Thing 23 - the end of it all!

Hmmm - I loved Youtube, Librarything is wonderful, and the RSS feeds are great since I used up every last available memory cell in creating all the account names and passwords that these exercises demanded. I will continue to be a lifelong learner, and pursue a greater understanding of new technologies and how we can use them in today's libraries.
Surprises? Only that I struggled with some exercises I thought would be a cinch and flew through others that had me worried. I did learn I'm not nearly as good at following directions as I should be by now. That surprised me because it truly was not out of laziness, but out of being so distracted by everything else in life, I tend to try and jump right to the final step. I will do better! The 2nd greatest obstacle I have right now in my quest as a learner is my refusal to pay $70/month for high-speed internet. That would be the only change I'd make before embarking on this kind of project again.

Thing 22 Podcasts

Lots of interesting stuff out there. I added a link to the SIRLS U of Arizona Podcast page that deals with a lot of the techno questions we've been discussing in 23 things. I'll have to make more of an effort to explore all the info that's out there.

Thing 21 Online Video

Nothing screams Country Bumpkin like "Cletus Take The Reel" by Tim Hawkins, so that is my featured film for this blog. Youtube is great, makes me wish I could afford broadband at home. Of course that would just lead to a serious online addiction. I could browse through these films for hours.
It would be fun to post our teen theater to Youtube this summer, or video some of our SRC programs with links on the KDL webpage.

Thing 20 Special Treat

The machine is us! Wow, I loved this clip, an amazing commentary on everything we've been talking about, on all the Things we're currently exploring. I'm not sure if this clip is intended for general audiences, but can you imagine if this were played on the TV? What kind of reactions and blogs it would inspire! I hope that more people are rethinking all the traditional norms, all the way things are changing, or are going to have to change if trends continue, or should I say as trends continue to link us all more thoroughly and immediately.
What have we gotten our selves into?

Thing 19 Digital Music

Yes, I've tried listening to an on-line radio station, but . . . ahh-hemm, Dial-Up! Need I say more? And yes, I've considered down-loading music from an on-line store, but again, see above.
However, I have tried a few file-sharing sites, mostly for kid songs. One in particular was Macjams.com, tailored specifically to Mac users (I wonder if I'm looked down upon for being a PC geek). But I did find some very fun songs, and intend to use such sites as needed to find silly, free songs to incorporate into story time activities.

Thing 18 Social Networking

I could talk about this topic for a long time, but I guess I'll limit it to the obvious. Social networking has so many benefits - find others just like you, find out anything in an instant, find new friends/confidantes/business contacts/sources of revenue. It's so great, who thinks about the bad things, right? The fact that millions of teens will trust, fully rely on, and follow the advice of virtual (no-pun intended) unknowns. People go online and become whoever they wish they were, or whoever they think you want them to be. There's something to be said for living in a fantasy world for a little while each day, but many people don't have a clue about reality, they can't cope with not being the image they have created online, and therefore cannot function in the face of demands, such as a boss, a job, face-to-face confrontation. I have a MySpace account, but it is private, used only for sharing pictures and ideas with close friends. I don't feel the need to live there, and I really worry about the upcoming generations who know nothing but online relationships. People need the skills of both the older generation's face-to-face mentality, as well as the ability to navigate the web and new technologies.
On top of that, there is the worry of authenticity. A teacher recently brought her class to the library, so that I could stress the importance of verifying sources when researching. These kids will believe anything that anyone takes the time to type up. If it's on the world wide web, it must be true, right? And if 2 million other teens believe it as well, and read about it in all their friends blogs, it must be better to follow their lead than believe anything, say, a parent, doctor, lawyer, police officer, or other authority figure might tell them. Just call me Negative Nancy!

Thing 17 Wikis

Wikis are an interesting source of info. I like the resources available for recommending books found at http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Recommending_books. Those types of wikis are handy, more updated than my own mind and have input from many different people, which make them all the more likely to help me do my job better. I also like the fact that library wikis give the patrons a chance to perform their own readers advisories and share their reactions to recent reads.

Thing 16 Technorati

A sad thought - today I realized that at the ripe old age of 32 I am a geezer. I explored Technorati, I did a search for "Learning 2.0" and my biggest thought was "So what?" I just don't get it! What is the purpose of this site? I went to their Top 100 Blogs and clicked on the most popular site Boing Boing. Now with a name like that, you'd think that the tag "boing" would have a million things connected to it - the results were a big fat 0.
I searched for the word "toddler" thinking I might find something fun to incorporate into my story times, not a thing came up that I found useful.
Sorry to be negative, but this stuff is just not relevant to my daily existence. I liked the "Learning 2.0 discussion" found at http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2007/08/interview-about-learning-20.html and maybe his explanation of the different neural wiring provides an answer to my discontent with this glorious piece of technology - apparently I'm just wired wrong!

Thing 15 Del.icio.us

Hmmm, I'm sure it has it's purposes, but I don't see my self doing this. I was impressed by the tutorial on YouTube, and the idea of del.icio.us, but the actual experience was kind of blaaahh! I mean letting people do your research for you is a really good thing, but if I have so many points of reference that I need this site to remember them for me, then I am suffering from information overload and don't really need to know anyway. Maybe I'm just no good at coming up with topics to search, but the results of my del.icio.us searches were pretty run of the mill and not at all worth tagging.

Thing14 Web 2.0 Awards

Well, once again going to go with the book thing (they are a particular favorite of mine). I had already tried Librarything and found it very useful. So I thought why not check out the 1st place winner, LuLu. But that seems to focus more on the publishing and structure of the books, not a lot of recommendations or useful features for doing my job (however, someday I will finish that novel, self publish with LuLu and become an underground sensation). So I choose Biblio as my new favorite Web 2.0 Thing! Like Librarything, it has a user friendly, easy to follow format. I also like the categories - now when I have some hormone-crazed teen girl dying to have something new from the Vampire romance genre, I might actually be able to communicate with them (they all seem rather disgusted that I know nothing about those books!).