Finally.

Well - what does one say? I have shown my soul to the world over the past few weeks and survived! My favourite exercises? The fun ones. The ones that were straightforward to do and didn't addle my brain. The ones I use often now - like Skype. How has this programme assisted or affected my lifelong learning goals? It has proved that at my age there are still things to learn that are worth learning. Unexpected outcomes? The confidence with which I can Blog and Skype and the fact that I can make awesome palooza heads. (Something I have always wanted to know how to do and now I can!) What could be done differently? Some basic skills on navigation would have been useful. I found it all rather cumbersome and kept loosing pages. Another programme? Ask me next year - depends what it is. Virtual cooking?
Thanks, Donna, for your patience and thanks Doreen for the time we were allowed.

Catch up time!

I'm trying to tidy up and get this all finished by tomorrow. RSS feeds. I know I did a rant in my first blog about them but I'm still finding them difficult. I found a useful article that I eventually managed to download but I can't remember where I got it from. I found that just because there is the little RSS icon beside something it doesn't mean that it works. I found the whole exercise frustrating and the Wee Scottish Lassie will probably give me an F for this one.
Library 2.0 - To me it means a whole new world of information all linked together and searchable from one spot. It will probably change the world of libraries as we know it. Will libraries still have collections as we know them? Will users stop coming to libraries when they can find all they need on the Web? It is up to us to adapt to these new changes and as Rick Anderson said in Away from icebergs, we should not be waiting for the mothership to guide us, we should be finding our own opportunities and going for them. Michael Stephens in Into a new world of librarianship, says librarians will be the "strategic guides" for helping users find information and gather knowledge. All exciting stuff. Instant messaging - I made an account but no one wanted to talk to me!! I can see the usefulness of this but isn't it just a glorified email system? Also, who's got time to "talk" to friends at work? Not me, I'm too bust catching up with my emails! Web.2 awards - I looked at Yelp! which is "a fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what's great and not so great in your area". This was American but I can see it as a useful travel guide. An up to the minute (hopefully) Lonely Planet guide. The whole Web.2 awards site was fascinating - the number of sites out there is mindboggling. Free sites - Excellent selection of stuff on the audiobooks site. With eyesight problems looming downloading audiobooks could be a lifesaver.

Podcasts

I have lo0ked at several podcast directories and found some lovely classical music. I had trouble finding one with a feed but finally managed to get one onto my Netvibes page but it doesn't seem to work. However, I have been through the process and know what to do. You could spent a lot of time fiddling around trying to find a viable one. An MP3 player would be better!

Going backwards

Having hit the wall and had a big rant about how I'm too old for this etc etc, I am now taking the advice of the Wee Scottish Lassie and going slowly and taking my time AND FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS! So - Technocrati has been explored. Learning 2.0 had 3825 hits in Blog posts and 188 in what I think was Blog Directory. I got the same results in the "popular blog, searches and tags". It's amazing what you find. UCOL had 138 hits. Some of them were our Blogs but one was someone writing about her family - a daughter was studying at UCOL. I'm not sure whether I would use this site but I can see it would be useful as a search tool because of all the different tags that people have used.

Library dominoes

What a way to shelf check! I chose this video clip because I'm fascinated by the way these dominoe trails work and then I discovered there were more attached to the clip. So have some fun!
Because YouTube is such a popular site you could add "educational" library clips that people might want to look at. A great way for the Liaison Librarians to run their sessions.
However, as other people have mentioned, you can get hooked on YouTube and it becomes all consuming i.e. a time waster. To be completely negative it seems to me that anyone who has ever made a "cutesie" home video wants to put it on YouTube and some of them aren't that cute.

This is the final week. Thank you Wee Scottish Lassie for your patience and for providing so many interesting things to look at and learn with.

Poem

HINTS FOR MIDDLE YEARS

You want to get

to where you're going

even if you don't have a map

or a torch

or a long piece of rope

for emergencies

let alone a Band-aid.

The thing is to do the journey.

Enjoy wherever you pass

be it city

or shore line

or paddock

or people.

And tune your breathing

to the rhythm of soul.

Annon.

This was done on Zoho Writer and then published to my blog. So clever.

Zoho writer is so easy. Better than Word. You can access it from anywhere, create and edit the way you want and load your existing documents onto it. It even allows more than one person to write or edit at the same time.

Penultimate week!

Hasn't time gone quickly? We must have been having fun.
I looked at a couple of wiki sites this morning and having been to e-Fest and seen what Otago Polytechnic do with WikiEducator I can see how useful a wiki can be - other people do all the work for you! I looked at Book Lovers Wiki and Library success: A best practice wiki. The first one was great - full of reviews of books you have been meaning to read. Now I don't have to. The best practice wiki is like WikiEducator. You post ideas and information about policies for libraries and the ideas are shared and refined until you get a "Best Practice" policy. Some of the items I looked at were Management and leadership, Selling your library and Technology. Lots of interesting ideas. Out of all the "tools" we have looked at I like wikis the best.

Oh, so delicious!

I have had a look at Del.ici.ous this morning and can see that it could be very useful as each item tagged has more information on it than a normal bookmark or favourite. You can also access it from anywhere so it's like a travelling document. Richard could use it as he bookmarks all sorts of things with his genealogy research and if at another family member's house and wants to show some of the sites he uses - hey presto it's on Del.ici.ous.

We spent the week end at Turangi and I would like to share this photo with you. It is of Mt Ngaruhoe taken from The Chateau.

A fun week

Once I got my head around all this with Sandra's help, I have had so much fun fiddling with photos and creating the paloozahead. I found a site for text bubbles and this is what I did. I think I need some better photos though!

Fergus the Chef!

Fergus says he wil cook dinner tonight.

http://kscakes.com/LolCats/Detail.aspx/osh-says-i-must-cover-my-hair-when-i-cook-does-it-take-my-cuteness-away/

Play week again!

Check out Basil!! A new reincarnation.

http://www.paloozahead.com/894947-ee9b

Play week.

The Cat in the hat! A self portrait from Louise's 50th birthday party.

I've done it!

I have made a Flickr site. Not as complicated as I thought and I now have some of my favourite photos on it.

Here is one.

The light turned on.

It must be because it is a lovely day that my head is so much clearer. I can actually see the sense of NetVibes although it can be a bit frustrating at times. I can't be too much of a technophobe because I downloaded Skype at home and we talked to Robert in Japan on Wednesday evening. Now we have a webcam so we will be able to see him next week.

I'm a dinosaur.

I really am. Why do I need an RSS page? For a start I haven't got time to be fiddling around posting this and reading that. I have set up the RSS page and my head feels like it wants to burst. The wee Scottish lassie has a lot to answer for.

Here's another recipe to try

http://www.cuisine.co.nz/index.cfm?pageID=27724&31E78EC8-91A2-41D9-A33CC56A2BF53EF0

Today

Today I helped Margaret with her Blog. Amazing what you forget! Yeah Right said the wee Scottish lassie. I have subscribed to some of my colleagues Blogs and it is great to see the Lethbridge librarians have also joined in. Here is a recipe for you all
http://www.cuisine.co.nz/index.cfm?pageId=52816

23 things

23 things are small exercises to help me explore and expand my knowledge of the Internet and Web.2. At the end of nine weeks the wee Scottish Lassie will say well done and reward me with my very own mp3/pendrive. Can't wait!
Today is the 1st of June and outside it is suuny with a cool breeze. The temperature is expected to reach 16.

Staff conference

We are having fun!