Week 24: Congratulations and Summary

Congratulations!! You’ve reached the 23rd thing. Give yourself a pat on the back for completing the program. Please give us your feedback on your experience by reflecting on your learning journey by posting a few thoughts on your blog. Here are some questions to prompt you:
What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
Were there any unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
What could be done differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
If another discovery program like this were offered in the future, would you choose to participate?





Here is your blue ribbon award for completion.
Hastings District Libraries Staff -Upon receiving you last email and blog update a certificate
of completion will be emailled to you.


How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote Central TAFE learning activities?We hope this is not the end of our learning journey together as a staff and a system, but the start of something amazing …such as:
maintain your blog as your educational journal
add your blog URL to your e-mail signature line
re-purpose it as your library blog
share it with your colleagues and ManagerNow, are you ready for Learning 2.1?
to: Posts (Atom)

Week 18 #23 Ebooks & Audiobooks

Explore eBooks and Audio eBooks
For this thing, you will explore where you can get free ebooks and get an idea of the types of titles you can find here. Take a look around and locate a few titles of interest. Many school and public libraries have audiobook and ebook collections, so check what they have in their collections. Audiobooks are popular for ELL and Special Education students, as well as communters who enjoy a good story during a long ride. There are a number of commercial audiobook and ebook sources, and many of these companies have exhibits at library conferences.Discovery Exercises:1. Explore World EBook Fair for FREE downloads from the Gutenberg Project. Also just explore the site - there's much to check out.2. Create a blog post about your findings.Discovery Resources:
LibriVox, audiobook versions of copyright-free books from the Gutenberg Project. Read by volunteers. Started in August 2005 by Hugh McGuire. Check it out!
Check out this "Best Places to Get Free Books" site, too.

Week 17 # 22 Podcastings

Podcasts (No iPod Needed)
The word podcast is used to refer to a non-musical audio or video broadcast that is distributed over the Internet. What differentiates a podcast from regular streaming audio or video is that the delivery method for podcasts is often done automatically through RSS. In 2005, "podcast" was named the "word of the year" by New Oxford American Dictionary and with the growth of podcasting over the last year and a half; it’s easy to see why. Podcasts take many forms, from short 1-10 minutes commentaries (like the ones used in this Learning 2.0 program) to much longer in person interviews or panel group discussions. There’s a podcast out there for just about every interest area and the best part about this technology is that you don’t have to have an iPod or a MP3 player to access them. Since podcasts use the MP3 file format, a popular compressed format for audio files, you really just need a PC (or portal device) with headphones or a speaker. iTunes, the free downloadable application created by Apple is the directory finding service most associated with podcasts, but if you don’t have iTunes installed there are still plenty of options.For this discovery exercise participants are asked to take a look at some popular podcast directory tools. Do some exploring on your own and locate a podcast that is of interest to you. Once found, you can easily pull the RSS feed into your blog reader (i.e., Bloglines or Google Reader) account as well, so that when new casts become available you’ll be automatically notified of their existence.

Discovery Exercises:
Take a look at one or two of the podcast directories listed and see if you can find a podcast that interests you. See if you can find some interesting library related podcasts here like book review podcasts or library news.
Add the RSS feed for a podcast to your blog reader account.
Create a blog post about your discovery process. Did you find anything useful here? Discovery

Resources:·
To find out more about podcasts start with Yahoo: What is a podcast tutorial· There are many, many podcast directories and finding tools out there. Here are just three of the more popular ones that don’t, like iTunes, require a software download:
o Podcast.net
o Podcastalley.com
o Yahoo Podcasts

Ideas:
Idea #1: Interview candidates for local office, or town officials about top issues in your community.
Idea #2: Create a daily Library news podcast, including an issue of the day such as copyright/music downloading/file sharing, Internet safety tips, or newest web 2.0 applications.
Do you want to learn how to be a podcaster ?
(Here are optional Resources for those who want to learn to create podcasts)
Yahoo: Publish a podcastOdeo’s Studio – online recording studio.
Beginners guide to Podcasts & Creating Podcasts How to podcast tutorial

