Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue.....

Gimme my chocolate frog!!!!!

I made it....eventually.....

What a useful learning experience this has been. All jokes and fooling around aside.

a) I've found a use for Saturday evenings, and a way to get the computer for myself each week/fortnight..."I've got Learning 2.0 stuff that HAS to be finished "for work""

b) I've been taught about programs/software/media/websites etc that I may have heard about but didn't really know much/anything about

c) I've thought hard about my profession - where it is going, where I am going, how we (CCLC) can be going - and how this technology can be integrated into the working day and how it can benefit our patrons

d) I've had fun....... (and frustrations, and joy, and lots of thoughts going through my head)

e) I've forgotten a lot of the things I learned at the start and want to go back to refresh those ideas

f) I'm hoping to learn more about other emergent technologies so that I can be more of a mover and shaker

g) I've created some terrible blog headlines, and mis-used a number of beautiful and famous songs

h) I've learned who reads my blog posts and who doesn't (well at least who does anyway)

i) I've integrated bloglines, blogs, twitter, facebook, YouTube, del.icio.us, wikis, podcasts into my daily life. The online generators I know I will use sporadically. And I'm going to ignore librarything and rollyo (I think). Flickr - jury's out.

j) I've created a list of 10 things I learned and now I can go to bed happy.... I really AM going to dream about that chocolate frog.....YIPPEE!!!!

Are you hearing me????

So, nearly there!

Had a quick look at the Audiobooks section. A lot of the links don't work on CCLC 2.0 site, but if you click on one of them (I forget which one) you can get to the others.

I had a look and most of the titles on the free sites are the ones that are out of copyright and are "classics" - not really my cup of tea.

I had a quick glance a the Overdrive demo site and I can see that the titles there are more recent, and it looks like it can be integrated into the library catalogue quite seamlessly (the screen dump even looked like Unicorn!!) although there is a cost per title. This would still be a useful alternative to processing and shelving items. The "small cost" per item would surely outweigh our current costs per item, to process, send and shelve...particularly given the amount of recent stock that gets deleted for book sales..... I feel this could be a worthwhile part of the collectionand I am pretty sure it is something that the collection team are evaluating for the future....

Peas in a pod

I've tried to have a look at the podcasting sites mentioned on the 2.0 site.

podcast.net and podcasts.yahoo.com both don't seem to want to go to websites (both are 404s). podcastalley.com is totally American. The sites that are there when you search for the word "Melbourne" are either about Melbourne in the USA or are really old or don't have a lot of material on them. Most only seem to go to 2006 and I think there must be a lot more available than that.


I am hoping to do further research on this one, but my PC is running slow while I download my video to YouTube - argh!!! frustrating......

Incidentally when you type in podcasts in google.com.au the first site after Wikipedia to come up is Radio National, I think this is awesome, then Triple J, then a couple of other Aussie sites - yippee! I've also just subscribed to Roocast a feed on Aussie music, presented from South Melbourne. I've added that feed to Bloglines, and they make it very easy to add to your iTunes as well.

I think this is something I may try to investigate further WHEN I HAVE MORE TIME!!! (hahaha)

Had a quick look at Audacity - the open source software for recording and editting sounds - this looks like a good program for converting old cassettes etc as well as recording new stuff. Again, something I;d like to investigate further...one day.....

U-turn

Well, here we are on another exciting Saturday evening at my house. I've been looking at YouTube. Actually I've found my husband spending more time on YouTube than me...
Anyway, I'm going to try and embed a video on to my blog. This is for all the Midnight Oil fans out there!
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=LBORTHao3eo#
Will it work?
Well at least you can click on the link. I had hoped to embed the YouTube box on my site but I can't get the embed URL to work and the Help screens are not helpful :(
Give me another couple of hours and I might've loaded one of my own videos to YouTube anad then I will add it to my blog..... meanwhile I'll have a look at podcasting


Here it is, Blogger for some reason had a hernia about embedding the source code, but here is the URL:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw_mieNxVbM

Enjoy?!?

Web 2.0 - and the winners are...

So I thought I'd have a look at an honorable mention that intigued me. It's called www.onesentence.org. Similar in scope to Twitter (I think) and basically people can submit their sentence, summarising their life (or part of it). My sentence was "A house is just a building, but a home is a house with memories". You have to wait to see if it has been approved by the website owner, and he allows a part of his site for "Unapproved entires" where anyone can then approve/disapprove sentences - some of the sentences there are crap... You then get an email when your sentence is approved (I'm just waiting for my approval now - I hope).

Now I've just looked at Twitter and added it to my blog and facebook site.

Now I'm going to look at the multi award winning site called "my bed" - goodnight, another exciting Saturday night at home.

Google docs

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pW6LlJoqweXxjww55RBljBw&hl=en_GB#

Let's see how this works.....
Scary..........it works!!!

