Week 9, Exercise 23

Well what do you know. I actually made it to the end of the Learner 2.0 program. I was a little disgruntled that it took so much time, particularly since I had to do it on my own time, but it was worth the effort.

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

A: My favorite exercises were learning how to blog, discovering Flickr and image generators, RSS feeds, the Libary Thing and podcasts. I yhink the home search tools that I explored in Exercise 11 will come in handy in the not too distant future.

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

A: I found a number of things I want to go back to and spend more time with. I've mentioned these in previous blog entries. Previously, I would use the Internet chiefly to find the answer to a question. Now I will look at it more as an extension of the library; i.e., a place were I can browse and "check out" stuff that interests me.

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

A: Don't know that it was unexpected, but I certainly feel more in tune with what my kids have been using for a long time. What's amazing is that they learned it all on their own without a course like this!

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

A: Can't really think of anything, though I don't think the podcasts were necessary.

And last but not least…

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?

A: Depends on what it was.

Thanks for the journey :-)

Week 9, Exercise 22

My exploration of ebooks was not quite as satisfying as the podcasts. Most of the items answering to my search interests turned out to be for SJSU only. The Gutenberg titles looked pretty dry, for the most part. What I anticipate finding most useful will be the Pimsleur language titles. I've always enjoyed the challenge of learning languages. It doesn't stay with you long if you have no opportunity to practice it, but while you're trying it out, it's still fun. Was going to download and revisit French today, but since I don't have a cable hook-up or dial-up and no time estimates were provided for DSL, I decided to leave it for another day. Safari Tech also looks promising. When I have the time, I'll download "Graphic Design Portfolio-Builder: Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator Projects" for starters.

Week 9, Exercise 21

Wow, this is cool, an absolute goldmine of manageable chunks of information delivered aurally. Like many of the resources introduced, there's more out there than one can cover in 20 minutes. The risk lies in wandering around out there for hours, possibly missing activities that are fundamentally more important. Nevertheless, I'm glad to have explored this resource as I found many things of personal interest (see list below that I'll be returning to). For one thing, it looks like a great place to find material with which to practice one's foreign language comprehension skills. "Learn Hindi from Bollywood Movies" looked like it could be fun. I learned how to use my French press and make Irish coffee by watching "Art of the Drink: St. Patrick's Day Irish Coffee." Here are some interesting findings. Podcast Alley's "Top 10" included two Harry Potter themed podcasts. The most popular tags today, as posted by Yahoo Podcasts, were comedy, music, news, podcast and technology. Both Podcast Alley and Yahoo Podcasts did a better job of locating library-related podcasts. I added "Libraries Across Cultures" to my Blogline feeds. "The program aims to help librarians serving multilingual, multicultural populations understand how to more successfully reach new people." Another one that YA librarians might find useful is "Game On = Games in Libraries," which "aims to keep librarians up-to-date on gaiming."

Here are my personal favorites from today's exploration:
* Unabellavista: How to Tour Italy
* Creative Photoshop with John Reuter
* NPR All Songs Considered

Week 9, Exercise 20

A coworker suggested today that I look up "The Secret" on YouTube. I found that there were many entries for it. Here's one that offers an appealing way to remember the ideas.



There is quite an amazing range of material presented. One video I encountered shared a teenager's angst at being humiliated on a TV show. I have to wonder at the wisdom of baring one's soul in this manner for some of the responses were so unkind. I can't help but wonder if he didn't feel worse in the end.

Potential library uses for videos: storytelling, tutorials

Site components that could transfer: what's new at..., popular [books] for mobile devices

Week 8, Exercise 19

Creating a Library Thing personal catalog was drop dead easy. Here's the link to my catalog, though I have to say it looks like a generic address: http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php.

