Saturday, September 29, 2007

Thing 12 - Rollyo

Storytime Resources Search

The link above will take you to my Rollyo search with various resources for baby/toddler/preschool storytimes. It includes sites with activities, tips, and early literacy research to help in preparing meaningful literacy experiences for children. This was just one way that I thought librarians could use Rollyo to help them quickly find information from a number of reliable sites. I do many searches to help me find crafts and activities and rather than doing a general web search, this tool lets me just search sites that I know are good and relevant. There's a lot less "weeding out" of bad or irrelevant results. This would also be a great search tool for teachers to use with students to help them search for information on a particular subject safely and efficiently.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Thing 11 - Library Thing

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

I had never heard of LibraryThing before, but it was really cool! What a great way for readers to share books they love! People are always more likely to read a book that someone has recommended to them. I've always been a fan of the employee's recommendation section at the library and this is a way to do that online. Librarians could share their book lists with patrons to encourage greater library use. Also, LibraryThing allows readers to network by becoming friends, which would allow patrons to get know each other and discuss books online. I thought this was a great resource. You can check out my LibraryThing catalog by using the link above or the search bar below.

Thing 10 - Online Image Generators

Yahoo! Avatars U.K. & Ireland

Alright, so the most important thing I learned is that I am way hotter and cooler looking online than in person. I don't think that was the objective of this "thing" but that's what I got out of it.

Image created at GlassGiant.com

Ok, seriously, here is a little rocket I made using GlassGiant.com. I tried to make a snow globe also, but for some reason the site kept saying it was down and I never saw the finished result. The preview was really cute though, so I may go back and try again later. These text and image generators are a great way for libraries to make interesting graphics that will grab the attention of patrons.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Thing 9 - Merlin, etc.

I found Merlin to be pretty cool. I found the Second Life and Avatar stuff particularly interesting. I had never heard of SL before and after learning about it I'm not sure if it's cool or losery, probably both! I thought it was awesome that libraries and universities are creating virtual campuses in SL to provide services to people in their distance learning programs. I'm definitely going to learn more about this, but not right this minute cause it's kind of addictive and I didn't realize I'd been sitting here as long as I have!

Also, I used some of the feed search engines. I didn't like the other search engines as much as the bloglines search. I felt like the bloglines search returned content that was more relevant to what I was looking for.

Thing 8 - Bloglines

I really like RSS feeds and readers. I'm not huge on blog reading, but I do like keeping up with a lot of news sites and stuff like that. RSS feeds allow me to check updates to all of these sites at once, which saves a lot of time. I thought bloglines made it really easy to subscribe to feeds and find new stuff you might be interested in.

I use iGoogle as my homepage at home, which has an RSS reader. I use it to keep up with top headlines, international headlines, and my guilty pleasure, People.com headlines. I also have a feed from weather.com that tells me the weather forecast for my area for the next 2 or 3 days. It's really useful for quickly keeping up with what's going on in the world without going to several different websites.

I did take the plunge and made my bloglines feeds public. You can check them out at http://www.bloglines.com/public/HCLJody .


Saturday, September 15, 2007

Thing 7: Technology Interests

As a young mother, I'm very interested in what technology is available to help me share and preserve pictures. My family lives in Alabama, so it is much easier to upload pictures online and let them access and/or print them from the internet. I really liked Flickr and had never used that site before. At home I've started using the scrapbooking software available through Creative Memories, which allows me to create a scrapbook and have it printed and mailed to me. I'm horrible at crafts, so these options give me the chance to create something on my own that will look both creative and professional, which makes me feel good. I'd like to look at more sites like Flickr and explore the other online imaging options available to me.

Thing 6: Flickr Mashups

I checked out some of the Flickr mashups, particularly the calendar and trading card applications. They weren't as rockingly awesome and I hoped they would be. My pictures kept turning out very pixelated and my trading card printed out teeny tiny. I tried to find a way to customize it and/or edit it more, but I couldn't find a way to do that. There were a lot of cool applications to use though. Facebook does some similar stuff with their site, allowing users to create applications. Even though all the applications aren't great, it really allows for a lot of creativity among users and eventually you can find a lot of content that fits well with your interests.

Thing 5: Flickr Niagra Falls Rainbow


Niagra Falls Rainbow
Originally uploaded by Kaptain Krispy Kreme

I found this photo by doing a general search for Niagra Falls. I've always wanted to see Niagra Falls and this picture grabbed me right away. The waterfall is beautiful on it's own, but I thought the rainbow in this photo gave it a special touch.

Thing 2 - Lifelong Learning

I'm definitely a big believer in being a life long learner. I just need my brain to be doing or learning something to feel productive. There are so many things out there that I am interested in and want to know more about that I don't see how I could ever be finished learning them all! I like the way the tutorial broke down the process into steps to help you really think about your goals and how to achieve them. I also liked that they recommended playing! I need a little playing every now then and sometimes a lot. Even though playing doesn't feel like learning you often find that you do learn a lot when you don't really intend to.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Getting Started

Well, I am officially a blogger now. This 23 Things stuff seems alright. I am pretty comfortable with computers, so I think that won't be too hard. However, from looking at the list of activities I don't think I've done a lot of this stuff (including blogging!). I just started working for library as well so I'm doing all kinds of new and exciting things! It's going well so far, and I'll keep you up to date through this blog.