train

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Week 9: Podcasts, Video & Downloadable audio

#23. I can't believe I've made it to the end, and not without some frustration I have to say. I was a little apprensive about starting this program, but eventually took the plunge and approached it one Thing at a time. My biggest challenge was to complete these exercises in the time span I had. I felt a bit rushed and perhaps didn't allow enough time on each thing so I will be reviewing some of the exercises.

I found Online image generator and Del.icio.us to be the most interesting tools I would use. The whole learning experience was interesting if only to keep up-to-date with some of the new emerging technologies on the internet.

The End (hmmm - or is it?)


#22. I explored the World EBook Fair site and looked at some of the titles. There is a selection of titles available in foreign language as well. World EBook Fair site All Audio eBooks are in the Mp3 file format. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12703 for title The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen in the Gutenberg's Audio eBook collection. For The adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19517 in Italian.

#21. Podcasting is great, you name the topic and you'll be sure to find a podcast about it. You can even create your own podcast. There are many directories to choose from and you can search by categories and tags. When you've found something you like to listen to you can listen on the Web, subscribe to receive the latest episodes, download and save to your hard disk and even listen to the episode by downloading the episode on your MP3 Player. Here's a Star Trek one I listened to earlier http://www.treksf.com/podcast/Treksf.com_91_Parallels.mp3

#20. You too can YouTube. Oh my goodness - I can't believe some of the stuff people put on this site. Home Video clips ranging from very good to quite disturbing, professional clips from movies, music, TV, Video games etc. There are over 1200 Web 2.0 sites with YouTube leading the way. I watched and listened to the band U2, "With or Without you". Check it out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7p4BjD7wb8

#19. Discovering Web 2.0 tools. Tools galore - this is certainly jammed packed with lots of interesting sites and links. I explored the Events site which took me to what's happening in Melbourne and around the suburbs. Its full of information, it current events, when and where they're on, price of tickets, names of performers and even a map link on how to get there. It gives you an option to add links and make comments as well.

I looked at many sites (Threadless - T-shirt designing, Arcaplay - games) just to name a few and added some of them to my favourites so I can revisit them at a later stage.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Week 8: Online Applications & Tools

#18. Very interesting, free Web-based applications for users to creat and share over the internet. These Applications appear to be on par with Microsoft office but without the need of installed desktop applications. I viewed the list of web-based productivity applications in Zoho Writer and was impressed with some of the Free web-based options available for desktop office. I looked through some of the demos and took a liking to Zoho planner and 30 boxes just to name a couple. However, I wouldn't use many of the applications but would recommend them to others.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Week 7. Wikis

# 17. Sandbox is a page for new users to experiment with; the general rule is that anyone can edit anything on this page. I added my blog to the Sandbox in the Favorite Blogs under the Australian Blogs along with some of my fellow colleagues. Then placed a few comments in the Favourite TV shows.

# 16. A wiki is a website that allows users to add, remove, edit & change most content in Real Time, and sometimes without the need to register.
I visited the SJCPL Subject Guides and looked at their New & Current Events site. It gives up-to-date news on what is happening locally and nationally and not to forget the what happened "today in history" site that leads to brainyhistory.com/ which makes for very interesting reading.

Book Lovers Wiki is a place for people of Princeton Public Library to write about what they are reading, they can also edit in the wiki. They can have their book reviews posted and respond to other people's reviews by registering with the Library.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

# 15. Reading the five perspectives on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 Library gave me an insight of what is to be expected from libraries in the future, significant way services can and should change, so its out with the old and in with the new.

There's no stopping technology, its progressing rapidly and libraries will be the place to help users find information, gather knowledge and create content. There will be obstacles which may stand in the way, however, the clear thinking new librarian will overcome them.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

# 14. Technorati turns 3 this month tracking over 51 million blogs and its estimated that the 100th millionth blog will be tracked in 5 months. Thats Incredible (now where have I heard that before?)

Technorati offers new ways to search for blogs, ie using keywords in blog posts, keyword tagged blogs or registered blogs with a subject term ie. trains, locomotives.

I checked some of the video blogs on YouTube and couldn't go past Free Hugs. I think the whole world knows about this video. Also searched "Learning 2.0" in Blog Posts, Tags and Blog Directory, these all had varying reports. The number of posts against them being 25,200 results for Blog Posts, then 86 posts tagged and 26 blogs in the directory making Blog Posts the most popular of them all.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Week 6

# 13. Tagging, Folksonomies & Technorati. Discovering Del.icio.us - sounds like a restaurant menu than anything else. Delicious can be used if you use computers in different places, like at work and one from home, it stores your bookmarks and you can get access from anywhere you can find an internet computer. This would be great for students.

Reading and listening to the Discovery Resources is fine at first, but then it starts to get complicated, opening new links to read then new links within the new links etc....I need more time.
So back to the beginning, I created an account and have a favourite recipe bookmark. I searched for a traditional Northern Italian recipes and found an entry for Pizzoccheri (buckwheat pasta dish) which I added rather reluctantly to my bookmark (I wasn't very impressed with the annotation and well the recipe left a lot to be desired). Think I'll have to post my own......?

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Thing 12. Rollyo - This sounded easy, however found it to be a little confusing at first. I created a Rollyo account and spent sometime checking out existing rolls . I've added a few searchrolls to my Rollyo but not made it accessible to the public.