines search tool would not open for me. It's great to know these tools are available to find things beyond googling.

AARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHH!

OK. I consider myself fairly technically literate. OK, very literate. So imagine my surprise when it tok 2 and a half hours to complete the RSS tasks. Listened to the podcast, watched the tutorials, no problem. Signed up for a bloglines account, no problem. Located lots of blogs, including the assigned ones and several staff blogs, no problem. Then came the part about the public blog and blogrolls. You mean blog!#$$^*%G&*%^$^&% ( Don't know why this wanted to turn that garbled mess into a link???) First, the screenshot wasn't there that explained the step. It wasn't clear once I generated the script where to put it. After an hour of messing with it, I saw that there was a new BETA version of blogger. I found this by going through blogger help and Googling for bloggroll help. My very talented co-worker (OK she is on my staff and she is finished and I will probably be the last of my department to finish oh the shame but at least she knew what she was doing) said that she had switched to the beta and that it was indeed easier to "add elements" which is what adding a bloggroll is. So I switched my blog to the beta, which meant signing up for a Google account. Fine. Well the "Add Page Elements" option was not there. She even pulled up her page to show me what it should look like, but mine wasn't there. Something got lost in the translation between the regular and Beta. So, I logged off and on again, and Voila!!!! it was there! Surely my problems were over. I found the right place, added the script, and........ No feeds. I hadn't shared my profile. Huh???? So I had to figure out on which of the many screens of options on bloglines did I tell it to share. I found it. Refreshed the blog and ....it only displayed three of my 15 feeds. After a lot of looking and detective work, I realized that I actually had set up a bloglines account previously, and it was pulling those feeds. Another hour (over 2 different days) I finally fixed it all. Of course, I couldn't just delete the one bloglines account, so I had to change info and profile names, and keep updating the script element in Beta Blogger. Well, it is real purty now. Of course, I haven't had time to read all my feeds, because I have been getting this to work. My public blogroll is http://www.bloglines.com/public/vintageradiance

To end this rant, I need to comment that if I got this frustrated, it could be bad enough for others to give up. And they are exactly the ones that this wonderful program is meant for, to show them that these cool tools are not something to be afraid of, but discovered and used. I love this program. I think it is great that it is discovery based. I also think it is great how we are encouraged to utilize fellow staff to troubleshoot. However, I believe that certain things should have a little more guidance. For me it was blogrolls, but others have had trouble with other things that simply didn't work the way they were supposed to. This is basically hindsight now, but identifying after this is over what were problem areas for staff and adding "cheat sheets" for especially tough areas (or troubleshooting tips) would benefit those looking at modeling programs after Learning 2.0. This is not a criticism, simply an opinion on my experience, and the hope that this is as wonderful a discovery experience for everyone as possible. Of course, you can always chalk it all up to operator error, and leave it at that. I personally will keep plugging away, I am truly enjoying understanding all of the 23 things.

DOPA and Lampshades-Finding Your Light

Anything about technology that is interesting...hmmmm....

Well, dopey DOPA came to mind first. Looks like it might have been held in committee. It was challenging trying to find info on the bill's status, for some reason Congress isn't very good about updating information for the public. DOPA is annoying, terrifying, and yet another attempt to keep the technology light under a barrel. If it shines too brightly, well something wonderful might happen AND people might have to think for themselves. So SHHHHH!!!! don't let people know about cool technology like we are experiencing and playing with, keep them afraid! Keep them in control. And do not let individuals shine too brightly! And pick on libraries while you are at it. After all, they are beacons of knowledge, independence and wisdom.

Then, there are lampshades. I discovered this week that lampshades make an excellent light tent for digital photography. A light tent filters light to allow the true clear picture to come through, especially of pretty sparkly things. It cuts through the flash and shows clarity. Not light under a barrel, but light harnessed to garner perfection.

It's all about finding your light. That's what you do when you are on stage. When you find your light, you are exactly where you are supposed to be. It's a great feeling. Finding your light may mean cutting through the glitter or the red tape, or the opinions that others want you to take as fact. Finding your light is finding your truth.

Take a bow, and shine on!

Mashup Fun

The newest slideshow demonstrates what a creative, and funloving, staff we have at PLCMC! I played with the inspirational poster maker. http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/ I took a cool shot of a children's rug, and took it from there. I played with the magazine cover maker, but my picture needed editing to really work. These tools are a great way to be artistic, even when your not! And make a statement in a way so clever it disguises any insult hidden in it! Anyone can be a satirist, political cartoonist, or create a techno-image of themselves. Kudos everyone!

Techno clowning rules!!!!!

Scary Clown is a blogger!,
originally uploaded by puppettherapy.

Some people are afraid of clowns. Some people are afraid of technology. So here we have the best of both worlds. A fear defeating a fear. A win win!!!! Couldn't resist this photo by puppettherapy. This looks the way I feel most days. I have been clowning around so long I am only on flickr at the end of September! Doesn't mean I am not serious though. Just always catching up. I do hope that puppettherapy will post a pic of this clown sporting his/her beautiful new MP3 player! We can jam together, maybe even form an audiobook club (if I ever catch up to step #22!)

Difficult Habits

Read the 7 1/2 habits. I think the most difficult is seeing problems as challenges. Next would be goals. It is fun to learn new stuff, but being organized about it is a different matter. I think playing is the easiest, learning by discovery. Happy Posting!!!!!

Learning 2.0 , I am finally here

Hello! Well, I made another blog but I cannot find it. So, I am making this one so I can finally register and catch up. this should be cool!