The End is Near

Wow, it's hard to believe that the end of the Learn and Play program is almost here. One of the goals of this program was to create a learning environment about Web 2.0 technologies and I hope the Learn and Play program accomplished that.

I would have to say my favorite thing about the program has been reading the blogs. I have gained so much insight about staff members, from the blog names to the blog posts it has been very enlightening.

I would like to say great job to everyone that particpated and I hope you had fun.

Art Vandelay

10 Random Things

1. I was born in New York and have lived in Burlington Vermont, Canton Ohio and Columbus.

2. The first album I ever bought was Get Lucky by Loverboy. My first concert was the Michael Stanley Band just like everyone from Northeastern Ohio.


3. I have two dogs, both mutts and 2 cats. My dogs are very spoiled and have trained me well.


4. My favorite Atari game was Missle Command and my favorite Nintendo game was Mike Tyson's Punch Out.


5. I have been taking Martial Arts for 15 years and have my Black Belt in Shuai Chiao. Never heard of it? If you go to Youtube and do a search for Shuai Chiao you can see some demonstrations.


6. After college, in an effort to avoid the grown up world, I backpacked in Europe for three months. My favorite places were London, Amsterdam, Venice and Prague. My only regret from this experience was that I did not go on the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg.


7. My first car was a 1982 Plymouth Horizon. It was a 4-speed, really hard to shift and would backfire when it rained.


8. My first job was at a local newspaper in Canton. I did the layout by hand by cutting the stories with an exacto knife and pasting them on the proofs. I used to have to make all of the stories fit on the page around the advertisements.



9. Every Tuesday after school my Mom would take me and my Sister to the library. We did this every week until 6th grade. My favorite books to check out were the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books. These were great stories about a woman that had alternative cures for behavioral problems.



10. My favorite TV shows are Seinfeld, The Wire, Law and Order (the original), The Shield and The Office. This year is rough with The Wire and The Shield both ending.

MOLDI

I haven't been to the MOLDI site in a while and I was impressed on how easy it was to checkout and download a book. I do have to admit that I am stubborn when it comes to reading and prefer a book in my hands but I think digital books are going to become more prevelant. I am going to use MOLDI more in the future.

Podcasts

I have to admit I had a hard time sitting still when I first started listening to Podcasts. Without the visual element I would find my mind wandering. A while ago I took one of those tests you find on the internet, you know, the ones that advertise "What's yout I.Q.?", "what type of learner are you?". I took the one for what type of learner are you (and ues I have taken the I.Q. one also) and it turns out that I am a auditory learner. Now I don't know how reliable these tests are but I spent some time researching learning types and that does seem to be the way I learn best.

Keeping this in mind I started listening to more Podcasts and realize that there is a lot of valuable information in the Podcast format. Over the past year I have used Podcasts at work and even for some personal hobbies and have found them very useful.

Youtube is Addicting

According to Wikipedia 100 million videos are watched every day. Wow that's a lot of videos. I know I have spent hours on Youtube just going from video to video. What I really like about a tool like Youtube is how it makes information so accessible. I take a martial art called Shuai Chiao. Now this martial art is thousands of years old but is not as popular as Judo or Tae Kwon Do so there are not too many books out about Shuai Chiao. Now on Youtube there are videos about my martial art that I have used to learn new techniques.
In applying this to the library just think of all the possiblities for sharing information with not only staff but customers.

Below are two links that show the Grand Master of Shuai Chiao doing some throws:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-UJ4NCCMA0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgPzk85BYIg

Also, the link below is a clip with "Art Vandelay"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T35QhLx_KI

CML Power Tools

I think the CML Power Tools page is a great place to start learning about Web 2.0 technologies and I can't wait to see it expanded. I am a fan of the Library Toolbar becaause it makes accessing Library sites so easy.

Web 2.0 Award Winners

For thing # 18 I select the list for Mobile Technology. A while back I had set up an account for Pandora and saw this site listed as one of the nominees. Pandora is a music site that llets you select music that you like and then plays songs by those artists. What Pandora also does is play songs by artists that are in the same category as the artists on your playlist. This lets you explore new music that you have not heard before. The drawback to Pandora is every once in a while a song is played that is not close to the music you like. Go ahead and check it out, it's a site that is easy to use and can be used for personal use.

Google Docs

Google docs gives users another option for creating documents, you are no longer as dependent on MS Office. I found it very easy to use and I did not feel limited. I could see Google Docs as something our customers could very easily use in place of MS Office.

Wiki Notes

Last year I attended a conference that had some good presentations about wikis.

Are you asking the question what do Wikis do?

• Wikis build knowledge
• Share knowledge
• Collaborate across locations

How can we use wikis?

• Committees can use wikis for colloboration, and sharing information.
• We can create wikis for equipment, for example create a wiki for the copier
  Share lesson plans and class information
  

How do we leverage knowledge?
Search once

Wikis and Libraries

Did you know that CML is starting to use Wikis for organizing information? It's true. Info Line has taken their information that is posted on bulletin boards and in notebooks and created a really great wiki. At this time it is being piloted by Info Line but look for this same model to be used in the future by other locations. Wikis are a great way to organize information and make it easy to find.

Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

I think that Web 2.0 and Libraries 2.0 are closely related since both include technology as a focus. One of the things that I kept seeing is the idea of trend watching. Libraries need to stay on top of trends, especially as related to their customers. I think an excellent example is the Gaming initiative that CML has started.

