Thing 23: Final Thoughts

I'm DONE!!!! Honestly I really enjoyed learning about everything on 23 Things. This is a great program and I hope everyone continues with it. Thank you to whoever created the program, I learned a lot and will continue to learn more about these tools and programs. I finally have an account with Facebook, so I feel like I am Mrs. Technology.

Thing 22: What did I learn today?

Participating in the 23 things has been great! I have learned so much new information and I know it is going to make a better librarian. I have already used some of the knowledge to help patrons. There are certain things that I feel I need to go back and look at again, retry and become more familiar with. There are the tools that I will be using often like, LibraryThing, Youtube, Facebook, and Del.icio.us.

I will definitely try to keep up with my blog, especially if I go back and retry some of the steps, I will have to keep of what I have learned again and what I have forgotten. All in all it has been a great experience. Thanks!

Thing 21: Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks

I actually have been a member to WebJunction for awhile. I joined after going to a meeting at work, where, we had representatives from WebJunction come a talk to us about their website and ways for us to improve our communication with English Language Leaner patrons. I receive e-mails with updated information to their website and I think it has very valuable information. Out of the three listed it is my favorite social network related to working in a library.

Thing 20: Facebook

So, I have been meaning to join either Facebook or MySpace for a while and never got around to it so I was glad to see this was one of the 23 things. I joined Facebook and found a lot of family and friends to become friends with already. Even though I feel many children can get themselves into trouble with these sites I can see why so many people use them. I found people I graduated with in high school just like that. I have a lot of information and pictures to download to it yet and many groups to join and friends to make but this is definitely one tool that I will be using after the 23 things is over.

Thing 19: Podcasts

I joined podcast.com and tried listening to a podcast about teaching and quite frankly it was really boring. I also tried listening to on about parenting but they could never find the rss connection. I don't know, maybe I would use this tool but to be honest I just am really not interested in it. I can only listen to and hear other peoples advice and opinions for so long and then I just want to pull my hair out.

Thing 18: You Tube

I Love You Tube. I do not get to spend as much time as I would like on You Tube but I do think it is a fun online tool. I think it would be a great idea for the library to be able to tape some of the events we have here, like character storytimes, the Summer Reading Program events and put clips online for people to see.

Thing 17: ELM Productivity Tools

Well, I didn't really understand what we were suppose to do for this thing. We have ELM as one of our data bases at our library, can't say I have used it a lot. Maybe if I was working in a college library where there was more of a demand for scholarly articles it would be more use to me. So I do not believe I will be using this tool very often.

Thing 16: Student 2.0 Tools

I am a procrastinator so these might have helped me out in college, but in some cases the only thing that would work for me is the fear of knowing the paper was due in a couple of days. I don't know if I would have listened to some website telling me to do and when to get things done. However I like the outline they get you, the step by step procedure on how to write a paper/presentation. I do think this tool would be helpful to parents though, it is hard to keep track of what your kids are suppose to be doing in school, this way you could have the website e-mail you what the deadlines are for your child's paper and ask them if they have completed it. The people I see using this website are the already super organized students and adults.

Thing 15: Libraries and Games

We have complaints from our patrons all the time about kids playing games on the computers. Really the problem is about a shortage of computers and adults thinking because they have work to do we should kick the kids off the computer. I see just as many adults playings as I do kids though, just my little rant for the night. I personally do not play a lot of video games at this current time in my life, two many children to take of. However, I have seen and tested some games and I do think they are fun. My only concern is people seem to get hooked and play for hours and hours without realizing they have actual real life to participate in. Don't get me wrong I like video games and I do think most do have a real educational value but some people take it to far, they shut out the rest of the real world,only focusing on video games. I even had a patron ask me before if we could stay open all night for him just so he could play video games. I mean come on, get a REAL LIFE!

Thing 14: LibraryThing

I Love, LOVE LibraryThing. What a great tool fro librarians to use, even teachers. I have my degree in Elementary Education and I would use this all the time for lesson planning. Using the tags would be able to help me find the books I was looking for, for whatever subject. I only have 34 books in my library right now but I can not wait to add more. This is great for planning storytime also, I will definitely able to keep track of books I've read so I can use them down the road.

I could see myself using this to help the parents, teachers, and day care workers who utilize our library. Most of the people I help want to know what I am reading, or what my favorite books are, always putting me on the spot. This would be an easy way to show them what I like to read to my kids as well as what I like to read for storytimes.

Thing 13: Online Productivity Tools

I went to igoggle to make a home page, it was quick and easy. I guess I will have to use for a couple of more days to see if I like it and if it is really necessary to me. I made a countdown for my 29th birthday, that was fun, I would have liked to make a countdown for each one of my pregnancy's, especially Charlie's, since she was born on her due date.

