Exercise 23

Now at the end of the journey as I reflect back I remember that when we started the Web 2.0 programme I like many others was not sure of my ability to complete the necessary exercises. This programme has certainly expanded my knowledge of terminology and the accompanying technology although it was a challenge to find the time to sit and complete the exercises. Some late nights were definitely involved.

It has been an interesting learning experience and I acknowledge that without participating I probably never would have taken the time to explore the many different applications and opportunities that are available like Flicker, or establishing a Bloglines account or learning about RSS feds. No I am not going to list all the activities but will say that I probably won’t go on to use Rollyo or Zohowriter.

With exercise 17, I received a comment in Spanish, inviting me to visit a blog by secondary students in Argentina
https://nodiscrimine.blogspot.com
on discrimination but the actual message is for there to be no discrimination. The website has a translator so you can read it in English but I had to find a translator programme to understand the comment on my blog. This was a different learning exercise outside of the programme.

The only exercise that I really needed assistance on was the podcast and it was (the suppose to be easy step of) pulling the RSS feed into my Bloglines account that stumped me originally. I acknowledge the help I had from the NSL web team on this.

There are things that I will continue to use especially YouTube and Facebook but then I had already explored these prior to our programme.

Many thanks for the opportunity to participate.

Exercise 22

Well I am still undecided on whether it would work for North Shore Libraries to create a presence on a social networking site. I acknowledge that there has been tremendous growth in this area and from a personal point of view I am a regular Facebook user. However libraries would need business and strategic plans in order to gain the necessary financial backing for such a venture. The idea that we would be able to reach a wider section of the library community certainly tips the scales in favour of this idea.If we decide to pursue this then it needs to be done well.

I can see that it would require the right team to create and develop a dynamic Social Networking Site which would appeal to users. Perhaps it would be possible to employ undergraduate university students or other younger people who are already active users of Social Notwork Sites to drive the building and maintenance of a library social networking site. It would be a continuous process with the regular addition of material, updates, comments and feedback otherwise the danger would be that it became static and dated.

Information does need to be gathered so that we at NSL do choose the methods that patrons prefer. However I anticipate that with young people especially being keen users of social networking this has the potential of providing in the near future an excellent way to reach them.

Exercise 21

Just experimenting with Myspace and as was suggested tried adding a video of one of my favourites bands. I found that I had to set up a login and I am going to try embedding an video of one of my favourite bands 'The Corrs' Everybody hurts by Richard

The Corrs Everybody Hurts


Facebook is something that I am already using. I set up a log in to this last year when my daughter went overseas and have continued to use it since. Recently experimented with and succeeded in loading photos to that as well. I have found it a really useful tool to keep in touch with folks overseas and around NZ. We use Skpe phone and have set up Webcam to keep in contact as well. All these opportunities help to keep in touch.

Exercise 20

I have checked out the information on e-books which are simply an electronic book, and what this means is that an e-book is available to read on screen.
For this exercise I used LibriVox because it is a website that provides audiobooks form the public domain and searched for William Shakespeare. This search gave me 69 returns covering a range of things including plays, sonnets and monologues. It was a simple matter to scroll the list and select different items to view the content.
I found 'King Lear' and the LibriVox recording marking the 400th anniversary of the first performance of the play, on December 26th 1606, with a total running time: 3:23:02. Information given incuded a summary of the play, the cast list, who did stage directions as well as links to Gutenberg e-text 1532 ,Wikipedia - William Shakespeare ,Wikipedia - King Lear
LibriVox’s King Lear Internet Archive page ,Zip file of the entire book - 97.5MB
RSS feed · Subscribe in iTunes · Chapter-a-day and most importantly the mp3 and ogg files to enable downloading.

Exercise 19

For this exercise we looked at Podcast -- something that I have touched on briefly in exercise 17. This time though I used the podcast directory tool Podcastalley.com and explored on my own looking for book reviews. It was a this point that I had difficulty figuring out what was supposed to be the easy step of pulling the RSS feed into my Bloglines account. Lucky for me today I had the opportunity to ask a member of the Admin team for help and after a frustrating time trying to access Bloglines the mystery was solved. It seems that some podcasts are just not user friendly and you end up going around and around not going anywhere.

I did pull the RSS feed into my Bloglines account for Booklog Book Review Podcasts, YA Bookcasts, and The Great Radio Show. I have reservations regarding the first 2 podcast as they do not have any new casts for 2008. The Great Radio Show podcast was different and had a July 2008 cast on 'The Darkest Evening of the Year' by Dean Koontz.

While I think this has the potential to be another useful tool, the book review sites will only be valuable for libraries and individuals if they have regular new casts and include new publications and not just material on older titles. Also it is wise to remember that these casts are just individuals opinions and often when others read the same title they may view it differently. This is true no matter the media.

