Thing Twenty-Three

I think I said most of what I wanted to say in my previous blog. I do think that I am more comfortable with the internet now. Before I just used it for e-mail, pictures and card catalog. The internet world is BIGGGGG! I really enjoyed creating this blog. It is fun to change it around and add stuff to it. I love my iGoogle page!! I like challenges and learning new things, so if you offered More Things, I probably would try to to that too. My experience here was challenging and awsome.

Thing Twenty-Two

Well, I am just about finished. I have worked really hard this summer to get through this program. There were many hours spent going back to the library in the evenings to work on this. But I am glad I was able to do all 23 things. I managed to figure out each one on my own, sometimes more successfully that others! But I learned alot. Now comes the hard part of continuing on. I was at my other school job yesterday. There was a high school student there helping out. She was impressed that I had a blog and was on FaceBook. That was a nice feeling to know that I could keep up with them! There are so many sites that I didn't explore as I went through the 23 Things, that I think I will go back to look at more of them as I have time. I was glad to see in the newsletter that 23 Things will be around for quite awhile. When I only work 3.5 hours a day at the library, it will be hard to find 15 minutes for this, but I will try. At our elementary school I found that many of the sites I have been visiting this summer are blocked. Oh well.

Thing Twenty-One

The 23 Things on a Stick site was very interesting. It was fun to see familiar names in the Pioneerland section. I think I will add the RSS to my webpage. When I watched Building a Social Networking Environment at the Library, I saw some good ideas that I would like to try in the future.

Thing Twenty

I set up a FaceBook account because I knew my children had already set up theirs. It wasn't too hard. It will be interesting in the future as I explore it more to find new contacts. I think FaceBook is very easy to use and it looks more adultish, someone my age is not afraid to join. I joined Library 2.0 Interest Group because I think I should like to see what other 23ers are saying. Next I added Libraries Using FaceBook Pages. It will be interesting to see if there are any ideas I can find there that we can use. As I was on that page, I saw FaceBook Applications for Libraries, which looked good, so I added that too. I will have to explore that later.

Thing Nineteen

I listened to BookLust, St Cloud State Episode 10, Podcast.com, and Minitex - Tom's Podcast. I liked the St Cloud site the best, probably because we are so close to St Cloud. I watched the podcast about Sara Martini. I work in an elementary media center also, and we have always wondered how they make the MHL selections. She answered a lot of questions we had. I know I don't want to get involved with podcasts, but it sure would be a good idea for our Odyssey of the Mind kids at school to try. I will have to give this idea to my supervisor.
http://web.stcloudstate.edu/schoolmediapodcast/podcasts/kathy_lewin.mp3

Thing Eighteen

I first imported a comercial about slinkies, but then I found this blonde joke that ends with some wisdom from the book of Proverbs and like this one much better. It is good to have wisdon. I had no issues uploading this video. It was easy.

Thing Seventeen

I had a lot of trouble creating a search alert. Anyway, I will need to remember to use these search tools for patrons. We don't do a lot of research for our patrons. But more knowledge is good. There is only one person working at a time here so there really isn't any collaboration with a colleague ( actually there are only 2 of us all together).

Thing Sixteen

This RPC and Assignment Calculator looks like a very good website to use. I hope many students and teachers are using it. I myself, would probably not have an opportunity to use it, but I did pass it along to my daughter who is planning to be a highschool English teacher. She probably already knows about these two sites. I work in a very small library and we rarely have students on the computers for research or homework. Our local school is excellent for teachers allowing time for research at school, and computer lab time. When I work at our elementary school, our grades only go up to 4th grade. This is beyond their needs too. We don't have very big projects at our small library, so I probably wouldn't use it here either. But I am really really glad I can do these 23 Things. You have all put so much interesting information into this course.

Thing Fifteen

I was looking foreward to playing games on my computer, but after looking at both PuzzlePirates and Second Life, I didn't want to download more things. I just know that games are very popular. That is probably 90% of what the kids do here at the library when they go online. We have regulars that come in every day to play their game. We miss them when they don't come in!

Thing Fourteen

I am learning things by doing them over and over. It seems easy now to link things from the internet to my blog. I will have to spend more time perusing through LibraryThing in the future. I set up my account and added a few books. Most of my books had a 5 star rating, but there weren't very many comments about them. I think I will be visiting and adding to this site. Looking at it one night here for the first time is a bit overwhelming. We share book lists with our patrons when they ask for them, by finding something on the internet and printing it out to hand it to them. Most of our patrons are older and don't use computers much.

LibraryThing

Thing Thirteen

On Line Productivity Tools was very interesting to learn what is out there. Much more than I every knew!! I chose iGoogle for my page because I have e-mail with Google, so it made sense. WOW! I really like it. It is easy to edit and maneuver around in and I think I will really save me time. No more going up to the Favorites Menu all of the time. Everything is right there across the top of my screen. I looked into the calendars. Kiko and Backpack. I think they would take more time to fill out (and learn first!) than it would for me to keep my lists on paper.Also, I work in three places, library, school media center, and home. I would have to keep a calendar for each one because they are too different. Besides, these computers are not just mine alone. There are many others using these computers besides me. Seems like these tools would be better for businessmen.