Item #22: Wrap up

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

I really appreciate having a much better understanding of many of the tools and applications explored through this training adventure. I will continue to use some more than others, but at least I have a base understanding so when someone mentions an 'rss feed', I'll know to what they refer. I will definitely be using the goodreads.com for reader's advisory type purposes and hope to pull more of my yaab teens into the fold.

• How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals

Well, as mentioned above, I'm no longer in the dark about much of the technology which I've been happily avoiding until now. I'm also more prepared to utilize these application in my work habits, as we migrate to more and more of them; wikis, feeds, videos etc...

• Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I find it very interesting from a sociological point of view that people are reaching out more and more to each other electronically. We expect more immediate gratification and instant recognition for our presence in the world, through blogging, microblogging, IM, etc. Why do my friends in other parts of the country or world need to know that I'm late today? Why do they need to know that I'm doing my laundry or whatever... It's all becoming more "Look at Me, I matter, Look at me!!!!" And sometimes people are looking that you'd rather not.

Also, it's very quickly apparent that as our society becomes more electronic, the people without access to technology will be at a severe disadvantage. Will my daughters be required to watch podcasts, access sites, or participate in online discussions as part of their homework for high school? For college? Both girls at the same time? probably. How will I be able to financially afford all the upgrades and other devices needed to compete? Will they each need a computer/phone/ipod etc... in order to keep up with their educators? How am I going to be able to afford any of this? I pay $35/year (yes, a year) for my slow dial-up connection, and we're lucky to have it at all. If it ever goes up, it will be gone, as I can't afford more. Low-income people will continue to fall more and more behind as technology soars unless we can level the playing field somehow. It doesn't matter how hard they study, if I can't afford to buy the powerpoint program for our computer needed to submit their projects. How will the public school system respond to this? How will society? Technology can bring people together, but it also divides a large group of people out.

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

I think that it was an interesting idea for a training program. However there were parts that I found to be quite frustrating, and were it not for a co-worker helping through parts of it, I wouldn't have been able to figure out certain things at all. As an auditory learner, I knew that reading all the tutorials/articles would be almost as bad as reading a manual, and much of it was. The videos were frustrating to watch as they were so dis-jointed and slow, but the information from them was useful. I think that requiring people to play with everything is very important, but some of it could possibly have been done in classroom setting in addition to the independent part.

Thank you for designing the program. I know that quite a lot of time and effort went in to deciding the applications to highlight, and I appreciate the opportunity to know more about them all.

Miss Holly is signing out.

Item #21: Alternative Blogging

I think that people must have a lot of time on their hands to be able to use the twitter or tumblr sites. I certainly don't have time to stop and update a website with every little thing that I'm doing throughout the day; nor do I think that anyone would really care. However, there could be applications for this kind of updating within a branch, department or even throughout the library system. We would always know where people were, or where they are going if we were trying to find someone, as long as everyone remembered to take the time to update. We could also use it to instantly open up reference question assistance to other staff onsite or offsite, but only if someone were monitoring it.

Item 21: Video Sharing

I have found watching videos online to be one of the most frustrating experiences ever. They take forever to open, and then you can only watch a few seconds at a time, wait 20-30 seconds, watch 2 more seconds of the video then wait again. It takes 15 minutes to watch a 2 minute video. And this is using the 'high-speed' connection here at work. I have very little patience for this ridiculous situation. Until this issue is resolved, I find online videos to be mostly useless... and this includes the majority of the videos to which I've been directed by this whole 2.0 training process.

However, I do know that uTube is referenced to me by teens daily, and when I had them watching the video for our RobotDance at our YAAB meeting, they played around on uTube for quite some time sharing their favorite finds with each other. It quickly got rather inappropriate, and had to be redirected.

Item 20: Podcasts

I surfed around in all of the podcasting directories, and discovered that for the most part, I was blocked from seeing anything without downloading some kind of support software. Since I'm not supposed to be downloading anything to this shared work computer, I didn't get very far.

However, I can see that there are several legitimate kinds of offerings, as well as, shall I say, 'other' kinds of visual eye-candy out there. I know that it's the wave of the future for educators, so it's been good to know more about them. I didn't know that these directories existed. Someday I'll download iTunes onto my home computer (with the dialup connection it'll take about 20 hours... bleh.)

The interesting thing is that anyone can produce anything, and load it up onto these sites. I only have a superficial overview, but it seems like possibly no one is keeping track of the content, quality or anything, really. Sometimes, this is good... sometimes, not so very.

