The final activity

Well! What a busy few weeks we have had learning.
I must say I am glad to get to the end of this little project. I think I will be ok out there all on my own now.
I have found this program to be
*Challenging
*Time consuming - very easy to be distracted
*Fun - I had heard you could find fun things online...
*Useful - I have set up 2 wikis and know of other staff using online apps for their
work
After finishing this program I am now
*Brave - and more confident of using online products
*Aware - of all the cool things our patrons (with more time than me have) use
*Keen - to use more efficient tools for communication

The program itself I think was very intense and the activities often took longer than you expected.
Once I realised I needed to keep track of my user names/passwords I was more organised.
And once you start playing around with sites like flickr and bloglines you begin to understand how they operate. For example: I was trying to add a YouTube vid. to my blog, but couldn't see the link/button for this action. So I set up an account with YouTube - and then as part of my account was the option to post to my blog.
So it all gets easier as you learn to play the game.

It has been fun to check out what everyone else has been doing with their blogs. There are a lot of creative and innovative librarians out there!

I have found the last 9 weeks to be very beneficial and have not wasted time in using my new found knowledge. We now have a wiki for our reference staff to keep track of goings on and to share knowledge. I have also set up a wiki for a project which incorporates a number of staff from different libraries and community members.
I also have in the works a wiki for database training.

Finally - I just feel more confident in knowing what is going on in the online world, and what our patrons are up to when they use the libraries pc's. I only wish I had more time to play with when at work - but I will try and keep browsing to find cool stuff to incorporate into my working practice.

Now...I think it is time for my Avitar to have a new look...

Week 9 Audio books

Had a listen to an Edgar Allan Poe poem - quite good. Actually very handy for poetry, especially the Shakespeare sonnets.
Audio just adds another way to learn, catching a boarder audience.
The annual fee is cheap too (even if it is in US?)

The Librarians Interview

This is good fun! Hope the whole 6 episodes are as funny

Week 9 Podcasts

I can see the value of podcasts to the library world - both for our patrons and our staff. Especially when staff are located at different libraries and some distance from HQ. For our patrons who have literacy challenges, have visual impairments a podcast might also improve accessibility to our website and services.

Food for thought...

week 9

Found great interview with the writers of The Librarians on YouTube.

Web 2.0 awards

Was pleased to see that the wiki I have used to set up 2 wikis for us won 1st prize in its catagory. Wetpaint wiki is very easy to use, and also looks good.

Zoho post

This is a plug for a concert that I am performing in on Sunday.

 

Bendigo Chorale 50th Anniversary Concert

 

Sunday 21 October

 

St. Paul's Anglican Church

 

Bendigo

online apps

I am writing this as I am playing with Zoho

- first it doesn't like Fire Fox and has opened up into Explorer.
- I was able to upload my Dopple Me avatar
- the meetings/conference tool looks interesting. Might be a way to train online
- have just type up a quick post and used the publishing tool. V easy!

I will post this post and then see if my Zoho post works

Wikis #2

Adding my blog to the PLCMC wiki was a breeze!

Wikis have been the talk amongst the reference staff this week.

A wiki for training a wiki for everyday things - latest school assignment - no dinosuar books left (that sort of thing...)

Wikis

I have been thinking for a while that wikis would be a good place to provide instructional training for databases, ref material and anything else that might come from the Information desk.
For all our staff who find it difficult to attend training sessions for whatever reason, wikis might be the next best thing.
A database training wiki mmm...

My thoughts on 2.0

Web 2.0 technology is fun, time consuming, full of potential, and some times exciting (mainly exciting when I get things to work!)

Web 2.0 technologies are tools - tools to be used to make our lives smarter, not harder. The trick is to now when/how to use them.

I guess its all about knowing when it is worth all the extra time to learn/set up/train others, and when it is quicker and simpler to use a non 2.0 technology.

Was just reading the blog Librarians Matter and it is great to see what other libraries are up to. I suspect they may have more staff with more time than we do...

Onto wikis...

Tagging and Bookmarking

I have had a Furl account for sometime now - and have not used in about as much time, even though I have a Furl tool bar sitting there looking at me as I play online.

And so delicious and technorarti are at the bottom of my to do list.
I am sure for those travelling round the world, or those how already use their browsers bookmark facility they would be useful.

As I am the laziest librarian in all the land - they are not for me.

Activity no. 6

Oops! I jumped a couple of steps...

Just had a look at the mashups.

I like yahoo's travel planner - would have been handy back in May! However will add this feature to my "From the Library to the World" presentation I am doing for Seniors Week.

Went to add my DoppelMe avitar and couldn't. Yahoo want me to add from their collection.

Rollyo

Thought I had better to something useful, after using a lot of my desk time playing with generators.
Having said that - it was great to actually do something fun online - normally I would only use the Internet for work.
Rollyo will become very useful. I can see it having usefulness at both the Information desk and Goldfields Research Centre desk.
Just for this exercise I stayed within the fun zone and created a Belly Dancing search.

DoppleMe - week 5 activity

To the left you will see my DoppleMe Avitar.
Lots of fun to create and a great way personalise my blog even more.

I found this generator on the Generator Blog.

Adding Bloglines element

This was a challenge! Felt like I was going round in circles!
Lots of fidling with my bloglines account and then a couple of goes at finding the right element to do the task.
Very satisfying to see it work. Now I can get on with more pressing work tasks.
Hope I can remember how I did it?!

Iona Ruined Nunnery

Iona Ruined Nunnery
Originally uploaded by jammach_uk

This was my favourite part of the Isle of Iona (Scotland).
The stone work is beautiful, and very pretty with all the different shades of pink.
Hard to believe that the nun's lived within the walls. They must have been cold all the time!

The things you find

Just found a great librarian's song "Addy will know" by SNMNMNM : follow the link...

http://addywillknow.com

The trick with learning 2.0 is that you suddenly find that an hours past - but in the meantime you have found some very cool things - like the above song.

What's in a name

Falling up is something we have all experienced - having to do a new job or task without really knowing what we doing!

A little bit like Learning 2.0 - I know a little bit about blogging, and a little bit about wikis but I don't really know how to actually use them - that needs practice and playtime.

I now enjoy falling up - I am pushed into learning things that I wouldn't otherwise have thought of. I have learnt that nothing bad will happen if I don't get it quite right the first time.

Enough babbling!
Time to play!