The graphic to the right shows Library 2.0 in two parts, Resource Environment and Web Environment.

Tagging

I found this quote on tagging on the following blog: blog4educators.blogspot.com/2008/01/tagging.html





"I strongly believe that all good social systems need to serve the individual motive. Tagging works because it strikes a balance between the individual and social. It serves the individual motive of remembering, and forms a ad-hoc social groups around it. If you are designing a tagging system you need to understand how it serves the individual and what sort of social formations it supports."





Tagging is a great way to:

• Share knowledge
• Collaborate across locations
• Leverage knowledge by search once

Twitter and Tweets

One thing about Twitter and Social Networking that I find interesting is how connected you can be with people at all times but I am not sure if I really can see myself using Twitter. However, I can see a lot of uses for Twitter in the day to day operations of Tech support. During the Michael Stephens presentation he mentioned that some Tech Support departments use Twitter for updates and outages. I started to think how we could do that with our updated and outages. For power outages a Tweet could be posted if a location was down and then when they were back up. Also, I could see Twitter as a good way to communicate with Technicians in the field, as they are working on problems they can update in real time. With each thing I am trying to not only see how I can use it in my personal life but also how it could be used at work.

Library Thing

I really like using Library Thing. I spend a lot of time on Amazon looking at books, reading reviews and looking at reviews so I can really see myself using Library Thing. I was adding titles To My Library an am looking forward to using some of the social networking aspects of the site.

Image Generators

So far this is my favorite thing because there are so many fun things you can do with these tools. You can also use them to add a graphic to a presentation, for example the Learn and Play team used the golden egg graphic for a PowerPoint presentation. I just made this graphic for fun:

RSS Feeds in the Library World

Did you know that the library uses RSS feeds? On the really cool Library Tool bar there are RSS feeds for New Items. That is one of my favorite featured on the Library Tool bar because it makes finding new titles so easy. While I was doing this discovery exercise I found that the Cincinnati library uses RSS feeds and has quite a few categories:

http://www.cincinnatilibrary.org/feeds/

Just something to think about as Web 2.0 technologies become more prevelant. How can CML use RSS feeds to provide services to our customers?

RSS Feeds

I have to admit that I didn't have a lot of experience with RSS Feeds. I found Bloglines the easiest to use of the tools. I didn't really care for the layout of Syndic 8 but I liked the Blogger Central link on Technorati. I think I have to play with RSS feeds a little bit more to become more comfortable.

Technology Moves Fast

I was thinking about how fast technology changes, as soon as you have something figured out, something better comes along. I don't know why but I was thinking about a friend in high scool that had one of the first VCRs. It was a beta and absolutely huge, but it was so cool to be able to watch unedited movies. Here are some pictures that show the evolution of the VCR.

Flickr Fun

I have been really enjoying playing on Flickr this week. I created a trading card for my cat Bear. I love to take pictures but the only things I seem to take pictures of are my pets.

What is so cool about Flickr and Photobucket are how easy these sights make it to share pictures. Photo technology has come a long way since the days of Polaroids and file.

Blogs

I am very impressed by all of the blogs created for Learn and Play. So far my favorite part of the Learn and Play program has been reading the blogs. What I enjoy the most is how I am finding about staff's interests and personalities, just a few bits of information can tell you so much about a person that you didn't know before. The blogs are a fun communication tool that allows staff to interact with each other in a fun environment and I am looking forward to reading the blogs throughout this program and even after the program has ended.

71/2 Habits

For me the hardest habit is creating my learning toolbox because I never thought of learning in this way. I tend to rely on books and web sites and I need to incorporate other learning tools.

The easiest is beginning with the end in mind. I have come across this statement multiple times and each time I read it it makes sense, not just in learning but in setting goals and working on projects.

Informal vs. Formal Learning

Not all learning is done by formal methods. The link below displays a mind map graphic that shows Informal vs. Formal learning methods.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7rneYvdkbAbqdN7RnPwYiot2iRgd-T2TwD6mXuDgEZ8mUN_YWFerPNUAMcOXKgTm_xtrzVtdvdTPSOQomqLyqd4QUFd21EyP_pPCZrX9rG5BvlVTU334lWRhvkPwVjN7rFvzXUbookDZm/s1600-h/ple.jpg

The Hyper-Linked Library

I hope everyone that attended enjoyed the Michael Stephens program! He had some excellent points that really apply to the future of libraries, especially harnessing the collective experience. Please let me know what you thought of his presentation. What resonated with you? What did you agree or disagree with?

Blast From the Past

Today during the Learn and Play @ CML presentation Gerald mentioned how the internet makes the world smaller. Proof of this happened to me earlier this week when I received an e-mail from a martial arts instructor that I work out with, he was forwarding me an e-mail he received from a high school friend of mine. She must have found my name on his web site and e-mailed him looking for me. It probaly took her just a few minutes to search for me and send the instructor an e-mail. I e-mailed her back and an looking forward to catching up.

Learn and Play @ CML

Does anyone remember when you could not even open a second window on these PCs? When I first started working at the library CML was using The Library Channel on public PCs to access the internet. It's hard to believe but that wasn't that long ago. The internet continues to grow and has become so much more than just web sites. The Learn and Play program offers staff a fun way to explore some of this technology while at work. Not only can you play at work you can win prizes! So stay tuned for more information about this program and the incentives.