Thing 21- Beyond MySpace

I am a member of several online communities for my hobbies and sports. I like participating in these sites because people there have interests similar to me. I like the idea of having a library presence in social networking sites. I enjoyed looking at several of them.

Thing 22. Ways to keep learning

Well, I'm going to start work on the More 23 Things on a Stick. I hope to finish before the May 20th deadline. If not, I'll still plug away at them until they're done.

Thing 19. Podcasting

I listened to a couple of podcasts. The ones from Sheridan Libraries were interesting. The one on "Who's Citing Whom?" was alright. It was kind of long though at 11 minutes.
I'm not sure if I'd podcast for the library because I'm more or a visual person. I'd like video with my audio.

Lesson 18- You Tube

I really like looking at videos on You Tube. I chose the following video because it's a little fun one.
video by: apaulso2
March 15, 2006 This was very easy to add to my post.

Lesson 17- ELM Productivity Tools

I tried these tools and can see how students might find them useful for assignments. I might use the web page creators if I was working collaboratively on a resource bibliography though I might be tempted to use some of the other collaborative tools that were explored.

16 - Student 2.0 Tools

I've explored the UM's Assignment Calculator and Research Project Calculator and thought that they're really useful tools for students. Our library has links to these tools from our library's website so our students can access them. We've also publicized their availability in some instruction sessions that we've given. I think the assignment calculator could be used by library staff if we were working on a project where we needed to gather research information and if we translated the terminology used in the Assignment Calculator to terms used for the project.

Lesson 15 Online games and gaming

I attended a webinar on a Second Life area that MnSCU has set up. My first impression is that the worlds look nice but moving around seems clunky.

Last night, I tried Puzzle Pirates. I created a character and wandered around an island in the Hunter sea. I tried bilging, and roping and wasn't very good at them. I deleted my character when I left the game.

Lesson 14 - Library Thing

This was a fun activity! I enjoyed creating my personal catalog. It was very easy and quick to do.
Here's a link to my catalog.

Lesson 13- Online productivity tools

I looked at iGoogle and My Yahoo! for creating a personal webpage. Although I liked some of the features in Yahoo, I chose to create a webpage on iGoogle. I customized my Google browser a couple of days ago and some of that customization transferred to my webpage on iGoogle. I added a countdown feature for the 23 Things deadline on my webpage. I have 14 days left to finish! I'm not sure if I'll keep my iGoogle webpage.

A tool that I saw in this lesson that might be of interest to me is Scrybe. I liked how simple, flexible, and powerful their calendar and to-do features linked together. Currently, they aren't accepting new members though.

I didn't try Backpack, but it looks like it might be of interest in the future.

In the Challenge area, I've used Basecamp through work with Minitex. It has a lot of useful functions that have been used like RSS feeds, an online calendar, an area to share files, and a chat room (though it is limited to 4 users at a time), and other areas to communicate in large or small groups.

12. News / information sites

I looked at the Mixx, Digg, Newsvine, and Reddit news sites. I didn't care much for Mixx or Digg. Mixx seemed to have a lot of ads posted as news items, and Digg had too much information though it was organized well. I liked the simpler cleaner interfaces of Reddit and Newsvine. Reddit even had a couple of articles that I found of interest. Newsvine was neat because it had a "Local News" link that displayed articles from the area. Interestingly, there wasn't any news articles on the St. Charles fire though.

I'm not sure if these sites would be useful in a library setting unless it was linked with another information tool or tools. I originally thought that one of these sites might be useful for having current local news but the one place that had a Local news link didn't even have any stories on the current big story!

11- Tagging

I like the idea of giving websites descriptive tags. It provides another way to access them. I also like the idea of social bookmarking. I find the thought of being able to access my bookmarks without being tied to a specific computer, attractive. As for library uses, I could see Reference librarians creating a list of useful resources that all could share.

10th Thing- Wikis

I knew about wikipedia and had only a vague idea of how they actually work. It was interesting for me to learn how easy the whole process is. The 23 Things wiki really seemed to go all over the place subject-wise. The liked how wikis were used as Subject guides for a library system. As for the banning of using the Wikipedia for student research, I think it depends upon the topic and the maturity of the student.

Ninth Thing- Online Collaboration Tools

Both editing tools looked interesting and useful to use.

8. Sharing creations

This is a test to see if my badge appears. Yeah, it does!

I used Photobucket rather than Picture Trail because I didn't want to create yet another acct. I tried to use Lazybase but it wouldn't work. I was able to view what others have created for public use and liked what I saw. I have an eFolio account already.

I'm not sure how useful these tools would be in the library. Although they were not difficult to use, I don't see how I'd use any of these at work yet.

www.flickr.com

7. Web 2.0 Communication Tools

This lesson covered: email, IMing, Texting, and Web Conferencing. I'm comfortable using email and use it a lot at work and at home. I was aware of IMing but haven't really been interested in using it. I think it has limited functionality for my uses and I see it as a time waste. Texting might be something we could use at the Reference Desk to answer student questions. Twitter seems to be a hybrid between IMing and Texting. Web conferencing is a useful tool. I've been an attendee numerous times. The last Minitex Webinar that I was in was with the MEIR Task Force.

6th Thing- Online image generators

This was a fun activity. I liked seeing the Librarian trading cards from Carleton College. I think it's a creative way to market the library to the campus.

Here's the trading card that I created. I keep forgetting the imported images bump to the top!

Thing 5- More Flickr stuff

My creation
Originally uploaded by labluedogmn

This took me all morning to do and I think I have only a sketchy idea of how I did it.

I tried the Spelling API but wasn't able to get the picture on my blog. I do like the idea of sharing photos.

Although these were fun to play with, I'm not sure how applicable these would be for library uses.

4. Photosharing with Flickr

Here is the photo of something from work that I uploaded into Flickr. The site wasn't hard to use, I just had problems resizing a photo small enough so that I could use it as my buddy icon. Also, I wasn't thrilled about linking Flickr to my blog because it seemed that the registration process was too invasive.

I'm still on the fence as to whether I'd use Flickr for library things or not.