In my dreams...

Eyeing the prizes

ELL in real life

In the past 24 hours (I worked late last night) I've...

• taught 3 students how to put their power point presentations, essays and science reports on their flash drives,
• taught 2 students how to save and then attach their work to a self-addressed email
• tutored all 5 in the beauty of Google docs.
• introduced my son to Pandora.com (he thought it was cool and promptly set up an account)
• turned same son onto a podcast of an NPR show that I knew he'd find interesting.
• shared a few hilarious Youtube links with my Dad (links courtesy of fellow bloggers)

and enjoyed doing all of it.

#23 (Ta DA!!!!)

In no particular order and without organization, here's the feedback.

• Great program. I learned a lot and I know I'm going to go back and revisit various Things to explore further.
• I truely appreciated the permission to play, along with the helpful nudges, hints, links and guidelines.
  
• I'm the kind of person who needs to process information for a longer period of time before responding. There were several Things that I would have liked to have had more time to explore and think about, especially when considering how the tool (for lack of a better word) might be used in a (or 'our') library setting.
• More time in general.
• Sometimes it was frustrating to work on this alone. Yes, we could (and sometimes did) bounce stuff off of colleagues. But I think this would be really fun if it was done in small groups, like 3 people. This presupposes that all 3 people want to be involved. In an ideal world, we'd be able to devote 2 hours (just throwing that out there) once a week to playing around. Maybe self pace it? On the other hand, there needs to be an end otherwise we would get totally distracted and not finish anything.
• While I'm not sure we'll be using everything we learned, I'm darned glad I know about it. (I listened to the debate last night, can you tell?).
• I'm really curious to see how (or if) some of these Things become more widely used. Twitter for example. I talked to lots of High School students, adults, kids, professionals and overall the response I got was 'Twitter???! You mean like birds?' So maybe this is a phenomenon that's localized to techno-geeks (my apologies to techno-geeks everywhere).
• On the other hand, we in libraries need to facilitate communication in all its forms. We need to support all these different forms of media and we have to continue exploring the new stuff, creating new ways to interact with our patrons.
  
• Regarding utilizing these tools here at EPL, absolutely, but how savy are our users. We have a digital divide. What is our role in closing it? Thinking of kids and apps like Googledocs. If kids don't have a computer at home, or access to the internet at home, do they at school? Do they have email addresses? at school? Access to computers whenever? Are teachers supporting, or even teaching digital fluency? We can certainly step into that role but it would be better if we were working with schools, teachers and media specialists.
• ...

My Media Mall

I've used this before and it's pretty intuitive to use. My only problem is the lack of titles, especially in the younger age range, which would be a real asset. There've been loads of times, especially during peak vacation times, when a downloadble book would have been perfect...but it doesn't exist, at least not in My Media Mall. Overall, I'm glad we have this and I hope it expands.

Finding podcasts

Podcastalley was a pain in the arse, with Podcast.com a close second. I prefer itunes - it's much easier to navigate, intuitive to use and MUCH easier to figure out how to listen to something before subscribing. I did find an interesting podcast called The Naked Scientist that I subscribed to. It's all about recent finds in the world of science. Did you know there's been a vaccination for MRSA developed? Or that bees can count? How cool is that? It would make a good companion to e review publication The Scout Report. There are a lot of ways we could use podcasts to extend our services, like many other libraries already are doing. Storytime anyone? I really like being able to listen to interviews, or whatever, on my own time. And it's amazing what's out there.

Later...OK, revisited the podcast thing and this time found some great book feeds that I subscribed to, including one out of Canada that is all children's book author interviews. Now the problem is only going to be how to keep up with it all!

Podcasts

Way cool.

More 2.0...Etsy (#18 & 19)

Enough about wikis, spreadsheets etc. I cut right to the fun stuff (for me) and explored Etsy. Etsy is "your place to buy and sell all things handmade". This site is well organized and has some funky ways to search - like by color, showcase, price range, in addition to a decent, linked category listing. There's a community section, a blog etc. There is a small fee for selling items through the site, and sellers need to set up an account, but all terms/conditions/requirements are clearly spelled out. Can we use this in the library? Probably not, unless we find inspiration for craft programs.

