Thing #23

At one point in this class (somewhere around Twitter) I thought I'd never see the end of this class. Now I'm sorry it is over, and yes, I would very definitely sign up for another class like this. It is good to be able to do this online with a cup of tea in hand.

What were my favorite discoveries? The "Things" I liked best and will be most useful to me taught me about RSS, Flickriver in #9, Library Thing, Apps, Web 2.0 and Podcasts.

This helped my life-long learning goals in that my goal is never to stop learning. A couple of these were frustrating in that I really didn't know what I was doing, but pushed through and hoped for the best. Maybe it is possible to put a couple of wrinkles in 60+ year old brain. And it is really important to keep current with technology, not only for myself personally. In this little town and in our little library, I'm it as far as technology goes. So learning as much as I can helps me answer questions for others.

The only real surprises was exactly how much there is "out there" ... I've had my own computer for years and start my day checking out news websites from the US and other countries, but did not realize how much else is available. I have heard buzz words about some of these topics, but they remained only buzz words for me until this class. Now I have at least a germ of knowledge.

The program was well conceived. The only suggestion I might make is to publish a set time for things like IM and Twitter and post it so people will know when they can expect a good result for their attempts.

Thank you again. And please do hold another class like this.

Thing #22

I confess that I went into this "thing" with a prejudice, thinking I would not like it any better than I liked Twitter. But as it turns out, I REALLY like this.

After spending a good couple of hours playing with this, I came up with a couple of favorites. http://travel.podcast.com has a subject entitled Travelography, giving travelers alerts about what is happening. I will probably use that again.

The podcast I really fell in love with, however, is NET radio's weekly book review show. I guess I'm not listening at the time this show is being aired, or it may not be aired out here in the hinterlands. But I subscribed to the RSS on this one. The URL is http://www.netnebraska.org/radio/all_about_books.xml. Also, the book talk section under library is informative.

This, again will be really useful for me to catch shows I would not otherwise have access to. Thank you again for teaching me all this valuable information!

Thing #21

This was a chance to get silly. I got into all the cat talking blogs, and my own two cats, Casey and Dinah, went nuts. I thing their favorite was http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JnIGcLgoA9o, but they had several they responded to very well. I had to stop watching because they started climbing all over the computer trying to find the cats.

There is so much in YouTube that it would be hard to really categorize it all. I guess that is what I din't like, but once you start making choices of what to watch, it chooses for you. I really don't see much use for it other than comic relief, however. Wouldn't watch most of what I saw otherwise.

Thing #20

This is one of the most useful lessons so far. It is good to be able to cut through all the less than useful websites out there to get to the very best in each category. I liked Biblio.com so well that I immediately signed up and bought a book I've been meaning to order for the library. This will replace Alibris for me.

Another one I bookmarked was ifoods.tv ... much better than other places that just post the recipes.

The one section that didn't show me much was the travel section. I checked out forecast.com, but do not see where it is any better than kayak.com or travelocity or the other sites I subscribe to.

But as a whole, this was VERY informative.

Thing #19

This particular lesson I liked very much. I was not aware of the availability of free desktop programs online. Since we are a small and technically-challenged library, the main benefit for me would be creating documents at home that I could later edit when I'm at the library. There is really no one to "share" with in these applications.

Being basically paranoid, however, I am certain I will not ever create any links between my hard drive where items like IRS information is stored, and any type of online storage facility. All of these places assure you how safe your information is, but if hackers can get into Department of Defense and bank databases, they could get into these also if they really wanted to.

So for lots of documents I want to work in at both places, it is much better than carrying around a thumb drive, and I am happy to have learned about this because it will certainly help me. And as recommended, I used the Google docs, as I didn't need to provide any further information and remember yet another password and login.

Again, this is one of the most useful "things" (for me anyhow) in this entire class. Thank you for giving me this knowledge.

Thing #18

I wasn't quite sure I did this exercise correctly, despite trying to follow the directions to a T. Nevertheless, I enjoyed adding my own "favorites", for whatever they are worth.

As the exercise said, this one is strictly for fun, and fun it was. I did have to wait for awhile to post because someone else was editing for quite awhile, so I guess there is not always immediate accessibility, but that's okay.

Thing #15

Thanks to help from Allana, I'm finally able to jump back to this particular "thing".

I can see the possibilities of slideshare for larger libraries, but have never had the occasion in six years to give a slide presentation, so this one will probably not be used by me. I viewed Michael Sauer's slide on copyright law ... I think that would have been a good presentation to attend. I also posted comments on two slide shows, "advantages of financial crisis 878899" and "beautiful nature 844098".

The link to my slide show account is: "slideshow.net/NixNoos.