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.

Thing Twelve

Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, Mixx. Sure is easy to type these!! I don't think we will use these tools in our home or library. It seems like they absorb more time than you might have. You can easily get caught up in various articles ( other than what you originally were looking for). I read an article on gas prices in the UK on BBC News. Seems like they are having the same inflation problems that we are.