Thing 21: I have used YouTube before. I saw my first digital video camera this past week. I would like to learn how to use this with YouTube. I watched all the library YouTubes clips and enjoyed the “fun extra” YouTube videos. I have also wanted to watch the Saturday Night Live Tina Fey version of Sarah Palin. That was good! This is a great way to share creative thought and information. I liked the students sharing their reviews of books, in costume and in discussion groups. I was wondering about parents allowing their children to be on the web in this fashion however. I know I would have some who would object to this.

Thing 22: I have listened to a podcast on websearching before. It was wonderful to be able to find something that interested me specifically…a great way to do school inservice!!  I watched the video and especially noted the creative cow podcasting tutorial to refer to again when I try to do this myself in school. “How to Podcast” had a good outline of steps on how to proceed. I will need to make sure I have audacity and download the “lame MP3 encoder.” I also noted that I can get music from CCMixter or Podsafe Music Network. This has been an issue for me before with past projects. It looks like I would have to log in to use both these sites. The amount of logins is amazing and crazy with all the passwords.  For this school year, I am interested in having our 5/6 students write and practice reading a book review on one of their favorite reads and then create a podcast. We can then put this into our catalog so that other students can listen to what the book is about as they are searching for something they would like to read.

Thing 23: Yeah! My last thing! I feel like I just got my feet slightly damp and can now try to take some more steps to getting them more wet. I LOVED the overview of SOOO many things. As overwhelming as it could feel at times and, I am not even sure how much of the information I have internalized, it was absolutely a great way to “taste” it all! I really enjoyed the YouTube and podcasting. I am also planning to try some more things with a wiki. I am glad to have been made aware of the best Web 2.0 sites available. I liked the programs format, but like everything on the web I have learned not to click on everything that is hyperlinked or I could be at the computer forever. It was just part of my nature to be sure I “covered” everything.  Now I click on what works for me…yeah! Please keep me aware of any new things that are added. I would definitely participate again in a Things to learn about session. I must say it is really tough to do this when school is in session, but I was able to fit it into my summer schedule more easily. Thank you, thank you for making this Vermont 23 Things possible for us ….and not involving tons of paperwork, etc…..just a learning experience to fit our lifestyle.

Thing 19: Hi! This is my first try creating a word document using Google docs. Wow! What a concept…and yet again there appears to be many things you can do with this package…with photos, calendars, etc. Will this do away with attachments in email…it appears to be a more efficient option, especially if the attachments require correspondence back and forth. The application I chose to use is exactly like the word processing software. I would like to try the calendar…it appears to be an efficient way to share a schedule for the library, etc.

Thing 20: I went to the short list of Web 2.0 awards. I like this list…a great place to know where to start when wanting the best of the best sites. I looked at the cooking, health, and google maps links. I needed to log in for the comiqs site. We were working on a graphic novel/comic strip project with 5/6 students at our school and I thought this would be interesting to investigate. We had the students using comic creator. These 2.0 sites are definitely more interactive and you can get a more “real” experience when you are involved in using these. I sent the short link web address to my work email. It is definitely something I would like to look at in more depth to connect to our library experiences.

Thing 17:  I read about and looked at the library wikis. I discovered a wiki called series binder that has booklists of the series of books categorized by genres. It is a great resource! I bookmarked it using my Delicious icon on my toolbar! Things are connecting! This will be a great resource in my library as students are always wondering the order of series books, what comes next, what we do and don’t have, etc. This wiki was done using Mediawiki. I read how wikis work and the article on the ban to wikipedia by Middlebury College..for use in citations.  But it is a great starting point for information. I looked at some of the library wikis and then the wiktionary and the sikihow. Watching Colbert’s videos online were entertaining. I especially liked his interview with Jimmy Wales.  What is the reality?

Thing 18: I took the PB Wiki Tour and then the commoncraft video on wetpaint wikis. I was wondering if I could use these Common Craft videos to introduce some lessons in school to 5/6 students. I did go to the Vermont 23 things wiki at PBWIki and logged in. I made a book comment and then tried adding a link…success! I tried adding a page about favorite hikes…it took a bit to make it a link on the front page, but I did it.  I did look at the history feature also.

Also, of interest to me, was the wikimatrix and the choice wizard it has to help you choose the wiki software that may work best for you. Wikis are great for information but I think you need to read them carefully and just use the information to get you started. They are great for focusing in on something you are looking for, but at the same time there can be a lot on a page if there are too many links and sidebars. I find myself going off on tangents and not staying on task.