Item 19: Audio/Music

I found the music networking sites to be very interesting; similiar to goodreads.com but for music. The interesting part is that you seem to be able to purchase music there directly for downloads to your computer.

I looked at the other audio archiving sites, and I think they are very ambitious. I loved the sound effects site! It was rather amusing. I know that ebooks are becoming more popular, but I still don't think that the standard book format is going to go away soon; at least not in next 50 years. You just can't snuggle up with a 'good screen'.

I love the idea of language learning online however. Languages can be very tricky to learn on your own, and Mango seems to be a cool way for someone with a computer to be able to brush up their skills or learn at your own speed.

Item #18: Google Docs

I posted from Google Docs to the blog, but now I can't access it through Blogger to edit, so I'm not sure that it's the best way to handle blogging, but otherwise I really like the Google Docs application.

I've been playing around with the Google Docs application today, and I think it's pretty nifty.

I like that it feels very similiar to MS Word so that I don't need to flutz around in it to figure out what I'm trying to do. I also like it because I can have access to projects from home or work without having to email them to myself at my various accounts. This is pretty cool.

I like that I can keep things private or share with a select few, or more should I choose as well.

Item #17: Cool Stuff

I've been playing an awful lot lately on Goodreads, and after my presentation and demonstration of the site to my YAAB group last night, I'm gathering friends. YAY!

I signed up for Scrabulous, even though I've never been particularly good at the game. I have friends on Facebook who are using it, and it might be fun to be humiliated from time to time. heh.
I found the sign-up agreement of basically playing fair, to be rather interesting.

The typing game was really funny! I thought that maybe it would be useful for my daughter's to use in practicing their skills, but the graphics are far too small for my visually impaired daughter, and I thing the ADD daughter would get too frustrated.

Item #16: Wikis

I've been familiar with Wikipedia for years now, and while I find it interesting, and have been surprised at the variety of topics covered, I've always been somewhat skeptical about relying on the accuracy of the information. For instance, I've tried to steer my children away from using it for reports and such. I simply don't trust it over published, and controled, sources of information.

Since we've started using the YA Wiki for programming, I've had some things added on there, but haven't had the time to do to much there myself. I hope to use it more regularly in the future when planning new projects and events. Also, I'd like to add some of the booktalks I've written for sharing with others. I now understand that there is a new Children's services Wiki which will serve the same purpose as the YA Wiki, but obviously focusing on the younger kids.

I found the wikibooks to be somewhat fascinating. Textbooks are expensive, largely reprinted sources with relevant revisions. I discovered that I could teach myself French entirely through this site, should I chose to. It is the ultimate self-learning tool!...if you trust it.

Item #15: Goodreads

I just joined the Goodreads site, and I like it much better than the applications that I was trying to delevop on Facebook! Now, I just need to recreate everything I've already gathered there. Visual bookshelf does seem to be better about finding random books, but I really like navigating Goodreads much better. I really like how you can customize your shelves, which will make organizing everything so much easier, and the whole thing will be more relevant. Once I get it set up, I'll be inviting all my YAAB teens, and probably by adult bookgroup patrons as well.

Something more to play with! Hooray!

Item #14: Technorati

I found this website rather difficult to use. The freeform tagging seemed to link posts to topics that were not really related. I became quite frustrated trying to navigate around the 'perculator' and 'popular' options.

Though I did find it interesting that blogging has become this powerful and the world is getting smaller every second. This could be an interesting way to find other people with similar interests and concerns...or to manipulate them.

Item #13: del.icio.us

I played around a bit with the tags for storytimes, fingerplays, and ice breakers and several of my favorite resources popped right up! Since we're always using shared computers here, bookmarking has been somewhat tricky, but I can see the advantages of using this kind of an application to centralize it all. Plus find new sites too!

I like how the related tags popped up too, so that I could just move into those quickly.

Item 12: Play!

Lately I've been playing with my facebook account on my own time. I've added the Visual Bookshelf and iRead applications, and am fleshing them out. I'm hoping to utilize this with the YAAB teens, before I go too much further adding reviews and such, I need to chat with them to see how useful they will find it. If the enthusiam is low, then it's not worth going too much
further with it.

However 4 of my college friends and 2 ex-YAAB people have found me! How fun!

I haven't had any time or inclination to check out the RSS feeds that I added. And I'm not sure that I'll ever utilize the meebo program either. IM just isn't something I'll probably ever have time for, either professionally or personally.