Zoho......hmmmm

Thought I'd got the hang of this. Managed to create a user name, create a document, and theoretically add it to my blog. Now it's somewhere in cyberspace, and I can't find it on my blog anywhere. Let's see if it just somehow magically turns up...or maybe I'll ask someone....

The potential for this kind of service is staggering, and if I can figure out how to really use it, I think it will be awesome.

POST SCRIPT - FOUND IT IN MY DRAFTS (NOT SURE HOW I FOUND MY DRAFTS BUT THAT'S A WHOLE NEW BALL GAME) ANYWAY - SEE PREVIOUS POST, 'COS THAT'S WHAT THIS REFERS TO. I DARE YOU TO CLICK ON THE LINK. Click the second part of the link and it should work.....

The previous post was actually created in Zoho Writer and added to my blog, all by myself - yippee! and it even looks seamless... It's just remembering the User IDs and passwords for all these sites that I can't remember.

I also just tried gOffice... see the link. I tried saving as PDF. It created a PDF but I can't get it attached to my blog. (The text from it is below, but the font has changed to Arial and it is obviously just text and not a PDF. I think I was expecting miracles. At least it does let you creat a PDF without having to have Adobe Writer.

"Greetings earthlings. This gOffice seems OK but it doesn't let you change font and I don't like Times New Roman. It also doesn't auto-correct typos.
Interesting concept. I want to see how it looks as a PDF document."

Jumping into the Zoho world

Well, here we all are then....

I am feeling that this service, explained quite nicely (I think) in Common Craft's video (http://www.commoncraft.com/) about camping is a great idea.

I had forgotten which site I saw this explained on, but then I remembered it was amongst my del.icio.us tags on my browser (gee, I've learned heaps!)... I'm starting to sound like I've got a bit of a handle on all this technology I've been learning about.

Hang on - now's the time to get (vaguely) smart....just a mo.....

<a href="http://www.fodey.com/generators/animated/talking_tomato.asp%22%3E%3Cimg src="http://r5.fodey.com/13f3e74a27f10402092ef1b02705279c7.1.gif" border=0 width="260" height="160" alt="gif animation"></a>

CLICK ON THE LINK....I DARE YOU TO.....SEE WHAT YOU FIND....IT SHOULD BE FUN!!!

Anyway, I think I'll quit while I might be ahead

Playing in the sandpit

I guess I figured I'd learned enough tonight, but then I had to play in the SandBox created by PLCMC.
A bit frustrating. I could add my favorite musical tastes (quite bland really, but I did it on the first go).

Then I tried to add my blogspot and had heaps of troubles.

First it would link, then it wouldn't, then when I copied and pasted Darryl's link from the top, it linked to Darryl's page (not surprising), then I had fun with brackets, then without them, and every time I went to save the page, it would say I wasn't connected to the web (which I was), and I'd hit save again and it then saved.

Well, I did it. I posted to a wiki. I feel a little like my son must feel when he discovers he CAN reach further than he thought into the plastics cupboard in the kitchen. I just hope I don't get stuck in the cupboard under the shelf like he does... I really should have taken a picture - it was really funny, and then he did it again (hahaha).

Wiki, wiki - not so tricky

What to say about Wikis.... I found this session REALLY interesting, and I didn't think I would. I had a discussion recently with a university librarian friend who said that their library was putting EVERYTHING online so that it wouldn't disadvantage distance education (DE) students. Her feeling was that putting everything online was in fact disadvantaging the on campus students who weren't using all the library facilities and clarifying/chatting/communication with the library staff in real time.
Anyway, I was thinking along those same lines that perhaps everything being online wouldn't be a good idea in some circumstances.
I then spent this evening discovering more about wikis. I still have some trepidation about adding content to wikis but the YouTube video (about camping) eas an excellent example, and I also found a lot of value fom the libsuccess (http://libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Main_Page) page - which I have added to my del.icio.us page....
I can see how we could use this at CCLC - the Staff Event on Sept 12, Book chats (sharing book reviews so you don't have to reinvent the wheel), processes for gaming consoles etc,etc. Instead of a staff intranet, I feel this would be a (perhaps) better way to go.
I'd appreciate hearing from others on this one.....

2.0

Lots to think about once you start to view just a tiny piece of the information pie that exists about Library/Web 2.0. I found this quite confronting.

I read the articles on the OCLC page, and I quite liked the comments Rick Anderson made http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/2.htm.

I expecially liked his points that we are no longer a "just in case" proposition, that education is KEY and that we shouldn't be waiting for patrons to come to us. To me it points to us focussing on people rather than things/physical resources.
I realise that there needs to be relevant resources available for patrons however, I am feeling that there needs to be enough capable, up-to-date staff to meet, greet and provide services to those patrons.

