Wednesday, August 29, 2007

THE END: Week 9, Thing 23

Hope I can remember some of the eye-opening tools I was exposed to during this journey. I have kept notes which should help me find some things I would like to go back to. Already some of the things I have been able to put to use (especially those related to photography) and have been able to pass on to my grandson (especially podcasting, which he didn't know much about). He's looking forward with fear to the day I upload a video onto his MySpace.
In summary, I'm not sure how often I'll be using many of the cataloging components, but at least I know more about what can be done. And now I can look forward to maybe winning a Wii!
HAPPY BLOGGING!

DISCOVERIES: Week 9, Thing 22

I was surprised to see what titles were listed among the Top 100 Books Yesterday in Gutenberg, which I explored after completing the Overdrive guided tour. My choice from that would be Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome, which I should have studied before pursuing my English major in college! What I enjoyed most was obtaining free temporary access to the Classical Archives of music, permitting me to wind up the day by listening to the "Spanish Dance" from Swan Lake. You just never know what a day of working for a library can bring! And what a great and appropriate way to wind up Learning 2.0 - with a swan song!

Friday, August 24, 2007

DISCOVERIES: Week 9, Thing 21

Viewed tutorials and posted a feed. Downloaded audacity for creating a podcast sometime in the future.
Podcast.net - The Podcast Directory

Podcast testing

This podcast contains some interesting material. Hope the link works.

http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

DISCOVERIES: Week 9, Thing 20

Explored some videos and added a few to my blog.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

DISCOVERIES: Week 8, Things 18 and 19

With 19 Things completed, I'm entering the homestretch, looking forward to Week 9 exercises which, I don't think, can be done readily via home dial-up. (Maybe in the process I'll discover how to make podcasts etc. work better from my home computer.) Saw many impressive Web 2.0 award winners in mashups, marketing and photo categories. Picasa looks like a winner for efficiently categorizing dozens of libraryland digital photos.

Zoho zounds good

A real eye-opener that warrants further exploration. Wonderful potential for collaborative editing for brochures, reports, etc. I see another opportunity here to impress my daughter with my new found knowledge and to let her in on a tool she could readily use for doing her job.

cool

(posted from Zoho)

DISCOVERIES: Week 7, Thing 17

Playing in the sand box was fun, as promised, and I managed to add this blog to the list. Wow! So many interesting new things to try.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

DISCOVERIES: Week 7, Thing 16

Veni, Vidi, Wiki (or was it Vici) and explored with great interest the many uses and possibilities of Wikis (not to mention the plethora of imaginative names given to the tool - as another variation I offer up the word "stikiwiki" for consideration). Purist that I am (to put it politely), I was disappointed that I could not try my hand at editing the misspelling of "congreagation" in one of the entries because I didn't have the necessary password and couldn't take the time to get one. But that was my only disappointment. The possibilities seem endless. Princeton's Book Lovers Wiki was amazing as was St. Joe's Subject Guides. There's all kinds of potential for the creation of community wikis and great repositories for collecting customer testimonials, not to mention idea sharing. Of particular interest to me are the possibilities for collaborative editing of things like brochures. Some of the examples on MERLIN such as You Send It invite further exploration. Right now I want to play in the Sandbox.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

PEACE AND QUIET







Libraries serve
as "mind gyms"
away from technohastle
with comfy chairs,
quiet and good light.

DISCOVERIES: Week 6, Thing 15

Libraries worry too much about their future. After reading Perspectives and Library 2.0 definitions, it's clear to me that some of their best thinkers and leaders already have the right ideas and ultimately neo-Library 4.0 will emerge. All libraries have to do is stay tuned to their users and "what floats their boat," and eventually as promised the effects of connecting the digital and the sensual will evolve into libraries that become mind gyms - better yet, "knowledge spas" (I love that term) - for meditation, relaxation, and immersion in a luxury of ideas and thought, existing in WiFREE space, away from technohastle, with comfy yet practical chairs (yes, vinyl can be comfortable, please don't take the chairs away), peace and quiet, good light, coffee and a few desserts.

DISCOVERIES: Week 6, Things 13 and 14

Things 13: Had to pass on the alternative podcast tutorials for del.icio.us on my home computer which operates on dial-up. After a cursory exploration of us.ef.ul and Habits of Successful del.icio.us Users, etc., I decided to move on to something that would be more useful for my purposes. I wondered if the prevalence of tagging is making searches by Google etc. too cumbersome in the long run by bringing up too many possibilities. It was, however, interesting to view other library home pages. I thought one library's Lost in Blogs idea of "What's for Dinner" with recipes from a book or magazine in the collection was a good idea for summer reading for adults.

Things 14: The idea of trying to organize the 100 million blogs that probably exist in blogsphere by now seems like a daunting task. In the process of examining the process and results, after locating and bookmarking Boing Boing, I inadvertently stumbled across the No. 1 video "everything in the known universe about noelia." Hmm, I wondered, who is that, before finding my answer on Videochismes, along with links to many sites that could have resulted in being tossed out and banned from the library forever had I been sitting at one of the public computers. Foiled once again, this time because of my Adobe Flash which is out of date, I was unable to view Noelia or any other video on YouTube. Incidentally, I wondered whether or not tagging is providing challenges to blocking and filtering materials not meant to be seen by eyes of the very young.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Random Thoughts About Aging

Since it's not fashionable to reveal one's age, I didn't give one in my profile. There must be a reason for hiding one's age, for example in resumes and news releases: it keeps people from thinking "he's too old," "he's not old enough" or "he's old enough to know better." In my case, suffice it to say I'm old enough that being cool doesn't matter to me anymore. An advantage of this is that I don't have to run around with my underwear showing (not that I ever did).