Here are my entries:
Graphic Design Solutions, Third Edition by Robin Landa (3 other members)

Creative Bead Weaving: A Contemporary Guide To Classic Off-Loom Stitches by Carol Wells (41 other members)

The Watercolor Landscape Techniques of 23 International Artists by International Artists (1 other members)

Kaffe Fassett's Kaleidoscope of Quilts (Patchwork and Quilting) by Kaffe Fassett (5 other members)

Handpaint Country: A Knitter's Journey by Cheryl Potter (29 other members)

Beading and knitting appear to be the most popular shared interests. Surprised not to see more owners of the watercolor book. Now here is what I'd really like to see. A similar service that stores books you "want" to read, but don't own. That way I can avoid checking out books until I actually have time to read them (avoiding those nasty fines for inevitably forgetting to renew something on time). I could also ditch the raggedy notebook in which I've recorded all the books I want to read "when I have time." I supposed I could create a shadow account for that purpose. Who but me would know (or care) that I don't own the books listed?

Week 8, Exercise 18

Google Docs does a better job of introducing the benefits and features of its service. My actual trial, as required, was conducted using Zoho Writer. After a little bit of a rocky start, I figured out how it works and everything worked pretty smoothly. I created a basic table template called "Community Contacts." I used that template to create a brief document (based on memory, since I was trying this at home) called "School & Education Contacts." I emailed and esported the document successfully. The drawback I encountered with Zoho Writer is its limited table options. I couldn't see how to have a table larger than 6 columns by 6 rows. Hopefully Google Docs would be more sophisticated.

What I can see as key advantages, over traditional ways of sharing documents, is that everyone working on a document is always accessing the most current version and multiple people can access the file at the same time. Nothing slows things down like getting a response in email that is responding to a document version that is already passe. Among its other benefits, I can see that this tool would be an easy way to create an aggregated contact list of any type (e.g., Friends, community partners, media, school, etc.)

Week 7, Exercise 17

I don't think you could find an easier tool to use. How it could be used at work? Obvious things that come to mind are:
* Post recommendations
* Organizing project resources
* Collecting best practices on any task assignment area; e.g. community outreach
It's 7:30pm on Sunday evening and my son is complaining "When are you gonna be done so I can use the computer?" so I guess I'll leave it at that.

Week 7, Exercise 16

Today's exploration revolved around wikis. SJCPL's Subject Guides opening page didn't look much different that our own Wired Subject Guides. But if you click on a subject, the next page seems to be a collection of information on the subject pulled together from different soures. I picked up several additions to my future reading list from the Book Lovers Wiki. I even put an audio book on request, based on the reviewer's comment about how the reader personalized the character's voices. That makes listening to a recorded novel so much more interesting. [Note to SJPL media selectors; try to get more audio books recorded by Sam Dastor and David Suchet; they do a great job of "acting" the characters they read.] Library Success: a Best Practices Wiki looks like a great resource. I'll bookmark it when I get to work tomorrow. As to how the library might utilize a wiki - I think the concept of developing an online equivalent of the library as gathering place is a good one. For one thing, we could expand the space available for posting public notices about community events. The idea of enabling people to annotate online catalog entries also sounds like a good one. It's very frustrating when an entry does not have a summary to enable you to judge the books value. It would also be immensely valuable as a place where workgroups could carry on a discussion and share documents without clogging email. Anything to relieve the overwhelming glut of email would be welcome. Don't know that I could every trust a wiki as the source of authoritative information, though. The idea that anybody, no matter their level of expertise on a subject, can post information as fact just doesn't sit right. That about sums up my exploration of wikis. Yahoo! I'll get to hit the sack before 1 a.m. for a change!

Week 6, Exercise 15

Dispensing with physical reference collections if electronic alternatives exist makes a lot of sense. Print reference is often out-of-date before it hits the floor. But don't take away physical books that are primarily for leisure use; i.e., novels or coffee table books. After spending 99% of my working day staring at a computer and encurring the resulting eye fatigue, the last thing I want to do is go home and attempt to read the latest mystery novel from a PDA with bleary eyes. Extend the number of copies and expand access through electronic alternatives, but don't get rid of print altogether.

I like the self-empowerment that 2.0 has enabled. Considering myself reasonably intelligent, I much prefer to find and evaluate information under my own steam, much as I prefer to shop without a hovering sales clerk asking if I'm finding what I need. Nothing irritates me more; unless of course, there's no one around to ask when I DO want assistance. But generally speaking, if I want help I'll ask for it; until then, leave me alone.

