Summary

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? It was a lot more time consuming than I expected. I was amazed at how many cool tools are available, some of which we could be using, and many of these are free.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? This program was a big bite at one time. I’d like to see is broken down in to smaller parts. Perhaps more people would be willing to commit to several short programs. Maybe Cindy could do a “new learning 2.0 tool” of the month program.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate? Definitely, YES!!

Learning 2.0 experience

First, blog about your Learning 2.0 experience. Tell me...What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
In my opinion, the most fun was the image generator and the most useful was the RSS feeds.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
The program was a great opportunity to learn about new tools and cool things on the internet. I will continue to use some of them to make my life easier; others I’m glad to know what they are and how they work.

I enjoyed reading other staff member’s blogs.

Rollyo

Wow, one can create their own searchroll. I can see lots of potential for this tool, especially for students and reference librarians. Another cool idea.

LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a good little FREE tool. It is designed for small collections (200 titles for free then they start charging). I like its simplicity, but missed having authority control. It was very interesting to check the tags that other have used for my books. I searched for music titles and did not find any CDs or scores. They could be added manually but that takes away the ease and fun of the program. I enjoyed the social aspects of the site. This is an interesting idea that I would like to investigate further.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/yoyody

Hair photo warholized

Image generators

I played with several of these. The hairmixer really got me laughing. You can see my favorite new do. Then I warholize it. These programs are just too much fun.

Here is the link: http://www.hairmixer.com/

Podcast and video in the library

I looked at the recommended sites: Denver PL, ASU, and others, and think they have some good ideas. For instance we could do a podcast to go along with information about the artist exhibits at Central.

Also I liked the storytime idea at Denver Public. I wonder if we could they put in page turn beeps so the kids could read along? Or maybe make it a captioned video. Are there copyright issues with doing this sort of programming?

This format lends itself to self directed learning; workshops for the public as well as the staff. We have already done one on self serve check out. I can think of many more topics we could teach.

These are great tools. I know we will find lots of library uses for them as soon as we have enough bandwidth so people don’t get discouraged.

Podcast

I looked at all 3 podcast directories. It is interesting to use the same term and get different results. I found a nice Irish flute podcast but it did have a RSS feed, so I used the website of the flutist. I searched for another podcast and found NPR Topics: books page which as an RSS feed which I added to my Bloglines.

Podcast give us another opportunity for sharing information. For some people it may be the best way to learn. I think it would be great to have a welcome message from Marcy on our website and other podcast teaching and explaining how to find information.

YouTube

I enjoyed looking at the videos. Once again I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. One could spend many hours viewing them; every subject one can image is there. Some of the videos are very good and some look like they were created with a cheap camera phone. The keyword searching feature is interesting. I found people purposefully miss tagging their work. Shhheeeesh!

YouTube gives libraries another venue for marketing. There are some library infomercials already there along with some great video clips.

Ford Focus Orchestra

Trading card maker

I played with the Trading card maker. I made a trading card for myself and saved it. I can see this being used for library programs. It would be a good ice breaker opening if the leader had cards for everyone and they traded them to get to know each other. I think school kids would love this one.

Flickr tags

Tagging, like cataloging is important when you have a large group of things books, photos or other items. It allows users (and owners) to find what they need without browsing and getting lucky. For a site as large as Flickr, tags are essential.

Pick A Color....Any Color

Pick A Color....Any Color,
originally uploaded by taylorkoa22.

I think I finally figured this out.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

A Flickr experience

What I learned about Flickr. Basic accounts are free. It is easy to upload photos and one can put them in sets or collections (organize them). Then you can make cool stuff with your photos. Flickr is all about sharing photos. In the last minute 5454 photos were up loaded.

Tagging you photos in Flickr is easy. Tags help you find your photos but do they help others find your photos? The “Flickr tour” said one could assign up to 75 tags. I just cannot imagine needing 75 tags for one picture (that is a lot of keywords).

Explore and play

What fun! I chose from the short list of winners and found lots of interesting things. First was Pandora the music site. It is a way cool, aural fake book. The site was a little weak in the classical music area; but I enjoyed playing with it. It is kind of like a reader’s advisory program for music. I wonder how their categories and tags are set up. Too bad we cannot listen to web radio at work.

Next I checked out PEERtrainer. It has a lot of good information so I shared this one with a few friends. Finally, I looked at Lulu and was not too impressed. I'd like to spend more time with these Web 2.0 award winners.

Technorati

Technorati is an overwhelming blog heaven. I got way too many hits and too much information, kind of like the internet itself. It may be fun for people with tons of time on their hands but I want to learn how to refine my searches to take full advantage of this tool. I plan to study this tool again.