The End?

I have reached the 23rd thing in our web 2.0 exploration. I have enjoyed working on my blog posts, and I loved playing with the image generator. I check my Bloglines account daily for a one-stop place to keep up on various blogs. We're using Zoho Writer in my department for planning an upcoming event.

These exercises have forced me to look at new technologies I otherwise would have ignored. This is a great way to have staff development without having to re-schedule library programs to attend classes. I was able to work on the exercises for brief periods at work and at home and at my convenience.

As far as unexpected outcomes or surprises, I feel a sense of accomplishment from figuring things out. Any frustrations I felt were worthwhile for the knowledge I gained. There are some things I've learned about that will help me do my job, such as best practices wikis and blogs and online productivity.

I think the program and format for these exercises worked well. There are podcasts for people who learn best by hearing information, and plenty of visual and hands on activities to suit other learning styles. The best part was not having to fit classes or lectures into a busy work schedule.

I would definitely participate in future discovery programs of this nature. I'm sure they will be necessary as technologies adapt and we find new "things" to discover.

Classics on Tape?

I have explored our digital media collection and searched for Jane Austen titles. I listened to an excerpt from Pride and Prejudice and expected to hear the familiar opening sentence, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Instead, I heard instructions for "Classics on Tape." It sounds like this version of the classic novel is a digitized form of an old cassette recording. My favorite advice from the excerpt regards troubleshooting tips for a cassette that won't play properly, "...give it a brisk slap against a hard surface." I guess this clash of technologies (cassette vs. downloadable audio) reminds us how far we've come in the audio book world. Remember when the books on tape cassettes would get too close to the security equipment and the audio would be erased?

Podcasts and Author Birthdays

I'm a Garrison Keillor fan, and if I'm fortunate enough to be in the car at 9:oo a.m. and driving in the north part of the county I am able to catch his "Writer's Almanac" on a NPR station out of St. Lucie County. This rarely happens. So imagine my delight when I not only discovered podcasts of the daily "Almanac" but was also able to add them to my Bloglines account.

Now no matter where I am in PBC, I will be able to keep up with authors' birthdays and interesting facts about their lives.

Brilliant Babies

This week we are exploring YouTube. I did a "storytime" search and located videos of librarians performing fingerplays and songs in story time programs. One library system in Ohio produced a very professional looking video promoting their story times for babies. I can see some value in using YouTube to promote library programs and services. After I found the "commercial" for the library system in Ohio, I visited their website to see what other programs they offer. I guess their "Baby Brilliant" video promotion did just what it was meant to do; it sent me to their website to learn more.

Zillow

For the latest exercise we were asked to explore one of the sites on the Web 2.0 awards list. I chose to explore Zillow. I am familiar with Realtor.com and this is a similar site, however it offers street, aerial and hybrid views of the properties listed. I had a feeling that Realtor.com has more listings than Zillow, so I did a quick comparison search. On both sites I did a search for properties with my zip code and price spans of $150K - $200K. Zillow had 157 results and Realtor.com had 240. I didn't take the time to see if any properties were listed on both sites. As for library applications for this, I guess if a patron was in the market for a new home, I would recommend searching both sites.

Zoho Blog

Learning About Zoho Writer

Today I'm learning about Zoho Writer and I must admit I like the "friendly toolbar."

It's easy to see how to change fonts and highlight,bold and italicize,underline and so on.

Using this tool to generate shared documents can eliminate the problems caused when various readers have different versions of word processing software. It's also a great way to format blog posts.

Our Favorite Things

I just successfully added my blog to our wiki. I was confused about giving the link text a name, but I figured it out. My favorite animals are already on the list of animal favorites, so I added a few words anyway.