From a public relations perspective, it makes a lot of sense to offer customers ways to interact and take ownership of their libraries. Offer staff-selected reader's advisory lists to those who want them. But many of us are just as interested in what our peers find interesting, so by all means, offer a forum for users to share their reviews of books.

Not sure I get the point of Library 3.0 --- virtual libraries with avatars. On the face of it, it seems somewhat frivolous, seemingly catering to people who can't deal with the impersonality of web-based customer service and need a visual substitute for their neighborhood librarian; turning information seeking into a video game created on the fly. But I'll admit, my personal experience of it is limited so I'm willing to explore it further.

What is Library 2.0 to me? It's a new way of conceptualizing library service, spurred by new technologies; a replacement of the library storehouse model, governed by an intimidating expert with a living, breathing institution that relies as much on the user to define what it is and should be as it does on its staff.

Week 6, Exercise 14

Taking a closer look at Technorati today.

Item 1 - Searching for "Learner 2.0"
"in blog posts" brings up the reference in the body copy of blog posts
"in tags" brings up blog posts, videos and photos
"in blog directory" brings up blogs that use the term in the title

I would expect the blog directory results to be much more focused on the subject than those that just referenced it in blog posts.

Item 2 - Anything interesting or surprising...
Broad spectrum of content from trivial to thought-provoking. Here's a snapshot of what was popular today.

Top Tags This Hour:
Ann Coulter Australia Birthday cat Comedy Crazy Dance Dog Eclipse Entrepreneurship fashion girls HDTV House iPod Live Lyrics Money Paris Podcasting random-thoughts senza-categoria Singapore sports-living-travel-library Tecnologia VISTA Windows Vista wordpress world & business youtube

Top 100 Tags from A to Z:
(all languages)
Allgemein Apple Art Art and Photography Articles Automotive Blog Blogging Blogs book books Business Computers and Internet Culture Current Affairs daily days Design Diary dreams and the supernatural empty Entertainment Entretenimento Entretenimiento events Family fashion, style, shopping Film Food Friends Fun Funny Games goals, plans, hopes Google Health and wellness hobbies Humor Internet jobs, work, careers Journal Life Links Linux Love Música Marketing Media Misc miscellaneous MobLog Movie Movies movies, tv, celebrities Music Musique My Life Myspace News News and politics Noticias parties and nightlife Pasatiempos Personal Pets and Animals photo Photography Photos Podcast Poetry Politics Quiz random Religion Religion and Philosophy Reviews RO Romance and Relationships School school, college, greek Science software Sport Sports Survey Tech technology thoughts TOPICS Travel travel and places TV Video Videos Web Weblog Weblogs Work Writing Writing and poetry

The "Top Blogs" list had the Huffington Post at the bottom, followed by Techcrunch. I would have put them at the top - didn't really see the value of the others; maybe I'm not as interested in securing the latest gadget. Beaders do not seem to be heavy bloggers - a search for "beading" in the blog directory brought up quite a number who hadn't posted anything in the past month; still more who hadn't posted anyting in hundreds of days.

I didn't get to compare "Discover" to "Popular" because the latter view seemed to be all that was available.

Plusses and minusses of tags:
PLUS:
Assign a term that is meaningful to you
Quickly find material that has been assigned that topic

MINUS:
Doesn't always bring up what you associate with the word

Came across an interesting article on "Social Networking's Next Phase"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/technology/03social.html

Week 6, Exercise 13

I found the SJLearning del.icio.us site a bit overwhelming. Found that I understood the concept a better when I did my own search on a topic that interested me personally, which is marketing jewelry. Can certainly see the benefit of using compound tags to drill down specifically to what you want. "How to" gives you how to do everything in the universe, but "How to" + marketing + jewelry is far more productive. Clicking on tags another user assigned to the article is more likely to bring up other useful links than clicking on the other user. Found an online beading magazine that I bookmarked and I'll definitely be going back to explore more of the sites brought up by others tags for that site. Just for the heck of it, I googled the same string of words. The results were less useful overall, so I can definitely see the benefit of piggybacking on the sifting through the unnecessary or useless sites that someone else has already done. Seems only fair to share in turn.