I took a look at each of the image generating links, and they seem to be pretty cool for customizing your blog, websites or just adding for fun into emails. You can make just about anything nowadays... ;)

Social Networking Item 10

I think that social networking is something with which we would be silly not to become involved. It is definitely here to stay! I'm very glad that YAAB has its own myspace page, and that we are reaching out to young people in their 'own backyard'. Using the computer to social network is immediate and fast. It's amazing how quickly, and how far, your contacts grow as you connect with friends of friends of friends.

However, there are some disadvantages too. When I approached my YAAB group about upgrading our group's website to a myspace account, they chose not to, as they would not be able to access the myspace info through their school computers due to filtering etc. However, I'm still waiting on the teen to volunteered to maintain the site to bring it up to date. We may need to reassign.

Meebo Me: item 9

With a little help from my friends, I was able to get the meebo widget onto my blog sidebar. It was not very obvious.

I've only had one personal experience with IM and it was so overwhelming, that I don't ever really want to do it again. Bing Bing Bing... It was impossible to keep up with the speeds while trying to decipher the language! Know wonder our teens can't communicate in complete sentences anymore...not to mention accurate spelling... but I digress.

However, it was much more effective than trading emails ; much more similar to a phone conversation. So I absolutely understand appeal. The wonder of Meebo is that it collects all the various providers through one simple gateway, of sorts. Then you don't need to have an ID for each of the different ones to be able to communicate with everyone, or wonder who's currently on where.

As for library applications, it would be very useful for the patrons to have automatic electronic access to us for reference needs, but it would require that a *very* skilled someone was monitoring it at all times. This person would need to be able to handle multiple conversation threads at one time, and they would need to be able to keep up with the constant 'binging', without going nuts.

As an inter-staff communication tool, I'm not sure if it could be used on shared computers. I suppose the Meebo would only allow one person to access the program at once. But for those with a dedicated computer, it would be a very quick way of connecting across the system.

RSS Feeds : Item 8

I've spent about an hour searching through Bloglines and the other search tools adding feeds to my account, and I've found that the Bloglines Beta seems to be the easiest way to go for browsing a wide selection of topics. I've also had some success with adding feeds directly from some blogs and websites. It's like creating a huge friends list from all over the web.

I like how all the posts for a related feed come together in one scroll. It makes it much easier to get compiled information about a specific topic and see it all in a quick view. Now if I only had the time to spend reading any of the articles! heh.

As a programmer, I can see how rss feeds could be useful for sharing information between branches for book discussion groups, YAABs, early learning events, etc.

RSS Feed Me

RSS Feeds... Wow!

I had no idea that this option was available, but I tend to be rather clueless about technology. I can see how they would be extremely useful for people who are constantly on the web for current events and such. I'm not typically one of those people, but I can see the application. It seems to make sense to streamline; to have all the current postings come to you, rather than you constantly searching in vain for newly added ones.

Flickr applications: item 6

I've looked through all the different applications linked, and the most intriguing one to me was the Retrievr. I had quite a bit of fun drawing and seeing what would come back, and trying to figure out why.

Just using 'spots' around the page got me a photo of Epcot, and using different color swirls got a photo of a duck that I could actually see in my drawing! Pretty wild!

Flickr photo: Item 5

I don't think that I'm doing this right, and I'm finding it very frustrating. I've been able to navigate around Flickr, and I've found the image about which I want to write, but it doesn't seem to be uploading to this blogger post appropriately. bleh. As an auditory learner, I can see that trying to learn all these new social software programs in this format is going to be quite challenging for me.

Anyways... Here's the url:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14075878@N08/2287101596/

I like this image of the melting icicles because it reminds me of New England, and I love the way that it juxtaposes the meltaway with the frozen in one small shot. All things in nature are always in a state of change, and it would be good for us to remember that. Plus, I've always been attracted to good b/w photography. I have a collection!

Successful Life-long learning

Welcome to my 1st Blogger entry!

This blog has been created to track my progress through an exposure to the possibilities of social networking and more. I'm looking forward to beginning this new tutorial on learning 2.0. I'm anticipating a broader understanding about "what's out there" and quite a few surprises!

Of the 7 1/2 Habits of Succesful learning, I expect to be most at ease with #7 1/2: Play! This is what I do best... I'm a hands-on learner, and avoid manuals as much as possible.

The habit which will be the least automatic will be setting specific goals. I tend to want to overreach myself, and have a difficult time with limiting. I have very high expectations of myself, and this can cause time-constraints as well.