Let's just say I'm old enough to become confused by some of the terms I've run across lately while wading my way though 23 Things and discovering they're not what I thought they were, e.g., MERLIN (a magician), MEEZ (someone's last name), RSS (the initials of a friend), OPAL (a gem stone), ROLLYO (something you do with your hole card in poker), pod (housing for peas), AVATAR (some kind of automobile), Del.icio.us (a thick coffee milkshake made with coffee ice cream and coffee syrup), tag (a game played in the back yard). Not to mention WIKIs (what burns in the middle of a candle) and WIIs (as in "whee," that was great).

Even so, although I might never find a constructive use for Rollyoing and some of the other cataloging-type tools that would force me to become organized, I realize that where there's a will there could be a Wii (something I long to have). Besides, there have been some rewarding "ahas" that have occurred along the way, and so I forge ahead.

How old am I? I'll never tell. :-)

Saturday, July 21, 2007


Discovery Week 5: Thing 12 Rollyo

Managed to create a Rollyo. I wasnt successful in being able to upload my bookmarks and choose sites from them nor was I able to create a searchbox. Perhaps I'll go back to both. Becoming somewhat frustrated with the Del.icio.us thing - the 12-minute video doesn't show up. Oh well.

Monday, July 16, 2007

The rest of the story ...

All is well in blogland - at least for now. The template problems must have worked themselves out so that eventually all of my entries were appearing in my chosen template. As for inserting the photo into the Profile - that's another story. Once I finally deciphered the instructions (I'm a bit of a slow learner), I posted the edited jpeg version and used the HTML editor, but was never able to make it turn up in the Profile, so I gave up on that (I learned later that it might have worked if I had known which part of the HTML line to copy). Being persistent (stubborn?), I forged ahead using the existing avatar that was on the post until, by trial-and-error, I managed to copy the correct portion of the ID and - voila - after pasting it where it belonged, the image popped into place.

Now I can get back on track. I have realized that I can save time by printing out the Week Discovery directions and exercises for fast reference.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

CONFUSED

It appears that I now have two or three templates in the works! What do I do now?

Help

Not sure how to save new template choice - it doesn't seem to be working.

Time Out

Took some time out from working on the Discoveries to figure out how to add the avatar photo to my profile. It took a while before I was able to figure it out. Onward.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Experimenting

Avatar

Trying to figure out how
to add this to my profile
before deleting it from
this post.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Discovery

Week 5: Thing 11
Created my own library.
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/rschaefe

Discovery


Week 5: Thing 10

Had fun playing David Hockney

by Hockneyizing my grandson

and his band.

Hooray

Yahoo! Avatars U.K. & Ireland Meet the safari hunter!

Avatar creation

Yahoo! Avatars U.K. & Ireland
This shows the page where my avatar lives. Can't seem to save the avatar to paste in somewhere else. Is it possible?

Monday, July 9, 2007

Discoveries

My Blogline
http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs

Discovery

Week 4: #8 and #9: Learned the meaning of RSS and set up a Blogline newsreader account with some 15 entries, including MERLIN. Began to facilitate the ability to podcast via Audacity. Located a YouTube tutorial for future exploration. In spite of having spent much wasted time alerting grandchildren to the dangers of MySpace, actually became tempted to join the ranks of social networking by ninging and and winking (who wouldn't want a Wink Widget all their own?). MEEZ was a little frustrating - it slowed me down considerably, as did the speaking faces.
Not sure if I have anything worth blogging about, but I found some fascinating sites which opened many new doors. One of my goals is to learn how to create a video that I can post on YouTube and maybe send to my grandson's MySpace site!

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Success

I managed to figure out what I wasn't doing right and have set up a Blogline with 13 feeds. Hooray!

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Blogline

Tried to create a blogline - need to try again!

Monday, July 2, 2007

Digital bridging

Thanks to the magic of digital photography, four family members were able to photograph festivities at a large graduation party and immediately afterwards compare results. The best of the bunch will be sent via e-mail, combined and burned onto a CD for various family members - and maybe even mounted on Flickr for the whole world to see and admire!

Discovery Week 3: No. 6

Learned about "mashups" and creative things to do with Flickr tools such as Mappr, Flckr color and Montager. Any marketing possibilities for original trading cards? Immortalized my grandson by wharholizing a photo of him playing guitar with his band.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Discovery post

Week 2: #4 registered blog
Week 3: #5 explored Flickr and downloaded a couple of photos - next time need to download photos before creating text

Tattoos that wash off.


Fun for Hogwarts fans

Members of a Harry Potter Club joined 200 other fans of all ages who climbed aboard the Knight Bus when it parked outside of the Cockeysville Library June 15. While they were waiting, many of them visited the face painting station or the craft tables and enjoyed refreshments being offered indoors.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Discovery post

Discoveries:
Never thought much about Learning Habits discussed in Week 1 and 2. Hooray - I created my first blog in Week 3 Things. Learned for the first time about Blogger Mobile, which I thought was cool and of possible value. Boo hoo, my phone service was not on the list of participants. Wondered about the possible application of using digital postcards for BCPL marketing purposes.

DISCOVERY: Week 1, Thing 2

It was interesting to examine Learning Habits which I never gave much thought to heretofore. Of all, Habit 3 (viewing problems as challenges) would be the most difficult to master, but certainly worthwhile. It's easy to get weighed down with barriers. The easiest is probably Habit 5 (creating a learning toolbox). I always seem to manage finding a way to equip myself with new technology gadgets and tools that I think I need.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

blogger novice

My first attempt to join the ranks of bloggers.