THING 23 -- MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

I am so glad I was able to participate in Maryland 23. This program gave me the opportunity to explore technologies I was aware of and heard about but never fully comprehended. While I am by no means a master of the 23, I do feel a sense of familiarity with these names and will definitely not be afraid to continue exploring.
I think the funnest exploration was the fun with widgets and You Tube. There is just too much time wasting potential contained on those sites. Of most practical value was Zoho Writer and the RSS feeds. Zoho Writer is a great document site and has multiple templates available for use. Learning about RSS feeds was really interesting. I'm not 100% sure that I like this method of searching, but I can see where it would be useful to monitor specific searches.
This program has contributed to my lifelong learning goals and has made me recognize the need to stay current especially in our profession. It wa a great way to learn but have fun also. I certainly never thought I'd have a blog to call my own.
I think the program was very well organized. I appreciated the updates and reminders and the drop in sessions at North Point. For those people who weren't able to make the sessions, it might have been good to have the tips which were available as handouts available online. I know there were tips on Ellen's blog, but perhaps each sheet could have been linked to the specific "Thing" and "Discovery Exercise." I know the time offered was plenty to successfully complete the program. I'm just one of those procrastinators who loves deadline extensions.
I would participate in a program such as Maryland 23. It gave me an organized and goal-oriented plan to peruse technologies which are the future of librarianship. It also allowed for interaction and discussion with colleagues regarding these developing trend. Thanks for all your hard work to make this such a success.

THING 22

I have minimal exposure with downloadable books and was interested to search these sites. I know some of the technologies haven't always been the easiest for customers to access, but it is an exciting new way for readers to be connected to books and librarians should be aware of these sites and any developing trends.
Project Gutenberg has always fascinated me. I think it is an amazing achievement that this organization has made available. I haven't visitied the site for a while and was pleased to see that there is now so much more for customers. Such links as the 100 most downloaded books and authors and best of cds and books are interesting readers' advisory tools. I was really interested to see the digitized sheet music option. This is a frequent request and can be really helpful to customers needing immediate music. This is an excellent site to bookmark and utilize for public librarians.

THING 21

Podcasts was an interesting challenge. After learning what they were all about from the tutorial, I first checked out http://www.podcast.net/. I had trouble finding anything of interest to me. I went into the local/regional genre and nothing really appealed to me. I checked out a couple of other genres, but it all looked very specific. This reminds me of the old cable access channels where any joker could get on with a show about anything. If you're not looking for anything specific it seems like a wasteland. I then tried http://www.podcastalley.com/ and that seemed better. One interesting feature they had was the "most viewed" and the "newest" podcasts. They also posted recommended podcasts. I found an interesting podcast called The Hollywood Saloon and was able to add it to my RSS feeds at Bloglines. I can see how libraries can make use of this technology, particularly when it comes to children's programming and reaching out to those who are unable to physically visit the building.

THING 20, part 2

Tried unsuccessfully again to post the video to the blog. However, I received the following message: "An error has occurred. Message: Your username or password is not recognized.Reason: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden." I think I was doing everything right, but will check with colleagues tomorrow. It's a shame because as I said in the earlier Thing 20 post, this video is a crowd pleaser.

THING 19

Web 2.0 awards offered a lot of great sites to look at. It's amazing all the things on the internet that are available free to use. No wonder the kids spend so much time with all this. You can really get carried away. I took a closer look at widgets on http://www.yourminis.com/ which was the winning widget site. I was able to add a game widget to my blog. I had some trouble doing this to blogger, but was able to copy the code and add it that way. I'm not sure why I wasn't able to log in to Blogger to do it, but the copying code was just as simple. I'm not sure if you can change any elements, such as size, to the widget. I can see these Web 2.0 sites being of great application to the library, as they are the best of the best and librarians should be able to direct customers easily to these sites. The directions seem quite clear and simple and customers should have no trouble following through with this on their own, but having a list of such great sites all in one place is a big help to librarians.

THING 18

I am familiar with Google docs and think it is a great tool. It's a wonderful way to share documents with groups whose members are not all in one location. Additionally, it's great for people who don't have the Microsoft Office system installed on a computer. I also played around with Zoho writer and found it to be great fun. I created a recipe template using a template in their library and can see how using this would be so easy for people to share receipes. This is just one small example, again I think it would be useful for groups or individuals who need to create simple documents but don't have access to Microsoft. These tools can be used in the public library setting to assist customers in creating documents, providing easy to follow templates and publish anything from booklets to resumes.

LINKS

I just noticed that the links posted on my blog aren't working. I'm not sure what happened because I think they did work when I initially had them up. I'll try to fool around and see if I can fix it, because those Colin Firth sites are great!