#23--a new beginning

Here we are, at last! I'm so excited to be on the 23rd discovery! It's been a grand adventure. I will say that I learned so much more than I thought I would. I have always considered myself somewhat savvy (and I say that in the loosest form possible) in the computer world, but so much of what Learning 2.0 offered was new to me! It was great to see what is out there to continue to educate myself and share with others. I would definitely be willing to take part in another discovery program, and this time I would be a bit more prepared by knowing how much work it actually takes!

When we took a look at the 7 1/2 habits, I had mentioned that confidence was probably my weakest one. I'm not sure that I've conquered that one (it could take a lifetime!) but I'm so much more confident at these few things, 23 to be exact. As I continue to learn information, my confidence grows.

I think one of the discoveries that I will continue to use is Flickr, which I truly enjoyed (once I got the hang of it). I can share pictures with friends and family just by sending them to the Flickr website. I can also organize them by putting tags on them. We're even thinking of opening an account in our dept (SOR's children's dept) to keep all of the pictures we take here. I will also continue to use YouTube, which is mainly just fun!

Thanks to everyone who gave us this opportunity to expand our minds!

#22-Audiobooks

Well! I think I've "discovered" a great new learning tool! Because I have a bit of a commute to and from work, I often listen to books on tape and books on CD. My personal goal for the next 3 years is to read all of the Newbery honor and award winners. Since I work in the children's dept. I thought this was a worthy goal. I've already listened to many of them in the past few months by checking them out from PLCMC. Now, I can download them onto my mp3 player! I'm so excited! I found the process of creating an account on NetLibrary and downloading the books very simple. This is one of the discovery exercises that I will continue to use long after Learning 2.0 is over. I think of all the Books on CD that I've listened to, my favorite is A Corner of the Universe by Ann M. Martin, read by Judith Ivey. I was a bit sad to see that it is not available in NetLibrary, so if you get a chance, you might want to check it out. Judith Ivey is amazing! I was able to find many other novels that I have been looking forward to reading, and some favorites that I would love to have at my fingertips! I'll be downloading them soon!

#21-Podcasts

OPAL Podcast

This seems like it would be a very useful podcast for libraries. I found different podcasts for children's books (since I work in the children's dept. this was helpful for me), teens, and adults. I even found one podcast with childrens' gift ideas on this site. It seems like a great website, so I added a link. Itunes is probably one of my favorite sites. I get mostly music from that site, but I've loaded a few of the podcasts as well! Podcasts are definitely here to stay. They are and can be a great learning tool!

#20-YouTube

I had discovered YouTube prior to this exercise, but I was able to do more searching than I had in the past. At the moment, I'm a little frustrated because the computer I'm using won't let me add my Blog to my list under my YouTube username. I think it's because I'm one of the precious and select few who have blogger in beta. I may have to wait to actually get this posted. But, back to YouTube. There are a lot of positive things to say about this site. Almost anything you wanted to see, you can search, and you'll most likely find it. Because of that, I think there's a lot of junk on this site. Helene did warn us of this, but there does seem to be a lot of stuff to sort through before finding anything worth watching. If you're looking for specific videos (such as the Lost Season 3 trailer) it's a great site! I will post that video on here as soon as I can get this to work...

#19-Web 2.0 Tools

For my discovery, I chose to look at last.fm which won first place for the music category. I love music, so I thought this would be a good one for me to explore. It has a lot of great features. It was extremely easy to navigate. There were many different categories to choose from and many different ways to actually look up music, by artist, song, word, label, etc. I found a couple of more obscure artists that I like aren't streamlined, so I wouldn't be able to actually listen to their music, but it seems that they're continually updating. It also has a feature where you can streamline music yourself when you become a member. You can buy songs or whole CDs if you like. You can also trade CDs with other members for as little as $1. You can create playlists that suit your tastes. You can even look up artists you like, they give you categories that you can choose from, and they'll add artists that are similar to the artists you already like! You should be able to log on to last.fm anywhere there is internet connection which is nice because then the music you like is right at your fingertips, literally. I really enjoyed this exploration and will continue to use it. I think this would be very useful in the library setting for people who want to find music. Whether you just like music, you're teaching music, or you want to learn more about it, this could be an exciting find. I know I could explore this site for hours (as it was, I had to limit my time to just one hour) and probably will end up doing that before long!

#18-Writely

Wow! This is such a great tool! I've chosen to look at the Google word processor, Writely. I checked out Zoho, but wasn't very impressed with it. Writely was a lot easier to navigate and gave me some instructions to start out with. I also just happen to love Google. I have an email account with them and do almost all of my searching through Google. Even my blog turned out to be the beta form in Google!

I haven't even been out of college for a long period of time, but this would've been such a great thing to have then! I could have gone over to a friend's house, home for the weekend or even just from the dorm to the library and worked on papers without taking a disk with me. This is an excellent find. I'll have to remember it for grad school! I love that it keeps track of anything you put on here and as long as you have internet access, you can look at the documents or work on them. I haven't tried sending it to my email, but that's a nice option, too. I'm also writing this in Writely now, but I can post it to my blog...how great! I think I may use this the most out of the 18 things I've looked at so far.

I tried it out, Linda, and I was able to post the image. Check with me and we'll work on yours.

Ellie

Ellie
Originally uploaded by elittl304.

This is my dog, Ellie, who now lives with my parents in Mocksville, NC. I'm sharing this picture on my blog for two reasons. I really love this picture of little Ellie, and I want to play around with it in my blog to help out my friend, Linda. So, here we go!