Google Docs

Thank you Marcia M for giving us a live and in-person demonstration of how useful this little app is. It's also easy peasy to use. (Thank you google) It's kind of mind-boggling to think of all the different ways to temporarily store, transfer, send and work on documents. As easy as attachments and email are now, they're almost last century, you know? With the number of students who use our computers and resources to write up assignments, this is an excellent way for them to 'take it with them' so to speak.

Later, on second thought....Yes, good way for students (or whoever) to work here, there or anywhere on a document but they have to have an email account to do so! While I don't know the statistics, I would hazard a guess that many of our students (grades 3-8 and possibly higher) who could really benefit from this do not have an email account, or may not have adequate access to computers to make use of one etc. I need to explore and think about this a bit further. Obviously we need to not only be aware of how the schools (middle and elementary) are set up for computer usage, but we also need to know what/how they are instructing their students.

After fiddling around with both Google and Zoho, I think I prefer Zoho. Although it's not as clean looking as google, it was a little more intuitive for me to use.

Wkis

These things are great. It was really interesting to see how they're being used in other libraries and I would love to set one (or two or three) here. What a great way to build programs, or reading lists, or how-to manuals.

I wonder if there is a sheep or yarn wiki out there? Mayben there's something devoted to bamboo?

The ELL wiki was fun...very easy to post to. I had no idea that Campagnola had an outdoor deck!

Library 20.0 (OK, maybe not yet, but we're getting there)

Great articles. Excellent summation of how all of this (email, facebook, tagging, del.icio.us, wikis, etc.) has evolved with newer ideas being built upon, yet encorporating the old. I liked the description of libraries being "conversations" and "dynamic", "knowledge spas". And that no matter what the future brings, what we have done in the past and what we are doing now will part of it. From my own perspective, it's been interesting to participate in these changes. On the one hand, the internet hasn't been around all that long yet I can't imagine life without it. The changes in technology, to me, are just part of the natural progression of society. I'm curious to see how our profession changes.

Twitter

Easy to set up an account but apparently my friends aren't into this since I couldn't find any of them. (Reinforced by their comments "Twitter? What's Twitter") It was fun searching around though. I found several other knitting addicts who had links to other fiber fiends. Just what I need...another enabling tool. All sarcasm aside though, I can definitely see adding this to our libarian tool kit, especially for all those titles/authors/factoids that are found right after the patron disappears out the door.

Tagging

I think tagging is one of those natural, "oh duh" common sense things that makes everything we do, online at least, so much easier. It's also one of those things that has so much potential that it's sometimes frustrating when it's not being used.
I also think it's another one of those tools that we libraries need to start exploiting more fully.
I don't have a del.icio.us account yet, although I've been meaning to set one up. (Maybe after the bamboo is back in the ground?...) I can certainly see the value in it, having more than one email account and several computers that I regularly use. I am frequently guilty of bringing up something I recently found/read/experienced on line that I want to share with whomever I'm talking to. It would be so much easier to share with a del.icio.us account than having to redo a search and send a link via email...

Review

Since I'm one of those people who need to think about things for a while before I can make a well-formed statement, I'm not sure that I've actually coherently expressed what I've learned so far. Ergo, a review of Things.

