Thing 23: Is this really the end? Or just the beginning ...

Wow! This is it! Drumroll please! Thing 23. When I started this learning journey, I had no idea that I would learn so many interesting and challenging things. If you had asked me a year ago, if I would have my very own blog, well, I would have laughed and said "Who me?". I had a lot fun creating my blog. My favorite discoveries or exercises were Thing 11: LibraryThing, Thing 10:Image Generators, Thing 5: Flickr, Thing 6: More Flickr, Thing 20: You too can Youtube and Thing 18: Web-based Apps. I have enjoyed the discoveries and exercises (some more than others - te! he!) of Learning 2.0 and I would be a willing participant in future discovery programs. Thank you!

Thing 22: Audiobooks (or "The end is near")

Hurray! The end is near! Wow! Only one more discovery exercise to go. Creating a NetLibrary account was easy. Whew! I was amazed that there are 2,046 eAudiobooks in the LCPL eContent collection. I chose the browse by subject search. There are a lot of titles that I thought I might want to download once I have my mp3 player. Some of those titles that I am considering are language studies and romance eAudiobooks.

Thing 21: Podcasts, Smodcasts!

For this discovery exercise we were asked to take a look at one or two of the podcast directories listed and see if we can find a podcast that interests us. I picked Yahoo podcasts and selected NPR book review podcasts to add as a RSS feed to my Bloglines account. I picked NPR book reviews because I don't get a chance to listen to NPR as much as I would like to. Now I have another way to stay up to date with some of the latest news from NPR.

Thing 20: You too can YouTube

What I liked about YouTube is that it gives people a chance to have their 15 minutes of fame. It gives musicians and singers a chance to be heard and possibly be discovered by a record company. What I don't like about YouTube is that anything can be posted. There's videos posted of people fighting and doing all sorts of other things that I won't mention. You get the good, bad and the ugly. Over all I think YouTube is a good thing. Can I see any features or components of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites? Well, patrons could click on a link to see what a storytime program, summer reading program and adult programs are like. I picked this funny and cute video because of the beautiful tiger cubs and the cute monkey. Adorable and smart!

Love the sport and the music!

Thing 19: Discovering Web 2.0 tools

I selected Wetpaint. What I liked about Wetpaint was that it has combined the finest elements of blogs, social networking and wikis. While exploring Wetpaint, I discovered a wiki by Nancy Pearl. It was very user friendly. It offers a lot of great info that I found useful. Could I see any applications for its use in a library setting? Patrons could create a wiki of their favorite books, cds and dvds. We are often asked if we keep a record of all of the items that they've ever checked out. This could be a good way for them to keep track of what they've read, listen to or watched.

Thing 18: Web-based Apps: There not just for desktops

For this discovery exercise, we were asked to take a look at Zoho Writer, create a document and then document your discoveries in your blog. At first I didn't know which Office Suite or Productivity Tools to choose. Finally I picked show zoho. After I decided what I wanted to do in show zoho, I had fun with it. One problem I encountered when I added a text box, was that I couldn't backspace or highlight a letter or word to delete it. I had to delete the whole text box and start over again. Here's what I created!

Thing 17: Playing around with PBWiki

I accessed the PLCMC Learning 2.0 wiki and create a login account for myself. To mark my adventure, I added my blog to the Favorite Blog page. I decided to give the optional exercise a try. So, I added a few favorites to several pages. It was interesting to see what other bloggers had added too.

Thing 16: So what’s in a wiki?

Wiki is an excellent way to share ideas and to collect topics all in one place.
The one of interesting things that I discovered was Bookswim. It's a Netflix type of book rental system. That might be fun to try.

Thing 15: On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0 ...

I feel that Into the new world of librarianship describes LCPL best because we have those traits. LCPL is striving to breakdown barriers and allow users access wherever they are: home, work, commuting, school, or at the library, bases all planning and proposals for services, materials and outreach on user needs and wants, participating in other thriving communities build connections online where their users live, doesn't buy technology for the sake of technology, “Techno-worship” does not exist here, recognizes how quickly the world and library users change with advancing technology and recognizes how quickly the world and library users change with advancing technology.