I think the online calendars could be a useful tool for me to use at work. It would be nice to have more room on my desk for other things but my calendar is always in the way, maybe I could actually be more organized using an online calendar. I set up onr through MSN Calendar because I have a hotmail account and it they will send messages and reminders to the people in your contact list.

I do not think the to-do lists would be very helpful to me. I do not really keep lists anyway. I do not like them, Sam I am. I found out very early my lists seem to get longer, not shorter and it seemed depressing, so my philosophy is if I forget to do something it must not have been really important anyway.

Thing 12: Do you Digg?

I guess I do not Digg. I checked out all four sites and I liked Digg and Mixx the best because they had either a tour or video for you to watch to explain how to use the site. With Reddit and Newsvine you basically had to surf the site to figure out what to do, I did not find these to sites to be very user friendly. Although I understand peoples need to be caught up on the latest news stories how accurate can the stories be without editors? There are already too many stories published with inaccurate information, I think these sites add fuel to the fire. However if I were to join one of these sites I would probably join Mixx. It was the site I spent the most time on and the one I most enjoyed learning about.

Thing 11: Tagging & Del.icio.us

I actually have never used Del.icio.us before, it was very easy to set-up an account and very user friendly. The great thing about Del.icio.us is you can access it from any computer unlike bookmarks where they are only available on the computer you work on. This way I will be able to access my favorite websites from work and at home instead of going through the hassle of trying to find the same website all the time.

I tagged some of my blogs, I understand the importance of tagging my blogs and the websites I choose to save but I have not had the need to use the tags yet. I am sure once I have hundreds of websites on my Del.icio.us account I will be glad I tagged everything.

Thing 10: Wikis

I guess I was surprised to hear so many libraries using wikis as a reference resource. I was always told not use wikis as a source of reference, especially when using "wikipedia". Because of this I never really used wikis before, or edited one, but it was easier than I thought it was going to be. I added a comment to the 23 things on a stick wiki, nothing important of course. I did read a comment on this wiki page that made me think, someone posed the question "what is the difference between wikis and Googledocs"? What is the difference, are they not both place for a group of people to come to edit and share information. Why do we need so many different ways to do this?

Thing 9: Online Collaboration

I tried, I tried, I tried! So I tried editing the Declaration of Independence document and failed! However I do understand the concept of it, and did read what other people had contributed to the document. I think I should try it out with some colleagues to see if it really is a time saver. I guess for me attaching documents to an e-mail is not a big deal and I usually do not have problems with it. I also can see how this would be useful to college students who have to work on group projects. I would have used this tool a lot when I was in college because it was always so hard to get group members together at the same time to work on paper. At my current job I do not have many group projects that I work on so I do not know if it would be useful to me but I can see how it would be a helpful to those who work in groups.

Thing 6

My creation
Originally uploaded by jessam5103

Charlie

Thing 8: Share your creations

I like Zoho, it was easy to use and navigate through. It is like using power point, which is useful in making presentations. So, I guess,l we would be able to use this in a library setting when it comes to giving presentations, teaching computer classes, or maybe even training in employees.

I could spend a ton of time on Picture websites, I went to Flicks and made a really cute picture of my littlest baby. I finally figured out how to download it to my blog. It seems that whenever I am downloading any of these fun pictures or designs they are added to the right side of my blog. I would like to add them with to either the left side or add them below my blog but I can't figure out how to do this. So right now the I have pictures at the bottom of my blog which I think are hard to find and you can't tell where to click to bring up the photos. I wish there was a way to be able to move these things around on your blog.

Thing 7: Web 2.0 Communication Tools

Well, of course, I use e-mail almost everyday-who doesn't? We use e-mail at work among co-workers, it is a great way to send out important information to everyone without having to hold a meeting. We use e-mail with our patrons, there is a feature on our website where patrons can "ask a librarian" a question. We also use e-mail to inform our patrons when books/items have arrived and also for overdue notices. We have not stepped into the world of text messaging the reference librarians at our library yet. I do not know if I would like to provide this service or not. Some patrons tend to treat us like doormats and if we keep offering different ways for patrons to keep getting a hold of us we will be constantly answering phones, replying to e-mails and now text messages. When will be able to help the people who actually take the time to come into the library. I think text messaging would be great among co-workers but not for patrons to use. Maybe that makes me sound old, but part of me just really does not like to text either. I'm not a texter.

As for IM, I think this is a great tool. I like seeing when my friends are on-line. It is fun to have a conversation with them this way. For me I am able to multi-task when I am Instant Messaging someone. Also if my kids are screaming or throwing a fit the person I am talking to can't hear it on the other line.