Exercise 18

You tube is just straight out entertainment and fun. I am a fan of Johnny Depp so I have searched and seen several videos of him on You Tube. There were more than 8 pages to choose from so I am going to try to place one inside here using copy and paste. Well here goes ....

Exercise 17

Well I had fun with this after I went to the Web 2.0 Awards nominees and I selected the category Food an interest that is near and dear to my heart not to mention my stomarch.

From that list I choose the site iFoods.tv to explore.

http://ifoods.tv/web/about-us.jsp



The site has a blog where I discovered a recent craze in America is Pizza vending machines! What next? I am going to follow this blog for a week or two just for fun.



There was also a Recipe Podcast: Potatoes with chili, garlic and spinach which I watched and may even have a go at cooking sometime. Great cooking tutorials available which may mean the demise of cook books.



So iFoods is a way of interacting with other food lovers worldwide. It is possible to upload your own recipe videos, develop your profile and prove your culinary genius to everyone or you have the option of learning from the professionally produced video cooking tutorials.

Web-based tool

Exercise 16

Web-based word processing tool

 

I can see that this web-based word processing tool does have major benefits as they eliminate the need to worry about different software versions or file types as you email documents or move from PC to PC.  I have found though that it does take a lot longer to load than just going to Microsoft Office Word that is installed on my computer.

 

It is quite functional though and allows the addition of images but again this took quite a long time to upload.  I have attached a photo I took out of the window of my work area.  Note all the reflections of the lights and can anyone spot the fans reflection.!!!! Another of many grey days this year.

 

Exercise 15

I have a very quick play with Rollyo and successfully created an account, then I created a search role selecting for my topic travel in Oregon, USA because my daughter has recently moved there to study. The link to my search role is http://rollyo.com/editroll.html?sid=456860.

Personally at this stage I can not really see an advantage to take the time to set up these because I continue to find interesting and useful websites so would be cautious about limiting my options to a specific group of websites.

However as with all the exercises in this Web 2.0 program it is always useful to know what is available.

Exercise 14

Well I was impressed with Library thing and didn't find it too much of a challenge to decide on 5 books to add. I liked the idea of being able to keep a list of books I have read but don't think that I will be back dating it. Wouldn't have any time to keep reading!!!

Here is the link to my Library thing catalogue

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Goldie1.

I can see how this could be considered the world's largest book club, and it is great to be able to access reviews.

Exercise 13

I decided to try adding a photo I recently took of The Tor at Waiake and using 'The Generator Blog' selected the Flying Flag to add my image to.

By agreeing to add my image to as an example I was able to download immediately without the water mark that advertised the site.

This was not as difficult as I thought it might be!

Learning 2.0 Sandbox wiki

I successfully added my blog to this NSL Learning Wetpaint wiki. Then I managed to explore and play with wikis for exercise 12 and finally tackled the challenged of taking my own photos on the digital camera and uploading it to my favourite holiday spot
http://nsllearning.wetpaint.com/page/Favourite+holiday+spot.
As I am still in catch up mode I haven't added anything else to the wiki, although I did check out favourite books.

Discovery Exercise 11

I found the whole concept of a wiki really intriguing. The idea that anyone can establish a collaborative website that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content is fascinating. I assume that this tool is exempt from copyright rules? I haven’t had time to research this aspect further at the moment.

Of the library wikis that I checked out I particularly liked the Book Lovers Wiki - developed by the Princeton Public Library – I was caught by the book reviews and ended up requesting one of the titles reviewed. I think that a North Shore Libraries wiki, established for book lovers by book lovers to add book reviews to should be considered and may be a useful tool for selectors to view.

As an aside my daughter alerted me to an interesting wiki www.tvtropes.org - a catalogue of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction. It includes a page or two on how it differs from wikipedia (less stringent guidelines on language for instance).

Library 2.0

Web 2.0 is a shared network space that drives work, research, education, entertainment and social activities and is the operating platform to which programmers write reusable, constantly updated software components that are embedded or loosely coupled with other Web applications.

Into this environment enters Librarian 2.0 which has been described as a “strategy guide” for helping users find information, gather knowledge and create content in the context of using technology that is changing and developing rapidly. It calls for libraries to encourage user participation and feedback in the development and maintaining of library services. Clearly North Shore Libraries can be seen to be onboard with this concept as one of their objectives is to be up-to-date and relevant, and Action 8 in the Draft Library Strategy identifies the need to “Provide electronic services to meet community needs.’