Week 16 # 21 Sharing Videos Youtube, Google Vids and more

Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload
and share videos.
Within the past year online video hosting sites have exploded
allowing users to easily upload and share videos on the web.
Among all the web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently
top dog serving up over 1 million video views a day and allowing
users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also
embed clips into their own sites easily.Do some searching around
YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find
everything from 1970s TV commercials and 60s music videos to
library dominos and a video made by library school students for
National Library Week. There's also the cult classic
Conan the Librarian. CLA 2006 conference Library Cheer was fun,
too.

See also:
Introducing the Book
Web 2.0
Library 2.0 Manifesto
March of the Librarians
Jack O'Connell Goes Back to School
Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth
watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and
see for yourself what the site has too offer. :)

Discovery Exercise:
Explore YouTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
Create a blog post about your experience. What did you like or
dislike about the site and why did you choose the video that you did?
Can you see any features or componets of the site that might be
interesting if they were applied to library websites?
OPTIONAL: Try placing the video inside your blog using the
copy and paste code for the for "Embeddable Player.”
Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.

Discovery Resources:
Other popular video hosting sites:
Yahoo Videos
Google videos
TeacherTube
Jumpcut by Yahoo!Teachers
Others - top video site list

NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light Internet usage times.

Week 15 #20 Online Productivity Tools

Take a look at online productivity tools (word processing, spreadsheets, and more)
One major benefit to web-based applications is that they eliminate the need to worry about different software versions or file types as you email documents or move from PC to PC. Another bonus is that they easily accommodate collaboration by allowing multiple users to edit the same file (with versioning) and provide users the ability to easily save and convert documents as multiple file types (including HTML and pdf). And, you can even use many of these tools, such as Zoho Writer and Google Docs (Formerly known as Writely) to author and publish posts to your blog. It’s this type of integration with other Web 2.0 tools that also makes web-based apps so appealing. For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at a web-based word processing tool called Zoho Writer, create a simple document and then document your discoveries in your blog. If you are up to the challenge, you might even export your document as an HTML file or publish it through Zoho to your blog. With Zoho and web-based applications, the possibilities are endless. This document is authored and published online using Zoho Writer.Discovery Exercise:1. Create a free account for yourself in Zoho Writer2. Explore the site and create a test document or two.3. Try out Zoho Writer’s features and create a blog post about your discoveries.Optional: If you’re up for the challenge, try using Zoho’s publish options to post to your blog.* Note: You can also explore Google Docs (formerly known as Writely), Google's online word processing, as an option for this exercise. FYI: On Oct 11th, 2006, Google re-launched Writely (which it acquired in Spring 2006) as Google Docs.BTW: Here’s a Zoho-created document (viewable as a webpage) about some of the beneficial features of Zoho.Discovery Resources:A short list of web-based productivity applications – Note: This list was authored in ZohoWriter and exported as HTML.Connections:
Idea #1: Challenge your colleagues to count all the books in their house (not including cook books.) Have them sort them by type (fiction/nonfiction, mystery, sports, subject, size, color -- their choice) and list these on a spreadsheet. [Note: you may want to limit the books to 200.]
Don't forget to write a comment on this blog about your thoughts experience in using these tools.

Week 14 # 19 World Cat & NZ Libraries Catalogue

WORLDCAT
WorldCat is the world's most comprehensive bibliographic database. Updated at a rate of nearly one new record every 10 seconds, WorldCat contains more than 100,017,500 bibliographic records and 1,256,923,495 holdings contributed by more than 9,000 libraries around the world.See the latest WorldCat record here

New Zealand Libraries Catalogue
When the Catalogue went live some of the larger library management systems had already been successfully ‘deep-linked’ from the Catalogue to individual library catalogues. The library holding s in the tepuna search when clicking on library symbol now link to the home catalogue to enable you to straight away see if it is available. Check It Out!
http://nzlc.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=first

Week 13 #18 Ning & Web 2.0

Explore any site from the Web 2.0 awards list OR Ning and write a blog post about your findings. Do you thing Ning is useful?

