Week 9: Item 23

I was later than most in starting this project and obviously, since it is November 23rd, one of the last to finish. Thanks for the extension of this project because it gave me the impetus to push through my reluctance and frustrations and ultimately finish and feel very proud that I did.

Clearly this is not an ending but a beginning. I've only touched the surface of these many web tools and yet I know that I've absorbed a great deal. Last week when I was talking to a friend who does not work in libraries, I was telling her about some of my discoveries. She was unaware of them yet she uses the Internet. It gave me great satisfaction to realize how far I'd come.

My blog may not be quite as cool as others', but it's my very first. As I progressed I was able to do more and more on my own. I don't know the final count of BCPL staff who participated in this project, but it should be high. Having worked my way through the exercises, I better understand their value. Maryland 23 Things should be mandatory for all full-time staff, most certainly librarians.

Thanks to Pawan for his help (you were very patient with me). Kudos to Ellen and Jim for all their hard work in monitoring this project and encouraging us to continue!

Week 9: Item 22

I read about and listed to the tutorials regarding Overdrive and NetLibrary. The Overdrive tutorial was much clearer to understand and a much more professional learning tool. NetLibrary needs to jazz theirs up a bit; I found myself losing interest in what the speaker was saying. While Project Gutenberg didn't have a tutorial, it was easy to navigate. I was particularly interested in the variety of books available in other languages, and I found a citation for a title in Mayan, edited by a French man--cool! Overdrive and Project Gutenberg are complementary sites as the former carries more contemporary, popular materials and the latter more literary and esoteric books.

Week 9: Item 21

These are two podcasts that I found on PodcastAlley.com about scuba diving. I haven't opened them yet because I am at home where my computers works faster and I can work without interruption. I'll have to check these out at work tomorrow.

http://nile-cruises-4u.co.uk/blog/?feed=podcast
http://www.scubadventureslcpodcast.com/ScubAdventuresPodcast/Podcasts/rss.xml

I like PodcastAlley.com. It's easy to search for specific information. I like it better than PodCast and Yahoo.

Regarding the MERLIN podcasting link, BCPL has its own zines podcast thanks to LVN. It's very good!

"How to Podcast" is very clear and makes one want to to try to create a podcast. Well, maybe others...

Week 9: Item 20

First I looked at the links that show the many sites that allow users to upload and share videos. I had no idea there were so many, because YouTube, MySpace and a few others are so frequently mentioned.

I looked at YouTube, MySpace and Yahoo Video because, from what I read, they are among the top sites that are visited. YouTube had a wonderful underwater video of divers diving with 15 dolphins in Hurghada, Egypt. It was very easy to find on You Tube a second time by doing a keyword search using the following terms: 15 dolphins, scuba diving, Egypt. While many of the scuba videos I viewed were of poor quality (due partly to the difficulty of filming underwater), this one was just lovely. The graceful dolphins were swimming around and around the divers.

I did not find that I could as easily and quickly assess diving videos that I wanted to view in MySpace. Rather, MySpace was good for true information on sports, especially referrals to businesses related to scuba diving. For example, I immediately was referred to a local business to get diving lessons and another for gear. There was also a very attractive site for renting homes and rooms at resorts on Bonaire.

Yahoo videos were immediate when I looked for scuba diving on Bonaire. I was not impressed with the videos though. They were short and of poor visual quality.

Week 8: Item 19

Among the Web 20.0 awards that I found relevant to my diving them are the ones, naturally, listed under travel. I was particularly intrigued with kayak.com, a site with which I was unfamiliar. There are great airline prices and it was fascinating to be able to watch the site scan for this information really fast. I looked for the best airline prices to Minneapolis for the PLA conference.

Week 8: Item 18

The concept of online world processing and spreadsheets is a highly useful one. I wish I'd done this exercise sooner, because I could have experimented with this concept on a real life task. That is, I was preparing a budget request and needed the input from managers at another branch. It would have been much easier to complete the task more quickly and efficiently with an online product. This exercise will be very, very useful to me.

I created a document on Zoho Writer. I tried using all the icons on the toolbar; it was pretty intuitive.

Week 7: Item 17

I posted an entry to the Learning 2.0 Sandbox wiki. The site is: http://greatplacestodive.pbwiki.com. Regrettably I've gotten the user name and password mixed up somehow, and I'm unable to get into this site to add to it. I've emailed pbwiki.com for help but still haven't figured out my mistake. I'll keep working on it because I want to add information to it, but I may have to ultimately delete that site and create a new one with a similar name. Nevertheless, I understand the concept.

Update: I was able to figure out the problem with my user name and password myself and have added information to my wiki. I haven't yet figured out how to edit the name of the page, but I'll keep working on it.