Week 4 Exercise 9

Technorati what an enormous blogospere! Searching Learning Web 2.0 delivered results that emphasized what a growing environment this is: Posts indicated 8,838 results for learning web 2.0, Blogs indicated 585 Blogs about Learning Web 2.0, however while there were no photos about learning web 2.0 there was a page of links to videos about learning web 2.0. Searching the Blog directory for Web 2.0 indicated 7 plus pages of results but I could only get up to page 5 to display. In the advanced search option I searched for the tag web 2.0 and returned 36,225 posts tagged web 2.0.
Further exploration led me to the Technorati Blog where I was interested to read that
Technorati has experienced a problem with their search result updating infrastructure. They were able to continue to crawl and save data, however, post search results were stale and temporarily stuck at about 3pm Pacific Fri. Aug 15. Link results (reactions) were stuck at Thu. Aug 14. Technorati identified the root cause and I expect the system has caught up now. It was interesting to note that no data was being lost just that the most recent posts and reactions at that time were not reflected in search results.

Week 4 Exercise 8

I have taken the time to look at and learn about tagging using Del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site).
I elected to have a look at recent 'design' bookmarks without any idea of the volume there would be. Some 6441292 Bookmarks at the time I checked it out. It was interesting to see that there were several (11) related tags which included 'inspiration,' 'webdesign', 'graphics', 'illustration' 'art' and others.
Obviously Del.icio.us is a well used tool and it was interesting to see how many people bookmarked the site or added comments. Delicious is about sharing your favourite sites with the community and is a wonderful window to look through to see what other people find interesting.

Search for RSS feeds

7.1
Has anyone pointed out that there is a spelling typo in the exercise instructions for 7.1?
'Often a feed icon will be diplayed somewhere in the navigation of the site.' diplayed should read displayed?
Anyway having created a bloglines account and subscribed to several feeds it was interesting over the next few days to see how many different versions of news items came through. I also found when reading information/articles from other sources that I would look for RSS feeds. In this manner I added Reuters; Top News. It took me a couple of days to figure out how to remove items but this is easy with the Mark All Read Button!

7.2
Explored the search tools noted in this exercise and found the Bloglines search tool okay to use. Looked at the others mentioned, Topix.net, Syndic8.com and Technorati. I found that I spent more time using Technorati the blog finding tool that searchs for blogs -- I looked into entertainment and found lots of interest. Bloglines and RSS feeds are great tools but need to be monitored and used wisely to avoid information overload!!!

Anything technology related

I found facebook was really great to keep in contact with family when overseas -- together skype and the webcam.
Currently I have added 'Scrabulous' (this is a game of scrabble online) to facebook and have two games going with different opponents.
I must admit because I work at a computer for the major part of my workday that often I do not feel like sitting down at night and exploring all the great new technology available. I do realise that I am not taking full advantage of all that is available.

Does anyone else really like 'Spellcheck'? I often find that my mind and my fingers have a difference of opinion so it is great to have a tool to assist -- provided that it is New Zealand English.

Discovery exercise 5

I have had a lot of fun exploring fun Flickr mashups and 3rd party tools that are out there.
I have explored maps a tool where users share where their photos and videos were taken, and see photos and videos taken near them. I was amused by the cheese map at the following link http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/cheese/map?&fLat=48.2816&fLon=1.3183&zl=14&order_by=interestingness

However I think what appealed the most was the ability to create trading cards. As we want to remain anonymous for the purposes of this training I have not created a card at this stage but have viewed several of the librariantradingcards and found it hard to select a favourite. So to prove that I have been there here, and because I think this card indicates a sense of humour here is the link to questing librarian trading card
http://www.flickr.com/photos/questinglibrarian/224598846/

Flickr

I have had a lot of fun looking around 'Flickr' and decided initally to 'explore' the more interestings bits for the last 7 days. Then by selecting reload was able to view a whole range of images and one that captured my attention was of a spidersweb (possibly because we are doing Web 2.0 training)! by 'Cisco kid 71'http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciscokid71/2138131145/

Next I actually completed a search using the tag 'webs' and returned a result of 5130 in comparison to doing a full text search which returned 867,208 results!
Some images that I really liked were:
Dewy Web by shesnuckinfuts http://www.flickr.com/photos/shesnuckinfuts/315869573/
Frosted Web by shesnuckinfuts http://www.flickr.com/photos/shesnuckinfuts/336437000/

I will probably take my digital camera to work next week and get some photos and actually join Flickr so can upload photos.

I have found that this process is not as difficult as I imagined, all I really needed to do was conquer the fear of the unknown. It was very easy to change the colour and font on my template so I hope everyone has a go.

I recently was forwarded information about the The Millau Viaduct. Did you know that this is part of the new E11 expressway connecting Paris and Barcelona. What is truly amazing is that it features the highest bridge piers ever constructed; the tallest is 240 meters (787 feet) high and the overall height is 336 meters (1102 feet), so at the moment this is the highest bridge in the world. It is taller than the Eiffel Tower . The Millau Viaduct is not straight because a straight road could induce a sensation of floating for drivers, which a slight curve remedies. The curve is 20km in range which gives you an indication of the mazive size of this structure. Also the road has a light incline of 3% to improve the visibility and reassure the driver.

If you google Millau Viaduct you will find some trully amazing images.