Week 12 # 17 Twitter

Sign up for a Twitter account. Track your activities using Twitter for a few days. How might Twitter be useful linked on a library website? Don't forget to blog it.
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Possibilities for Libraries quick reference exchange among staff and different Libraries, Reference intereview, for Reference Librarians to communicate with each other?
What do you think?

Week 11 # 16 Social Networking My Space, Facebook & Bebo

MySpace and Facebook probably get more mainstream press than any other tool on this list—besides blogging. And, as we all know, not all the press is positive. However, social networks are one of the main ways that young adults communicate with each other—55% of all teenagers use social networking sites. Use of these sites has even surpassed landline telephones for a certain percentage of teenagers according to a study (pdf) by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
It is worth noting that these networks incorporate many of the tools we’ve already covered in other Things—blogging, photo and video sharing, internal e-mail, message boards, and IM. One stop shopping is part of their appeal--one user name, one password, all the info in one spot. Another part of the appeal is the need to “belong to a group” that is a milestone of adolescent development. Young people create their own groups, “friend” people, and more, often without the watchful eye of parent or other authority figure. This is one reasons many teenagers like MySpace and Facebook. Facebook began as a college-focused social network—it originally required a .edu address to join. When it opened up to all comers, many Facebook users were not happy. The exclusivity for young adults seemed lost. Of course, the lack of the watchful eye is, to some parents, teachers, and librarians, the reason social networks are suspect and can be prone to abuse. Many parents and organizations opt for blocking access to these sites. Others look to education on Internet safety, privacy, appropriate use of technology, and other issues as a way to allow use of these networks that are so important to teens and young adults.So, what does it all mean to libraries? Whether or not you become a convert to MySpace and/or Facebook, it is important to understand how they work. If our young users are communicating through these networks, we need to be able to be there, too. In this Thing, you are going to explore a social network. MySpace is the most used social network, but Facebook is currently the fastest growing social network. Facebook is more secure in that it is more difficult to see a user's profile until that person has accepted your friend request. 1. First, here is a simple explanation of why social networks may be useful for those of us beyond our teenage years. This is an episode of the Common Craft Show. You have the choice of visiting either Facebook Bebo or MySpace--or for the ambitious, all three.

A.
Facebook requires registration in order to view any profiles of members.
1. Register for the site and add 2-3 friends. If you have any difficulty, you can visit this tutorial. There are many other Facebook tutorials on this page that are useful as you find a friend. Be sure to let us know when you join, so we can "friend" you.
2. Complete a profile, write on at least one wall and join at least one group. Here are some possible Facebook Groups to join: (Groups are only visible when logged in to Facebook.)
American Library Association Members
Library 2.0 Interest Group
Libraries Using Facebook Pages
Librarians and Facebook

B.

1. Visit MySpace and visit some library MySpace pages and examine their content. Here are some library MySpace pages. You can search for others:
Denver Public Library MySpace Page
Hennepin County Library MySpace Page
2. If you are feeling ambitious, create your own MySpace Page. Add the info to your blog.
Resources
Information Wants to be Free blogpost that describes some of the pros and cons about venturing into social networks
MySpace Sign Up Step-by Step Instructions from the University of California- Santa Cruz's 23 Things project.
12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally
7 Things You Should Know About Facebook (pdf)

Blog Prompts
Facebook
Which groups did you join and why?Reflect on why Facebook may be the fastest growing social network. Is that reputation deserved?
MySpace
How are libraries using MySpace?
Did you find anything on a library's MySpace page that would be useful for your library?
If you created your own MySpace page, how do you plan to use it?