6th Thing- Online Image Generators

This was fairly easy to do. At first I couldn't figure out why me Trading card picture wouldn't show up on my blog but then I realized I had to save it to my computer and then upload the picture. The Image Chef website is a lot of fun too, but there is so much time involved in just playing around with the website and looking at what is all offered. If I were to use these tools to help advertise it would take me a long time to decide what to use.

5th Thing- More Flickr Fun

These tools are fun to use and play with and I can see how they would be fun to use for advertising programs but it seems more like playing around rather than working to me. Sure it is fun but I couldn't help but think I was wasting some time doing these little projects. I also couldn't get the pictures where I wanted them to go on my blog. They are at the bottom of my blog and I would like them to be towards the top. Maybe I will eventually figure it out. Otherwise they where pretty easy to use and I was able to figure out how to get everything onto my blog.

Storytime with Clifford

Storytime with Clifford
Originally uploaded by jessam5103

This is Sam meeting Clifford at Storytime. As you can see we are being a little shy.

4th Thing- Photosharing

Flickr is AWESOME!! I love taking pictures and sharing them so learning about Flickr has been a lot of fun for me. I created my own Flickr account and uploaded some pictures from our library's digital camera to my account. This was very easy to do . The only confusing part of this assignment to me was when we were ask to upload images to our blog, it took me awhile to figure this part of the assignment out. But I was able to upload pictures and create a link to one of my pictures from the Flickr account to my blog. All in all I am pretty proud of myself for being able to figure it all out.

I think our library would benefit greatly by putting pictures on a Flickr account. I did find out out library does have an account but it does have some old pictures on it and none of the new recent events that we have been holding at the Library. Which is to bad because we don't get dressed up in Monkey suits and sing silly songs for nothing. We need people to see all the great things we are doing here and looking at all the great photos we have would be one way to do this.

3rd Thing-Learn about RSS

I did not know what RSS was. Turns out it is pretty easy to do and quite a useful tool. I had some trouble at first trying to figure out how to subscribe to certain blogs or websites but once I realized how simple it was I was able to breeze right through the lesson. I even found a super cool "LOST" blog to subscribe to so I can keep up with all the latest information about my favorite TV show.

Really I have been waiting for a tool like this, I have so many websites I visit on a regular basis, it will be so easy to keep track of everything now. I have my degree in Education and I use Bookmarks all the time to try to keep track of all of the really great education sites there are on the web. Using RSS is sort of like using Bookmarks except it lets you know if any new information is posted right away. It is fast, simple and easy.

2nd Thing - Learning about Library 2.0

The libraries of today are nothing like the libraries I remember using as a kid. I actually am pretty proud of our little library and how advanced it is compared to other libraries in our region. The librarians who work at this library are the very type of librarians who would be able to instill Library 2.0 to other staff and our patrons. Many of us just started working on 23 Things and the buzz and excitement created by just learning about Avatar and setting up a blog was so much fun to watch. We all are sharing our blog pages with each and are all excited to learn about the 23 things.

As for Library 2.0 our library already does provided some new activities for our patrons, for example we have a monthly game night at our library. I have heard staff talk about adding a blog to our website as well as wikis and other web tools, hopefully after we all complete 23 Things this will be a goal we will complete in the future.

On John Blyberg's blog he quoted Sarah Houghton's definition of L2, in it she mentions libraries having a "collaborative photo site". This was interesting to me since we have a character storytime, where someone dresses up as a favorite children's character. We read stories and have special crafts around the theme of the character. There are always so many cute kids who show up for the event, they will take pictures with the character and make a special crafts. We have a digital camera for use here at the library and I am able to get pictures of some of the kids and I have always wished there was a way to post all of the pictures for the community to see. Having a collaborative photo site would be one way to be able to share all of these priceless pictures with everyone. But a question I have about posting pictures is "Do we have to have parents sign a release form in order to post the pictures?" This would be such an nice way to promote the library but I feel it is something we could not accomplish if we would need to keep track of release forms from parents. Does anybody else post pictures and if you do, how do you do it?

1st Thing

Setting up the blog was actaully pretty easy, even you can do it Denise. I did like creating the Avatar, it is like playing paper dolls on the computer. I do wish the Avatar had more clothing options!! I also need more kids to add to my picture but it would only allow my to have the one. This is my first blog that I have created, after 23 things I will have to create my own personal blog.

1st Blog

This is my first blog, hope I don't mess it up. I am a mother of three beautiful children and I also am the Children's Librarian at the Public Library in our town. As a librarian I am kind-of embarrassed I have not blogged before but whatever, I'm lucky I got to take a shower before coming to work today.