Finis

Can you believe it?! I actually made it all the way through Learning 2.0.

I've gained a lot of new knowledge in this process and my horizons--if not the bandwidth I have access to--have been broadened greatly. I do wonder if libraries that regularly use podcasts, vidcasts, blogs, wikis (etc.) have a better computer response time than we do.

For me some of the Discovery exercises in the Things could have been simplified. Then I think I would have gotten less bogged down in the preliminary reading and understanding of each concept or tool. But maybe that's just me... Most VBPL people just whizzed right through, so I'm willing to chalk up my difficulties to 'dinosaurism'--the fact that I'm old as dirt and technology sometimes flummoxes me.

CERTAINLY I would take part in a program like Learning 2.0 again. It's a great means of continuing education. I know that some schools with outreach programs have peer or 'cohort' groups of students who sort of mentor each other through the educational process. I was fortunate enough to have several dear and knowledgeable friends form a cohort "shield" around me while I worked my way through Learning 2.0. So to Dorcus and Delilah--all my thanks.

Denouement

The end of Learning 2.0 draws near, and I must admit I'm glad. I let myself stress out over this way too much, and I know that wasn't the point at all.

I've had fun with Flickr and YouTube: the visual stuff was a blast! (I'm still hunting for a suitable photograph to 'Warholize.') And I feel more comfortable with the the new technology that libraries--and the world at large--are using. I needed a program like this to kick-start me into investigating beyond my comfort zone.

I've read blogs, watched clips from YouTube, and listened to podcasts before. However, having everything laid out in a week-by-week lesson plan truly gave me a good idea of the big picture. Above and beyond the technology and "mechanics" of this, the sociological and psychological aspects of social networking fascinate me.

Obviously Learning 2.0 has included useful ways of organizing web information and searching. It also has enlightened me about the way people meet, get to know each other, and form personal and professional relationships using this technology. I wonder if "in the flesh" human interaction is aided or hurt by how easy it is to communicate with others while remaining at a comfortable distance. Or maybe in today's society this distance is more appealing than ever for safety reasons...

I don't know. I'll think on that... In the meantime, this program was very worthwhile. There were frustrations with computer response time and filters, but those were far outweighed by the rich continuing education opportunity Learning 2.0 provided.

Rollyo-ver Beethoven

I created a "mini" search roll on Rollyo of several websites covering the museums, shops, and attractions of Florence, Italy.

As I entered search terms , I noticed that the three sites I put in were the always listed on the top of the results list. There were other websites below those, though, that I hadn't specified. Where did they come from? Were they linked to the sites I did choose specifically?


I can see where this could be a useful tool to group frequently used websites and search within them for specific topics. Didn't we do something similar to this a few weeks ago? Del.icio.us perhaps? That was bookmarking sites and this is creating a search engine within a batch of sites, right?

"Things" are beginning to run together in my mind!

Library Thing

This is a cool tool !! I certainly can see consolidating all my lists of books I eventually want to read into this one spot.

It seems as though you have to choose a specific edition when you enter a title, though. I hope people using this as a general list understand that a bookstore or library may not have that specific edition or ISBN, but may well stock the title.

And 'Display Style E' looks like a real library catalog. Neat-O!

Image Generators

I enjoyed playing with the online image generators!

The "Warholizer" was a real kick. I didn't have the right kind of photograph to make the best use of it, though.

I ended up on MagMyPic.com embracing my inner cover girl. Not exactly being a model or pin-up queen, I opted for converting one of my photos from Italy to a National Geographic cover.

What a hoot!

Library Podcasts

I was more successful today accessing podcasts and vidcasts from our public computer lab.

I clicked on 6 or 7 podcasts and vidcasts from the LibSuccess wiki--only three of them loaded. I never got into the Denver PL's podcasts, but I did listen to a few teen podcasts from the Boulder PL. Arizona State University made good use of 3 and 4 minute "mini" introductions to doing library research, searching online resources, etc. Although it was video, the ASU screens didn't change that often, which would have made it more interesting and useful, I think.

I couldn't get any of the story presentations to open...

One thing is for certain: if podcasts and vidcasts are going to be useful for libraries and their customers, they have to load quickly and run smoothly. Why bother creating these things if the network you're on doesn't have the bandwidth, power (whatever) to support it.

The quickest way to lose a customer is to frustrate them with new technology that doesn't work effectively.

A Bad Day

I think I chose a bad day and time to investigate podcasts, vidcasts, and their directories.

It was 2 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon in the Central Library's public computer lab. I kept getting thrown off the sites I was searching such as podcast.net and podcastalley.com--frustrating!

Finally I got a search result list that was sort of related to my search (libraries and reviews). I ended up with 'The Genealogy Guys' and listened to them for a while. If you're a genealogy researcher I'm sure they'd be very interesting. To me, not so much. However, they are on my Google Reader now. I'm sort of surprised--one of the times I got pitched out of the Internet was when I was adding them.

The vidcasts were a complete wash-out. I'd found a 2 minute video interview with the Coen brothers talking about 'No Country For Old Men" but after about 10 seconds the whole thing shut down.

Again, frustrating...

Sir Bob

A Hard Rain

YouTube was just WAY too much fun!

I had the best time watching my favorite scenes from 'Dirty Harry' and 'Animal House'--two underappreciated masterpieces of American film oeuvre in my humble opinion.

And then I moved on to clips of some of the music masters at work. There's wonderful video of Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin, and Jim Morrison that I had no idea even existed. One clip is a true rock and roll gem: Jimi, Janice and Jim singing Jimi's hit 'Red House.' I would have put that on my blog, but the embeddable player code said "Embedding not allowed by request..." or something like that.

So here is a baby-faced Bob, that musical Oracle of Delphi, predicting a Hard Rain back nearly 45 years ago...

P.S. The natural language keyword searching on YouTube is Fab-O !!