Wild Thang! You make my heart sing!

Wild flowers in my front yard. I've been encouraging them for years and finally with this past rainy season I hit the jackpot!

Beginning the end & ending the beginning, #23!

I made it!! I can hardly belive it! I really lost hope about Thing 7. I had to just let it all sit for awhile. Jumping ahead of what was troubling me helped renew my confidence and when I went back to Thing 9, it was no trouble at all!

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? My favorite discoveries were that I'm not the techno-idiot I thought I'd be! The Web 2.0 winners, #19, was my favorite exercise because I found so much good stuff! It's my favorite bookmark now at home.

*How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? It's made me more confident online. Last night when I was working on getting Overdrive to work on my computer, instead of giving up, I kept at it. My husband and I even went out and bought an Ipod Touch over the weekend! I had been resisting this sort of things for years. Hey, my CD player still works! I still have records. Downloading songs into that thing was a blast! And I'm actually enjoying learning about all its other functionality.

*Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? Maybe that I did find so many things, in various formats, that I actually found useful and fun. And that I began to enjoy blogging! I'm a rather private person so this type of sharing at first was uncomfortable, but now it's no big deal.

*What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? Access was the biggest issue. Even though we finally got permission to do this from City computers, that was not always successful. An example is the Youtube videos I have in my blog. From my city computer I cannot view these, I even get the message they are not available any more. But, when I access my blog from home I have no problems. It was MUCH easier just doing this from home! I know others who were having trouble making time to do this, and some items took a lot longer than others, especially if something was giving you fits! A longer period to get it all done wouldn't hurt.

And last but not least…*If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again choose to participate? It depends on what's going on in my life. I really wanted to get this completed before the end of February as my calendar just explodes with commitments after that! It also depends on the topic. I'm open to it.

#22, Shove it into Overdrive!!

It took me an HOUR, but I finally got the proper settings for Microsoft media player worked out, and the security setting, and viola, Tin Collectors was playing on my computer!! This is pretty cool. I can see me on vacation, and out of reading material. I have my laptop with me, an MP3 player, and my trusty library card, POOF!, I have audio books at my disposal. Or movies. Of course, my Netflix account will let me download movies, too, but Overdrive is free and has a different selection.

Though, I have to admit, I much rather read books than listen to them. I'd rather have downloaded text to read and reread at my leisure. Maybe that's the next step, downloadable actual books via the library. Yes, I believe there will be a great deal more downloadable material in the not so distant future. No, I don't think physical books will die, but they will go out of vogue for quite a few "millenials". MHO.

#21, podcasting a wide net

After visiting quite a few podcast sites, my fav is NPR, I'm wondering if we shouldn't have some podcasts on our library website. I'm thinking stories for kids and such. Maybe audio book reviews so you can hear the passion in someone's voice. Or, just links to really good podcast sites, like NPR. Possibilities. Here is the link. Check it out: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=18659293
Like RSS, there are WAY too many choices and it was all rather overwhelming. I added several to my Bloglines feeds, but I have to be honest with myself - I'll probably have time to hear or read very few of them. Still, they are nice just to have so when I can steal a few minutes there are some interesting things to read or hear.

Awesome Library video

Kudos, Columbus Nebraska! While this video is aimed at kids, a teen focused one and an adult focused one would be great! When we get our big screen tv these types of "ads" would be great to run!

Oh, Oh, Domino!

YouTube is amazing! There is a video on anything and everything! There's even a woman who broadcasts a tv show from her minivan! This domino video amused me. I like how it's combined with pool instead of just dominoes falling. Enjoy! I have to go back to YouTube. There's an awesome cowboys on ice video I need to figure out how to download to my computer....

Web 2.0 "tools", #19

Wow! I just used the actual winners list, http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/short and was amazed at the variety and quality of these sites! I am going to spend a LOT more time later visiting just about all of these winners.

My favorite so are is: http://www.onesentence.org/stories/ . Some stories are hilarious! Some wanted to make me cry. It's incredible what can be conveyed in one sentence. I'm going to give it some thought then I would like to make an entry.

My other favorite, which will also require more indepth exploration is: http://www.yelp.com/c/phoenix As you might have guessed from my previous posts, I like food. I like to grow it, cook it and, best of all, eat it. I've heard about this Farm at South Mountain for some time, even read a review in the newspaper, but after reading some reviews by actual people who have eaten there, I have GOT TO GO! Maybe I'll blog about that later.

As far as library applications go, I don't know. I think at the least we should like to these winning sites to provide our customers with quality links. I hadn't heard of most of these sites, but I am bookmarking many of them for future use! I'm so glad for this exercise because I've found some valuable resources.