Two Three

As a manager of a small, busy branch library, Learning 2.0 has taken an enormous amount of staff time – much more than expected or originally stated when we first embarked upon it. Some of the struggle was (and still is) not just finding the time for all staff to do the weekly tasks, but also ensuring that staff understand what each task is and why they are doing it – not just getting it out of the way by following instructions. I felt that initially there were no good clear instructions, or suggestions (eg.to keep track of your sign-ups and passwords) and people got bogged down early (eg.particularly with the RSS feeds ) and got really disheartened and pessimistic about the whole process. I ended up doing the Things myself first (sometimes at home) and then helping my 3-4 staff through the rest - so overall it took at least a few hours out of my work every week.

I feel that often one of the Things would have been enough per week not two or three, as after struggling to get us all through one, it was difficult to face up to another couple and still get our regular jobs done. I also often felt I couldn't spend enough time on one Thing, as with limited time I felt I had to hurry on to the next to be able to get them done.

Personally, I have found Learning 2.0 rewarding - even though a lot of what we looked at is largely American and still not very big yet in Australia, it is good to know what is out there and be aware not only of the way libraries potentially might be going but the way we need to direct ourselves. I found it valuable to know what is going on, and what so many people are spending their time doing - even if I do find it rather overwhelming and perhaps somewhat superficial in some cases.

I think that the practicality of the programme was good - making us have to physically do things such as blog and explore pictures and set up a Rollyo search engine etc, made us realize that these things aren't hidden away behind a big brick wall, and also made us really understand the Thing we were looking at, not just the theory of it.

So what am I going to do now with the reclaimed hours in my week? Well, think about how I can use Wikis and podcasts and blogs in my branch library perhaps...!!!

Audio of the future

I think the downloadable audio books are fantastic - particularly for classics - (easy for study). There is definitely a place in libraries for these - as MP3s are the way to go in the future. They won't replace books - they just offer a different option for people - and for smaller branch libraries it is a way to hold classics without having to have the shelf space.
It is absolutely imperative however, that libraries steer clear of the computer-generated ones as they are absolutely hideous - to listen to a computer voice (with an American accent) reading Shakespeare's "A midsummer night's dream" was just apalling...!!

Poddy Casts....

I found the podcast directories overwhelmingly American again - as I have found with a lot of the other "Things". I added LibVibe to my Bloglines - which has headlines of Library News from America - it would be good to have something like this for Australia - or Victoria...
I spent time on the ABC website listening to podcasts - which is something I have been meaning to do and haven't got around to. One thing I like about podcasts is you can have them on in the background and continue working!
Again - in a Library field, my comments are similar to my comments about You Tube - book reviews, librarian comments - anything like that on a library website could work well...

Marley on You Tube

I am familiar with You Tube and have looked at it on several occasions to find certain things that I am interested in. I find there are a lot of apalling things on there - just absolutely not worth the time - but if you know what you want, the clips can be worthwhile and for example can give action to something you are reading.

I am just in the middle of reading Marley and me by John Grogan, and it had me laughing out loud in places - which I don't often do when I read... I am now approaching the end and feel I will be shortly sobbing - so I was pleased to find some video footage of Marley on You Tube. I did find a brief bit of him at home with one of John's children in an interview with John Grogan as well, but the one I have put here is of when Marley was a film star. It is mentioned in the book that he played the family dog in a film called "The Last Home Run" that went straight to video - so here are Marley's scenes from that film.




In a Library situation - book reviews or author interviews (from You Tube) could be put onto the library's webpage - and even local librarians commenting on new items or events could be uploaded - or a snippet of bookclubs or storytime would promote the library and books and put them out there for people in an interesting way.

So much stuff out there!

I like the idea of One Sentence (http://www.onesentence.org/) - 2nd place winner in Fun Stuff - but found most of the one sentences very ornery. I use Google Maps a lot with great success - so was interested to see that it had 1st place in Mapping. Looked at Wayfaring - which was 2nd place in Mapping - but found in more clumsy than Google Maps maybe just cos I'm more used to Google Maps. Had a quick look @ Frappr (3rd in Mapping) - but seemed way to social for me at this point in time.... Got distracted and had to play Guess the Google (grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google) 3rd place under Games - which was fun but was a bit disappointed they didn't tell you the answer for the ones you got incorrect.
Ran out of time to look at any more so didn't find any Library related stuff - but may come back - Lulu looked interesting...

Zoho, Zoho it's off to blog I go!

There is a huge advantage to having your documents online and being able to either work on them from various locations without transporting them (whether via e-mail, CD or memory stick), or to share them with colleagues who need access to the same document. This has already happened at work with a Google Spreadsheet being shared among staff to record in one location our donation figures from across the corporation's branches. I can see the value of this in other areas such as periodicals as well. I found the toolbars rather limiting at first - but then a lot of what I work with contains images or tables and importing these into Zoho from already existing documents didn't work that well - but there are always ways around these things...

Ochre Oasis

 

 

 

OCHRE OASIS.doc

 

I can definitely see the advantage of having documents online

and being able to work with them from various locations or sharing

them with other people who need access to the same document!

 

Sandy Wiki

I felt that the PBWiki gave good hands on experience as to what Wikis are all about and enabled me to get a feel on how to actually use and be able to edit one.

Wiktastic!