Thing 14:  This week has increased, yet again, my technology vocabulary. Not only do I need to use these words more often to remember and understand their meanings, but I also need to practice what some of these vocabulary words represent in order to not only understand how they work but to get an idea of how they can benefit the school library environment. I did watch the common craft video on social bookmarking and then they tutorial on Delicious. I tried searching “school library instruction” on Delicious and loved the results as compared to Google. Because these are bookmarked already the results were of much better quality and more specific to what I was looking for versus the huge range of results I get on Google. I then set up an account on Delicious and added my own bookmarks. I now have the tag at on my Internet Explorer page.  I looked at the Vermont 23 Things delicious page and then created an RSS feed to this using my account in Bloglines (that was good practice!) I would be very interested to learn/see more how libraries are using this in their schools.

Thing 15: Technorati, another new vocabulary word, was an interesting site to peruse. Again, I think I could have spent much longer there and also found myself getting easily sidetracked. I used it more as a search tool.  I played around with the items on the front page. I was assuming the “tag cloud” was the speech like bubble at the top of the page…otherwise, I did not find this. It is amazing the amount of information and reading that can be done…and what is of value and what is not? what is true and what is opinion or gossip? I did not claim by blog and set up a watchlist yet.

Thing 16: I tead the library Web 2.0 information and the following five articles.  I made a copy of the list of references for future use. I would like to read more about Library 2.0 specific to the school library environment. I have to agree with the balance of technology and the real environment of the library and the people in it.

Thing 12: Wow! Creating an avatar was fun! I am going to try and download it to this blog….we’ll see!

Yeah! It worked! This reminds me of the characters I saw my kids creating when they got their WII.

Thing 13: I took a look at Library Thing and added 5 books to my list…Stephenie Meyer’s books! Thought I would put these under “teenage girls’ series.” I also asked them to get back to me on how this would work for the library. They mentioned it’s connection to OPAC. I would like to know more about the “widgets”…not too sure how that works. This looks interesting enough to explore further.

Yeah! It worked! This reminds me of the characters I saw my kids creating when they got their WII.

Thing 13: I took a look at Library Thing and added 5 books to my list…Stephenie Meyer’s books! Thought I would put these under “teenage girls’ series.” I also asked them to get back to me on how this would work for the library. They mentioned it’s connection to OPAC. I would like to know more about the “widgets”…not too sure how that works. This looks interesting enough to explore further.

I am finding that taking time to learn these new things on the computer can be very time consuming and sedentary. To master the use of these technologies would require quite a bit more experience and practice to truly comprehend their value and function. In realizing this, I think this course is great to expose myself to what is out there. Even if this doesn’t mean that I become an expert at it. Even having time during catch up week hasn’t made me this expert, but until the value of the “thing” becomes real will I truly understand and invest the time to know it. On to the next week!

Thing 10:  Wow! Exploring Facebook and MySpace took a lot longer than I thought. I really got caught up in the searching and started looking for friends and family. I couldn’t bring myself to register. It feels sooo public! I have always been fine just meeting people in “real” life and can only be friends to so many people at one time anyway. It seems like our bodies are going to become more sedentary as everything we used to move around and do, we can now accomplish at the computer.

Thing 11: Like I mentioned before, I couldn’t bring myself to put in a page. But I would love to see how to do it and experience that.  Can you take it off at any time?

How would this work in your library? Good question! I did look at a couple of the examples presented. I would need to look at these further and have more experience with these social networks in order to determine how this may fit into a school library setting, if it would. Wow, very interesting!

Thing 8: I like RSS and newsreaders because I find the amount of information available overwhelming and spending time on the computer extremely time consuming. This will hopefully get you to what you want to read faster. I already found lists of summer reading at Education World and lists of top book choices that will help with my book ordering. I can see libraries using the RSS feeds to highlight the latest in news, sports,etc. but I am curious to see the many other ways that this will be used. In using it more and more myself, I then may become more familiar with it to think of some ways on my own!

Thing 9:  I went ahead and set up an account using Bloglines and then chose some of the url’s that were listed. I then added the Vt 23 things participant’s blog page and then tried to add specific parts of the Burlington Free Press: sports, local news, and top breaking stories. I had to go to the Free Press site and click on News Reads and then copy and paste the URL into the Bloglines subscribe box to add to my list.

Thing 5:  I signed in to Flickr and read the security notice. I also had success uploading a picture of the view from my house into my photos on Flickr. I learned about sets versus collections and I used “home” as my tag to help organize my photos in Flickr. Tags can be compared to keywords to help you look photos up in the future.

Thing 3: Well, I think I have set up my own blog!? I played around on the dashboard and even discovered how to change my presentation. The thing is, as with all learning, the more I do this, the more I should pick up and actually remember what I did to get there. This reminds me of when I started using Microsoft Word. There were so many “little” things to click on and know about…even after all these years of using it, there still appears that there is so much for me to still know about it. I feel like this is similar to that experience. So, I guess I just need to start doing it!

Thing 4: I’m going to register my blog! I looked at a lot on the participant’s list.