(Side rant) I still feel that we are doing ourselves a disservice in the way libraries and librarians are marketed. WE know we've changed, but SOOOO many of our clients don't realise!!!

If we were to promote our library courses as "marketing 101, information technology, media, client-centred, visible, social" rather than "library, books, cataloguing, quiet, shh, computers" we would get a COMPLETELY different group of people applying to be "Librarians" (scratch that "Information Detectives, Social Investigators, Media Specialists")

Anyway, I feel more of us "ID/SI/MS people" (see above) need to embrace Library 2.0 and beyond so that we are relevant and competent to be able to provide active and attractive product to those we serve.

Technorati, shmecknorati

Wasn't really enthralled by this site. Too many self absorbed people spending Saturday night adding posts to their blog or looking at other people's blogs.....pathetic really...... get a life :)

Yum, yum, yum

Del.icio.us - I thought this would be better than it is. I have registered (http://del.icio.us/MexicanStorm) and I can see that getting the websites you use a lot and tagging them could be useful.
I would like to see how I can access these at work. I did check out a library website that was using Delicious, and it looked like it could be quite a powerful medium. As yet, I don't really know anyone else using this site. I think I need to experiment further, a quick look at this service doesn't do it justice. Could we perhaps get some more help/insight about this from the Info Team or from another of the CCLC Learning 2.0 participants who is using this and how they find it???

Rolllin', rollin', rollin...raw hide....

Rollyo - can't really see the point. Tried to set up a site. Don't have that many sites that I go to regularly that I want to search. Not really impressed. Oh well...

Library Thing...you make my heart sing...you make everything groovy... Library Thing

Well, I'm not sure how I actually link this, but I've done it...don't think I'll make much use of it though.
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/MexicanStorm

Why don't you all f-f-f-ade away (talking 'bout my generation)

This week was all about generators. It took me a while to get into it, but once I found a few that I liked I felt happier. Hopefully I can figure out how to attach them now. I can see that (again) you could spend a lot of time mucking around on these sights, and a couple seemed like a waste of time. Pizza's here now, gotta go.....

We are the Storm from Melbourne town, we'll blow the others off the ground, we are the Storm and we're number one

So I've now had a quick look at Bloglines news feed and can either get generic Rugby League items, or stipulate my search tems "melbourne storm" and just get the stories I'm actually interested in.
In case anyone's interested, the heading is actually the Melbourne Storm theme song...BTW - hope they beat the Titans on Monday, even though they'll be without half the team and the coach because of Origin duties.
I think it could get rather addictive with news feeds etc. I think I'll have to be judicious with what I get pushed to me, as this could take over your life.

Bloglines (na na na na na na na na) Bloglines (sung to the theme of Batman)

I reckon I've spent about an hour and a half playing with Bloglines and RSS feeds. I certainly feel I have a bit more of an understanding, however I'm sure I've really only found the tip of the iceberg. I'm finding it quite difficult to find the time to really evaluate all these wonderful tools, and I am falling behind (supposed to be on Week 6 now, oh well).

I think it will be good to be able to see all the interesting things that are occurring out there in Internet Land. I would like to find more time to really have a look at the News Feeds. The last company I worked for was really pushing this just as I left and I could see the potential but I never really had a full understanding of how it was utilised.

Push technology has come a long way and is so sophisticated. I guess when you are time poor this is a godsend, however are we time poor because there is too much information and we are being information gluttons? I think of the "poor people" in Africa who are theoretically "so poor" yet how much richer they are in relationships because they are concentrating on the things that matter rather than seeing how many feeds they can fit in their day..... rant over. Batman will now go back to the bat cave :)

Make a wish

Make a wish
Originally uploaded by julianf1972

I just figured out how to do this (with help!!!)

(All sing together)...Flickr, flickr, flickr the bush kangaroo

Tonight I've been trying to figure out Flickr. I'm still not sure if it's a dolphin, kangaroo or other kind of animal. I think I'll stick with my 3rd option.....

If I wasn't so photo security conscious I think I could get into this. I really liked the "last 7 days" option on Flickr, and I think that some/most of the photos there are awesome. The colors and angles are great. Even the most mundane subject matter is given a new view.

Only problems I've had tonight are: 1) trying to get the fonts to work in my favour 2) figuring out how to edit blogs and 3) figuring out how to use Flickr blogging to add interesting pictures.... I need help...

I also had a look at Big Hue Labs Trading Cards, particularly the Librarian ones. Some look really fun. One use I saw is for a school (?) library's students to get to know its' staff. Perhaps something like this might be fun for our staff or patrons????

I could also get used to this for creating birthday cards of the family!!!

One giant leap for womankind - but does it always have to be in heels?

Righty-ho...

Read the Introduction...check
Completed the 7.5 learning habits tutorial....check
Created a blog.....check
Landed on the moon.....check
Orchestrated world peace....check

That's enough learning for one day :)