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... ;)