Week 9

Summary - I really enjoyed exploring the 23 Things in this program and I will definitely use many of them. I have signed up at the Loudoun Co. Library for RSS feeds of their BookNews on my Bloglines. I like getting notified on new materials so I set my Bloglines up to check for BookNews and other library news. I plan to do more exploring of the Mashup sites, such as the Yahoo Pipes. I also plan to go back and spend time on LibraryThing. I found accomplishing the program a bit difficult with the busy summer schedule; covering for co-workers on vacation break, kids on summer vacation, and the SRC. In order to finish the program, I worked mostly on it from home where I was able to find some uninterrupted time.

Week 9

Overdrive, Netlibrary, and Project Guttenberg - I did explore Netlibrary and Overdrive when they first were available. At that time, I downloaded an audiobook from Overdrive. Then I glanced through a Storytime ebook fom Netlibrary. Since I do not enjoy listening to audiobooks or spend that much time commuting, I did download and listen to a children’s book. Because I do not visit these sites regularly, I have again revisited these sites. This was an excellent review. On Overdrive, I downloaded a movie (the IMAX films are amazing), and adobe ebook (The Eensy-Weensy Spider, adapted by Mary Ann Hoberman). Then on Netlibrary, it is fabulous having access to many Storytime planning ebooks. I really should take more advantage of accessing them. While, I personally feel that I spend too much time in front of the computer, I believe having access to these materials are fantastic.

Week 9

Podcasts - I searched for library related podcasts on Podcast.net, however after finding one titled Open Stacks, I was unable to add it to bloglines. So I tried searching for Open Stacks on Yahoo Podcasts, and in their details the RSS feed address was available and I easily added it to bloglines. I then added OPLIN4cast and LibVibe to my bloglines. I also found Podcast Alley user friendly. I prefer using Yahoo Podcast. I find helpful to have access to library related news in one location on bloglines.

Week 9

This site is very addicting. I love this song performed by the Muppets, Jim Henson, Jerry Nelson and Frank Oz. Finding clips on YouTube was fun!

Week 8

Web 2.0 Award List - I had a bit of fun today checking out two widget sites - http://yourminis.com/ and http://springwidgets.com/. From the yourminis site, I copied a Quotes of the Day widget. Then from the springwidgets site, I copied an Etch-A-Sketch widget. Both of these fun widgets can be found at the bottom of this page. Take a moment to play with the Etch-A-Sketch. Just click on the screen and use the arrow keys to sketch. There were many neat widgets to choose such as; games, news, video, shopping and so on. They were so easy to add to my blog. Cute.

Week 8

Online Productivity Tools - I found Zoho writer http://writer.zoho.com easy to use for creating a document. However, I failed at publishing the document to this blog. So after many unsuccessful attempts, my frustration and the lack of time, I gave up and decided to write a post. I'll try again another time. I hope to have better luck with Google docs.

Week 7

Wikis & Sandbox Wiki - I first learned about wikis during LATI, when we used a wiki to contribute a few of our resources. At that time I could not see any great benefit for using a wiki. I thought that this would just be another location to have resources listed that would change and need to be updated. After some study, I now see the possibility of how this can be a used within the library system. Wikis would be a good tool for the collaboration of sharing ideas and resources for programs; such a place to brainstorm and contribute ideas for the Summer Reading Program. I added to the Sandbox wiki, my favorite children's books. I could have added many more, those were some of my top favorites.