Thing 14: Getting not-so-technical with Technorati

In Technorati I did a keyword search for Learning 2.0 in Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. The results for blog posts were far greater than the results for tags. The cutest thing that I found while exploring Technorati was Nora, the piano playing cat. She is so adorable.

Thing 13: Tagging, folksomonies & social bookmarking in Del.icio.us

I viewed the 12 minute Del.icio.u.s tutorial and found the other two discovery resources helpful too. For this discovery exercise, we were asked to take a look at Del.icio.us and learn about this popular bookmarking tool. I took a look around Del.icio.us using the L2LCPL account. I clicked on the bookmarks and saw the different tags and comments. Can I see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere? I would say the answer is yes to both questions. I decided to try the optional exercise. So, I created a Del.icio.u.s account because I wanted to bookmark a few bookmarks that I saw when I was using the L2LCPL account.

Thing 12: Roll your own search engine

I created an account and explored Rollyo. It's a pretty neat search tool. I took a look at the other search rolls like Quick Quotes and I typed in a few quotes. It found every single quote that I'd entered. Next up - creating a search roll. At first I drew a blank, as to what subject I would create a search roll about. So, I clicked on the "need a suggestion" link and that helped me to think of a subject. I picked women's health. Since I had come this far in this discovery exercise, I decided to do the optional exercise too. Tada! Below is my search roll and I named my search engine "To Your Health".

Select...To Your HealthSearch The Web

Thing 11: A thing about LibraryThing

The LibraryThing is a great online tool for booklovers. I had fun adding books to my catalog. You can edit the covers, change the view of your catalog and so much more. It was an easy and fun discovery exercise to do.

Thing 10: Play around with Image Generators

Out of the three image generators, I had the most fun with Letter James. There were so many good images to choose. Well, here are my four.

Thing 9: Finding Feeds

The method that I found the easiest to use to find feeds was the keyword search. The Search tool that I thought was the easiest to use was Topix.net. It gives you an interactive graph and you can click on the blue bars to narrow your search. Also, it gave me the local news on the home page. I found a few usual feeds when I was searching. I'm a big fan of Caesar Milan the "Dog Whisperer." I was surprised to learn that there is a cat, lizard, squirrel and worm whisperer too.

Thing 8: Make life "really simple" with RSS & a newsreader

What I liked about RSS and newsreaders is that it brings the news to me. It's news that I have selected to receive. What a time saver! It eliminates mail clutter. This is a very good thing! The tutorials were very helpful. Yippee! I created a free Blogline account, subscribed to (or should I say too) many newsfeeds, RSS and blogs.

Thing 7: Blog About Technology

Apple has raised the bar again. The company has invented the iphone. What will they think of next? The iPhone is a combination touchscreen iPod-cellular telephone-Internet browser. It can automatically synch the user's media – movies, music, photos through iTunes. It is less than a 1/2" thin and runs the Macintosh computer operating system. The iphone cost about $499 - $599, but it's not available until June. It has a lot of great features in one small device, but I'm not going to spend $500 for the iphone. I'll just stick with my camera phone for now.

I posted a few comments to several blogs.

Thing 6: More Flickr Fun

Yes, more Flickr fun!

At first I thought that I would create a Trading card. It look like fun. When I click on FD Toys, I decided to select the Captioner instead. You can add cute comic book style captions to your photos. I uploaded a photo that I took myself and added the captions. Here it is!

Thing 5: Discover Flickr

The Future Is Always Beginning Now

The future is always beginning now
Originally uploaded by IrenaS.

"The future is called "perhaps," which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the only important thing is not to allow that to scare you."
Tennessee Williams

Words to live by.

I went to Flickr and click on a few tags that peaked my interests. I found this beautiful photo and the inspirational quote by Tennessee Williams above that someone else had previously uploaded. I was able to skip one of the steps because I already have a Yahoo email account. Yes, I Yahooooooo! Next step was to send the photo to my blog. After several attempts I finally was successful. I was excited to see the photo posted in my blog. Hey ya! Now that the discovery exercise is behind me, I'll take a look at the other links listed to learn more about Flickr. Amazing!