#17-PBwiki

I thought this was very easy and fun to look through. I enjoyed reading people's comments on their favorites and, of course, I had to look through and see who I know on the Favorite Blogs page. I enjoyed being able to write what my favorite things are and letting other people know about it, too!

#16-wikis

The book-lovers wiki was really easy to navigate and useful because you can add your own reviews. This would be an excellent source for for the library because patrons could read different reviews about books that we have. I don't necessarily like wikipedia because of the fact that anyone CAN change the information. I work in the children's department and children don't necessarily know that the internet is not always a reliable source. Because of that they tend to get information that isn't credible. I think widipedia could have this kind of reputation. The Library Success wiki is a great way to share ideas and encourage other members of our profession. I definitely think some things work better as wikis than others, but overall they're a great source!

#15-Library 2.0

To be honest, I've not even been an employee of the library for even six months yet. I was not an avid library-user before now and I am relatively young. I don't know a lot about how libraries were in the past, but I've seen a lot of great things happen in just the short time I've been here. I've learned a lot through our Learning 2.0 experience, personally, and have already recommended blogging to a patron. I think libraries definitely need to focus on the future and how we can continually accommodate our patrons. Having patrons learn and do things on their own not only makes them self-sufficient, but life-long learners, as well. I think it's our job to always keep people learning and experiencing new things. We're not just starting the journey, we're continuing on one that started a long, long time ago.

#14-Technorati

There were definitely different results of a keyword search for Learning 2.0 in blog posts, tags, and the blog directory. I got different people each time, which was actually helpful. I did see one of my co-worker, Lesley's, posts and it was about technorati. I explored the different options, popular blog, searches and tags. I have to put a link to Weird Al's White and Nerdy because it is so funny. It's a video, if you're interested. There were so many things to explore that I actually had to stop myself from searching!

#13-Del.icio.us

This was such an exciting discovery! It allows you to look at some of your favorite websites whenever and WHEREVER you want. The nice thing is that it's just like your bookmarks on your computer, but you can take it anywhere. Sometimes I know I've forgotten what certain websites are simply because they're in my bookmarks and I don't have to remember the site (sort of like not even knowing your wife's cell phone number cuz it's in your cell phone and you don't have to remember it...thanks, David) so this is a lifesaver!

#12-Rollyo

I made my own search engine!! Woo hoo! It's pretty neat to be able to search only the sites that you like and trust. It helps to really narrow down the search and not have to look through so many unwanted sites. I'm not sure how often I'll actually use this because the Search Engine I made up was for the hit TV show "Lost" but it was fun to do anyway :)

#11-LibraryThing!

This is an exciting tool! It will be so great to add all of my books onto LibraryThing. It's such an easy tool and worth looking into. I love being this organized with my books! You can look up other people's books and it even gives you a list of people who have similar taste in books as you. I will definitely be using this tool a lot and sharing it with my friends and family who love to read. Be sure and check out my collection!

#10-Image Generators

This was a lot of fun! There are so many different image generators to choose from, it could take years to go through them all :) I had a good time with this one. I think one of my favorite image generators is the Random sign generator that I'm pretty sure was used in #6 "More Fun with Flickr."



Here is a link for this generator.
Enjoy!

#9-Finding Feeds

I looked at all the different search tools we were given to find feeds. The most helpful one for me was Technorati. It seems extremely easy to use and very helpful in many ways. I was able to find all kinds of topics within other people's blogs. The other one I really liked was Topix.net. I love the News Front Page. I didn't care for Sindic8.com. The layout was hard to follow and I didn't think it was easy to navigate at all.

#8- Exploring RSS feeds

RSS feeds are great! It's so much easier to have all of the websites and pages that you visit everyday organized into one location. I did put a few of my co-workers blog addresses in my bloglines which will allow me to visit their sites everyday, too! I think I even figured out how to make mine public...we'll see! I did, however, put a link to bloglines on this post :)

My bloglines

#6-More Flickr Fun!

135_3525
Originally uploaded by eason.

I loved this picture in the Krazydad colorpickr. I can see how so many of these 3rd party sites could be incredibly useful and just plain fun. I guess this one really intrigued me because you could print up some really cool pictures with the same color scheme to hang on your walls. I'm a big fan of decorating!

#7-Blog About Technology

I really enjoyed creating my own avatar. This was something fun that I could spend time doing, but wasn't stressful! It was probably the easiest thing I've done yet and I get to post it on my fantasy football page as my team icon. Woo hoo!

#5-Flickr Fun

IMG_0469
Originally uploaded by elittl304.

Well, it seems that I've figured out how to use flickr. It doesn't seem like it will be difficult at all now that I'm set up. This is my nephew, Ryder, doing a bellyflop at the beach last June. My sister, Robyn, took the picture...she actually took some great ones of the other kids, too, but I just loved this one!

#2

As I was reading about the 71/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners, I started thinking about how much more I have to learn! There are many goals I set and wish to set, but often I don't follow through. Hopefully this will give me an opportunity to change that habit! I think the habit I find easiest would be viewing problems as challenges. Don't get me wrong, I can be just as negative as anyone else and I don't always have the "Pollyanna" attitude. However, I usually see the silver lining. After a difficult problem or situation I'm almost always grateful because I know that I've learned so much and can put it on my list of experiences.

The hardest habit for me is to have confidence in myself as a competent, effective learner. This is an action I would LOVE to make habitual! I don't have too much trouble believing that I can learn everyday tasks, but when you put it in a class format or make it more "official" sounding, my confidence dwindles. I'm going to try to "unlearn" my bad habits and implement new positive ones!

Just a Test

Here I am!