Thing 30-- done!

Thing 30

Things 29 and 30 could almost be combined, I think. Certainly “discovery exercise 1” in 29 could be combined here.

And speaking of doing things differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

Fewer things. 30 is daunting. I know, I know, what do you leave out? Well, Combine a couple—Week 9 has 3 things about Flickr—are they all necessary? I found it hard to distinguish well among the discovery exercises. Week 5 IM. The two things could be combined. The two blog posts could become one.

I found a number of libraries in Va. that are doing Learning 2.0, most with fewer things. It would be interesting to know their rationale for this decision. Are the staff more advanced than us? Was this all the time their leaders could permit staff to devote to it? Are they planning a followup that includes the things they left out before?

I’m sure many people have commented on the surprisingly long time that it took to complete many of the things. This is very difficult to control. I know that many persevered because of the prize at the end. If I had had to fit this in with a desk schedule, I’d never have been able to finish it.

I doubt that similar incentives can be offered forever. So how about just offering one or two related things each month, and keeping them up for a long time. That way people will have more time to devote to it, and not feel pressured.


Unexpected outcomes:
I understood much more of what I was doing than I expected. The step-by-step, multiple approaches (read about what it is, then take and tour, then do it) worked for my learning style. If someone says “here’s how to change a lightbulb”, I want to know what a lightbulb IS, and how it might be useful to change it, first. As I mentioned in #29, there’s tweaking I still need to do for some things. But, on #29, I FINALLY successfully added a comment to a blog. I’ve been trying to do that off and on for months.

Semi-unexpected outcome: I really enjoyed blogging—or at least the opportunity to express myself in writing. Even though I know I’m mostly talking to myself (my blog isn’t going to grab anyone’s attention), I can at least believe in the possibility that I’m writing for someone. I’m not a diarist—I prefer writing for a presumed audience.

Would I choose to participate in a future program? Of course. We’ll have to have future programs just to keep up with the next steps. Not having been born with a mouse, I need a little more help with some of the newer things—even knowing they exist.

Thing 29

Thing 29, most probably

I am hoping you won’t take these “Things” down from blogspot. I’ve gone back to earlier lessons several times since October, to reread information, or to verify something. Since so many of the resources are (duh) links, printing the ‘things” won’t help.

I just went back to Thing 9, about RSS feeds and sent the thing link to my brother in Richmond. He was talking about how he gets his news, the browsing of multiple sites, etc., etc., so I asked if he knew about RSS feeds. He had been wondering about the little orange buttons!


Initially I was fearful I wouldn’t be able to get the technical parts, but the program was structured so that it explained what we were doing and walked us through a lot, so that I became more confident. Even though I’ve had trouble with some of the “things”, with practice I’ve gotten better at them. With time I can work out some of the other glitches, too.

DANGERDANGERDANGER: I can be a bit obsessive/compulsive, and found myself spending more time than I should on some of the sites. I can easily see spending hours and hours playing with Library Thing, or Flickr, or YouTube, or (name almost any tool we’ve learned about). Even while reading the introductory articles I’d get lost in a trail of related links. It’s probably a good thing that I haven’t had a functional home Internet connection for a couple or three years.

In looking at other blogs and web sites, I can now recognize what I’m seeing in many cases. For example, back in November I looked at a blog and was impressed by the drawing of the blogger. Now I understand that it came from one of the image manipulation tools (the blogger told me that when I talked to him several months ago, but I didn’t understand him).

ROLLYO thoughts

Interesting. I can see how useful this could be for a specific hobby or interest, or research topic. Like anything else, of course, it has its limitataions. I searched the “free photos” rollyo for “Tom Selleck” and “Elizabeth Peters”. There were a number of hits that weren’t pictures—just the mention of the name on someone’s profile, or an artistic photo or bricks “Tom Selleck’s Mustache” (didn’t understand that!).

Even with folders, “favorites” lists become cumbersome. I expect a very personal Rollyo could help this. You really wouldn’t even have to organize them—just pull it up and search the topic. And, since the site list is conveniently located, if you know you need to look at the main site for a particular topic, then you can click on that.

I’m wondering how it would work with sites requiring passwords to search, or databases you must subscribe to. For example: If I were doing research, I might like to be able to search my topic on Ebsco, Literary Resources, and Wiki. Could I create a Rollyo of all 3? Probably not.

Nice that the paid ads are in a different color!

Library Thing

Intriguing. I would also like to add audiobooks to the list. I'll have to try that when I have more time-- probably work by adding a book manually by ISBN. I fumbled around trying to figure out how to add reviews and ratings. It wasn't intuitive (to me, at least).

I just added some books I've read in the last couple of months, from several genres, etc.. It was interesting to see how many-- or how few -- others had added the same books.

Melvil Dewey Warholized, better

This from www.shadowfire.de/warholizer
I like it better than the old format one.
Class in 779

Altogether I tried and more or less successfully posted 3 different images-- 3 different posts. Looking at the others, especially from "The Generator Blog", I can see there are lots of fun things to try out-- and now I understand some of the images I've seen on other blogs.

Rats. Technical difficulties. Yesterday the image showed on the blog. Today I get the pesky corner x.

Melvil Dewey Warholized

Tasteful Lady on Funny Face Generator (26)

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It was this one or the pinhead, a definite "pear" shape. I prefer uniform fat.
Our instructions did say "try to be tasteful, too."

Podcasts are us!