I think Wikis are great - in a controlled environment such as our library service they could be of extreme value in communication in general or in working on a special project, or for subject / autor lists. As we have staff in a number of different locations - seperated by considerable distance in some cases - to have a central document that can be revised and /or edited by anyone on the working party would be a bonus. I also feel that as we would generally be all working towards the same end in this we shouldn't suffer from many "edit wars" and have to go to arbitration as must be the case in bigger Wikis... (I also thought the Commoncraft video explained Wikis in a very clear and concise way...)

Libraries and invisible technology

I think it is time for public libraries to become more adventurous in the technological world, as I believe we need to be dynamic and remain at the forefront of technology and not slip behind. I think libraries as they are now could well fade away unless we metamorphose ourselves with Web 2.0 and have some of these technologies being incorporated within libraries in an integral and what may well be an invisible way.
However we can't just accept everything holus bolus, but will have to learn to step carefully between the technologies - willingly embracing ones which can help public libraries and the people who use them and rejecting the others.
Also technologies that are simple to use and explain are important - and they are the ones that I have seen as most beneficial in the Learning 2.0 training. I think technologies and printed books can co-exist - I believe it will be a long time before books as we know them disappear - but there will be other formats as well.

Ballooning Blogospheres

I found the whole idea of Technorati rather overwhelming. The simple fact that a tool like Technorati is needed to monitor the ballooning blogosphere is, to me, a scary thought. I have blogged about this before - but the fact that there are so many people out there just doing this is crazy. I found the searches to be rather limiting and again was disappointed with the lack of Australian material - it seemed to be predominately American. However I did "claim" my blog and played around with making a watchlist.
I can see that blogs can be a powerful office / company / business tool and Technorati would be very useful in maintaining these and keeping them current.

Fan.tast.ic!

I really like Del.icio.us! I have been really frustrated with my Bookmarks recently because I could never find the one I was after and have just re-organized them (on all three computers that I regularly use)! I also would often not bookmark a site I really liked because it just increased my list and I would probably never have found it again. Now with Del.icio.us and tagging I can bookmark as many sites as I want and still find them (on any computer!) as long as my tags are standardized.
The social sharing is also pretty good - as just after a quick peek at sites others had bookmarked I found similar sites that I would find of interest. To be explored in more depth another time!
And having the network badge on my blog makes it all just handy!

Rolling my own...

For this exercise I just added a few of my favourite websites to Rollyo - so I can choose to search one of them easily. However I can see the advantage to being able to search specific topics on specific sites and if the need arose I would spend the time creating subject searches in the areas I needed.

In True Librarian Style...

I have played around with Library Thing before - and think it is a very useful tool - which (someday when I have time!) I plan to take advantage of to order my own bookshelves.

Generating Images

I have always enjoyed playing around with images and text and can see the benefits in many of the image generators that I played with, however I also found them somewhat limiting as I couldn't always be as creative as I wanted to be when using them.
I thought the "put your message into a Bob Dylan video clip" was extremely clever and I finally came across a caricature generator which was rather fun - and I created the little bloke on the left. I have put a link to both of these generators in this blog. Also played around with the reflection maker and glitter text as can be seen by other additions to my blog.
I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of other generators out there and found most of them so amazingly pointless that even though I know it happens, I find it difficult to comprehend that not only do people create them, but that even more people use them and e-mail them to even more people.

Feeding Really Syndicated Simpletons

I came to this exercise knowing nothing about RSS feeds and struggled to understand what they actually were until I had joined Bloglines and was starting to add feeds. From there I suddenly clicked and realized their potential.
By far the toughest part of this exercise was linking Bloglines to my blog. However when I finally got the feeds to appear on my blog there was a definite sense of achievement.
In looking for feeds using search tools, I found Google Blog Search the one that was clearest to use and brought up the most relevant feeds for what I wanted at the moment. However, by far the easiest way initially was to go to known websites and locate the RSS link – from there it was easy…

A technological oasis?

Is there such a thing? Is a technological oasis where no technology exists to hassle us? To sit and read in the sun somewhere with no interruptons - no phone ringing, no music blaring, no need to check your e-mails or the news on the computer...this is indeed an oasis of sorts - and one that I love to indulge in... However, technology surrounds us in everything we do nowdays. Personally, I love my gadgets and am rarely without one within reach - my memory stick to carry my photos and files around, my Mp3 player so I can listen to the songs I want when I want, my digital cameras for when I feel the need to capture the moment, even my mobile phone - more for everything else that is on it rather than for making phone calls. Perhaps I, for one, am living immersed in a technological oasis...

Ochre water droplets

Red, originally uploaded by tomhe.

LOVED the Colour Pickr on Flickr as colour is very important to me in choosing things in my life. Played with it for quite a while. Found this one to match in with my Ochre Oasis theme... Also could see the potential in Mappr...

An Ochre Oasis?

puddles in the desert, originally uploaded by kburki.

A puddle in the desert...I find this an intriguing photo as it is hard to see the puddle due to what the water is reflecting. Instead it appears to be a hole in the desert. An optical illusion created by good photography...

Flickr is an amazing resource for photos - some fantastic one there and some really bad ones as well. Searching keywords on the tags don't always seem to bring up relevant photos, but kept at it till I found what I wanted.

What to blog? That is the question....

Being now an official blogger one finds it necessary to find something meaningful to blog about....pertinent to myself and others. Perhaps it will come to me in due course...