One Last Thing

Thank you to Hartford Public Library Learning 2.0 for all the new experiences. I learned to:

• make a wiki
• try Google's slideshow tool
• try other internet productivity tools (See Thing 18)
• find the best video ever about Web 2.0
• find a favorite funny library blog not written by the Annoyed Librarian and actually get it to feed into my blog so I can bask in reflected funniness
• bask in even more reflected funniness by linking here and here
• Start a library at LibraryThing (only 25 books so far...)
• Learn about tagging and flickr
• make a Librarian Trading Card
• start writing down all user names and passwords** in one book, always, no matter how convinced I am that I'll remember them. It's like Seinfeld's episode about rental cars... . You know. Anyone can MAKE the password. The important thing is to REMEMBER the password.

I did many favorite things. My most favorite was making a wiki on Wetpaint.

Unexpected outcomes: I've learned that on Web 2.0 we are experiencing a blooming EXPLOSION of human creativity.

The Learning 2.0 program has contributed to my lifelong learning goals by showing me how to use a rich selection of Web 2.0 resources. It pointed the way to even more lists of resources like this one: http://rameyerguam.blogspot.com/.

Thank you to Irene; Sandy; Mary; and everyone else who put together and ran this program. It was very, very worthwhile. If I hadn't been able to do some of this on work time I never would have discovered and learned as much as I did. Thank you!

The program was wonderful. Possible improvement might include extending the lab to a morning or two per week at the branches. It would also be great to add a group/team Thing to the to-do list.

I would definitely participate in another program like this in the future.

**The book cover was made by HPL blogger quietguy at http://web2assimilation.blogspot.com/

Note: I had written more about Web 2.0 and net neutrality but they made the post too long, so I put them here.

The Penultimate Thing

I'M ALMOST DONE!! Gloating? Naaaah.

Thing 22: Audiobooks.
I tried all three free audiobook download sites. The Openculture catalog is no longer maintained. Simplyaudiobooks lets you download one free book of their choosing each month. On simplyaudiobooks you can also listen to samples of others, and if you like what you hear you can either rent or buy the audiobook.

The best free audiobook site was the last: Librivox. I browsed through their titles and tried out a Jack London audiobook. You can also volunteer to record books for them. I added a Librivox podcast to this blog page.

On another note: Thank you to Webbeagle and others for mentioning Pandora--a site that lets you create a radio station of your favorite kind of music. Really cool.

Thing 21: Find Podcasts

I subscribed to a podcast called "A Taste of Russian." The text website has transcriptions of the dialog on the podcast. It's for intermediate speakers/listeners to help improve their Russian language skills.

Searching for good podcasts was more difficult than I thought. I had more luck with Podcast Alley than Yahoo Podcasts. I'm still confused about subscribing to podcasts and RSS feeds. It sounds simple but I'm just not getting the process involving an "aggregator" and how to get the feed onto the blog. Anyway, I did manage it, but I think there's something that I'm failing to understand. Other Web 2.0 products like online productivity tools let you click on "export to blog" or "publish to web" or something similar, and you can type in your blog URL and voila!

I'll keep trying this and in the end will probably wonder why on earth I was ever confused. Sort of like reading Hartford's city bus schedules...

Things 1-4 Retro

Obviously I did Things 1, 3 and 4--read about the program, set up a blog and register it on the HPL Learning 2.0 23 Things Log. But I didn't document Thing 2 the way I was supposed to. Since I really, really, want to qualify for the laptop drawing, I'm dotting all those pesky i's and t's. Er, crossing the t's.

Thing 2 was to write about which Learning Habit is easiest for us and which is hardest. At the time I thought that would be too boring for other people to read about. I'll do it here but you don't have to read it.

In case we've all forgotten those 7-8 habits, here they are again:

8 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners
Habit 1: Begin with the end in mind
Habit 2: Accept responsibility for your own learning
Habit 3: View problems as challenges
Habit 4: Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
Habit 5: Create your own learning toolbox
Habit 6: Use technology to your advantage
Habit 7: Teach/mentor others
Habit 8: Play

The easiest habit for me is PLAY!. It's so important that every single entry on this librarian's list of 181 Things ends with PLAY! Play is FUN. Something like the library usage by peeps study took a lot of work to put together but it must have been joyful work.

The hardest habit for me is to organize a learning toolbox. I have a toolbox, but all the stuff in it is jumbled, so the thing that's on top probably gets used the most and the things underneath only if I have time to rummage around in there and find something cool I'd forgotten I had. I also have a hard time keeping the end in mind (Habit #1). I can BEGIN with the end in mind, but I very quickly forget about it as I'm led down one trail after another. Er, why are we doing this again? (just kidding!)

I really, really like a lot of these. I like "Teach/mentor others." I especially like "View problems as challenges." And more. These are all great. Go team, rah rah.

Thing 20 2.0: The Machine is Us/ing Us

Youtube again. The coolest expression ever of "What is Web 2.0."

Thing 20: YouTube

Today I searched YouTube for funny commercials. I have to say this does not feel like work. :-)

The Peep Thing

Check out this study of peeps and library usage. We should think about expanding services to meet the needs of this underserved population.


Thank you to Miss Dewey Decimal for the link.

Thing 19: Seomoz Web 2.0 Awards

For Thing 19 I tried out the hosted wikis PBWiki and Wetpaint. (PBWiki was awarded first place and Wetpaint came in second. I couldn't access the Stikiwiki website, which was the third place winner.).

A Wiki is great if you're working on a group project. Instead of having to email edits and ideas back and forth to your team members or physically meeting for work sessions, any of you can work at any time on the Wiki site.

PBWiki was very business/corporate-oriented. Wetpaint was better for individuals, students, and libraries. Wetpaint gives you templates for the overall look and templates for the organization of your wiki. I didn't find those features at PBWiki (although they might have been there--I didn't have time to intensively search for them).

When I set up a group project wiki at wetpaint, it gave me a brainstorming page, a research page, a rough draft page, a schedule page, etc. It suggested the sort of text I should enter in different places. Group members can upload photos...and you can track all the changes made by anyone--wetpaint records a history of changes made.

Frustrations with using these wikis are the same as for Google Docs and Zoho online productivity tools--formatting your documents is not easy. You just have to be happy with what you get and not try to make it look perfect.

Notes: Seomoz: Seo is Search Engine Optimization.
Moz is a branding ploy.