I’ve been to so many programs at VLA that discuss ways to deliver information/training online, both for staff and customers. Podcasts still seem like a good, quick way to do it, and one that can be carried with you. For example, Tours of the building. Videos might work, too, but with a podcast the customer can listen while walking through the tour, and not be distracted by the video image.

A podcast describing a MARC record, while the person is looking at one online and manipulating it would be lovely. A video is also possible—but again, the video can be distracting or boring (!) for a subject such as MARC records.

I repeat what I said in Podcasts, the previous post. A script is essential. I listened to a couple of Library podcasts (will omit name of library to avoid hurting feelings) and also decided that even a scripted post doesn’t work when the librarian’s voice is unpleasant. There were several different men doing book reviews, including book reviews of YA and younger materials—with just unpleasant voices. Do I feel this way just because I’m of the radio generation, when people had mellifluous voices, unless they were trying to be funny?

But I still want to do some podcast book talks. I think they would be fun to do, and there are some books I really want to tell people about—fiction and nonfiction, adult and juvenile.

I don’t know if it was the setting on my player, or if it’s not possible to get images attached to the podcast (as when you play music and sometimes get an album cover), but it would be lovely to link the jacket cover to podcast reviews, if we could, legally.

Podcasts

I’ve wondered about Podcasts for so long!

Obviously the quality varies. I tried one and got a giggler, even though it wasn’t here first. It also provided some tips (inadvertently) for podcasting-- get to the subject fast and stick to it (she was doing an interview, and kept giggling!). Scripting is a good idea. If you don’t script it, listen to it before you publish/upload; at the very least it may help you hear your idiosyncraices that detract from the message, such as “like.”. I tried another on the same topic—she was new at it. Then I tried a third—same topic—and it was almost certainly scripted, but well read/acted! The ‘caster’s way with words made it worth listening to; it was well-written and well read.

I had better luck searching and getting to hear podcasts from Podcastalley than from Yahoo.

Found a great podcast to link to the RSS feed, but don’t think I was successful with attaching to the blog—although I did get it on my RSS feeds with Google. I still haven't got it showing up as an RSS feed per se, but I was able to add it the the blog page-- all the way at the bottom (Purl Diving). Haven't figured out how to move it up the page, or get it into this post.

Thing 23--Discover YouTube

I really enjoy the embedded links to YouTube videos found in American Libraries Online, and other odd emails. I’d never really SEARCHED YouTube before.
Having searched “Star Trek” for the exercise today, I was surprised that the first few that came up were of “questionable” content. For example, “Star Trek Sex Compilation.” Okay, why am I surprised? Naivete, I expect. And the description under the video lets you know what to expect, so you can avoid it. I know from my brother’s comments that there are lots of “star trek sex sites” on the web. So why would You Tube be any different?

OTOH, the video “Star Trek meets Monty Python” was silly fun. But it had some of the same troubles I’ve had with other YouTube videos—stopping and starting. Very irritating. It was sufficiently irritating when I tried to watch “Star Trek vs. Star Wars” that I did finish watching it. BattleStar Galactica vs. Star Wars vs. Star Trek vs. Babylon 5 was even worse—it totally stopped after 9 seconds. Bummer! Is this endemic to Youtube, or does it have something to do with our connection to YouTube?

YouTube in Libraries? Great marketing/training potential. So many of the videos linked to from American Libraries Online have been library training or humorous takes on library clichés.

Thing22 Flickr fun

Sigh. I enjoyed looking at the applications and even tried a couple-- me as a trading card, and a beautiful "Warholized" Melville Dewey. The trading card was not exciting. I'll need to work on that-- but an interesting, fun concept. I can imagine it would be great fun for a program after hours, with multiple pcs. Or for a cool present kids could make for their families, or a fun family activity--.

The "Warholized" Melville Dewey was a keeper. But I was unable to load it successfully, despite many tries.

FLICKR 2: Tagging, community, utility

What you can do with Flickr:
Post photos
Tag photos
Group photos into “folders” (I’m fuzzy on this)
Make photos private or public, or somethwere in-between.
Manipulate photos with applications
Add notes to spots on photos (very cool)
Search the tags!

Not having posted photos, I’m having difficulty understanding how “community” develops on Flickr. I can understand that if I use a particular tag, and discover another person who uses that tag, then our photos will appear when the tag is searched. How this creates community is not apparent to me, unless community is meant very superficially.

OTOH, having this rich resource of photos at the click of a mouse is a cool thing. Do any of you folks remember when we had as part of the reference collection catalogs of portraits or photos that could be ordered? They were limited, of course, and were essentially thumbnails. We’ve also had other picture collections in loose-leaf for those who needed a portrait of, say, Marie Curie. These could be photocopied—letter size portraits, usually. But they were horrible to keep in order, just like the Facts-on-File binders—only worse!

With Flickr, you can probably find a photo on just about any subject (including many of those portraits) and then use it for your nonprofit work. So much easier. But the “all rights reserved” part is confusing. For example, I just searched Marlene Dietrich and found several photos—identical—that were recently uploaded by different people, and all rights were reserved. How is this possible? These individuals must have found the photos elsewhere and put them online, perhaps with some tweaking for clarity (especially for the one for St. Therese). The subjects of these portraits have been deceased for decades.

For the previous “thing” I wrote about searching for library cats on Flickr. Lots of chuckles. The ability to find amusing photos for a pick-me-up, or a semi-homemade greeting card is a cool thing about Flikr that I really appreciate.