Regarding #'s 1 & 2, learning and lifelong learning. I think this whole concept of ELL is a fantastic idea. Lifelong learning is what we library people are all about. While not everyone may be enthusiastic about all the web toys available, or want to use them, we need to be at least passingly aware of them (IMHO). Ideally, we'd all be thinking about how we could exploit these things to our advantage. Learning something new can sometimes be scary, intimidating and difficult, especially if it's something 12 year olds are really good at and we're just trying it out even though it's been around for a while. But that's o.k. (Did anyone else see the article in the newspaper about adults learning to ride a bike for the first time?) What I like about this 23 thing idea is that it grants permission (while making it relatively easy) to play with learning. So far I've been having a blast. In terms of life long learning habits, the hardest thing for me is self-confidence. I'm not the most confident of learners. I always feel like I'm surrounded by people with brains waaayyy bigger than mine, who are much more able to absorb and utilize information. They're also really good at sharing their experiences in complete, grammatically correct sentences. I definitely have a hard time with recognizing my abilities as a student. On the other hand, I've always been insatiably curious and usually willing to try new things. I love ferreting out information, figuring out how to do something or just plain old jumping in. Although I do draw the line at bungey jumping and sky diving. I probably won't ever climb Mount Everest either.

Re #'s 3&4. Setting up the blog was a little nervewracking. I'm still not comfortable with forking over a whole boatload of personal info to a website I've only just been introduced to. But then I remind myself that They (whoever They are) probably know exactly what I had for lunch. So relax and take a deep breath. Then, since I'm such a visual person, I wanted it to look exactly like I imagined it, immediately, without having to go through the painstaking steps of figuring it out. Fortunately there are plenty of supportive folks around here and nothing is cast in stone. And then there was the issue of focus. Interesting blogs have a focus. My introverted, self-confidence lacking self wasn't too sure that anyone else would find endless prattle about sheep, wool, yarn and herbs at all interesting. There's always books, but lots of other people are writing much more interesting book comentary. So topic focus is out the window and randomness is the name of the game. Choosing which blog program was fairly easy - it had to be intuitive and able to link to lots of other stuff easily. After playing around a bit and getting pretty frustrated with Wordpress (although I liked it's clean lines) Blogger was much easier for me to use. So far I've really liked it. It's easy to add widgets, upload photos, YouTube video, and Flickr photos. Easy to edit and find what I'm looking for.


#5 & 6, RSS feeds. This is a pretty nifty tool and I'm glad I was forced (so to speak) to revisit it. I really like the one-stop-shop aspect and being able to keep with all the blogs, databases, or sites that are constantly updated.


#7, 8, & 9. Flickr. There's some amazing stuff out there, including the gorgeous bug pictures I uploaded on the blog. What a fantastic way to share. I created an account and although I'm not that fluent with a digital camera, I was able to upload some photos I took. Supposedly I can use bluetooth to upload photos from my phone, but so far I haven't had any success. I'm determined to figure it out however. Just need a little time....Like Blogger, I found Flickr to be very intuitive to use. I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing around with my photos, changing the color saturation, brightness, cropping etc. And it's easy to post photos to the blog.


As far as Flickr apps are concerned, there were way too many out there - my brain started to glaze over as I was scrolling through the list. While I can't see making use of 99.9% of them at the moment, it's good to know they're out there, just in case. You never know what kind of wild, creative, hair you're going to get at 2:00am. Anyway, I played around with Flickr Color Pickr, which was cool. I liked the randomness of this and my first thought was that it would be a great tool for artists/designers etc. to inspire exploration of color juxtaposition or texture. Or even to just interpret the random photos that get pulled up. It's something I definitely want to go back and play with when I have more time.


Flickr Spelling. Since my dad is an expert in fonts, type design etc. I kind-of grew up in a font-aware household. Anybody else out there have serious conversations about the type on a cereal box while they were eating a bowl of that cereal? Play with "press type"? Loads of fun... Really! Which is why I had a great time with Flickr Spelling . It didn't always work, sometimes it left blank spots for letters. The design possibilities are very alluring.


YouTube (and relatives) is one of those things I could inadvertantly spend an entire day with. I've definitely whiled away whole chunks of time puttering around with this. I've found all kinds of things, including Yoga instruction, knitting techniques, sheep shearing, deaf comedians, satire... Uploading the video was easy...once I found the right code box. The possibilities for libraries are fantastic. It's probably already been done, but what about easy to understand tutorials (a la common craft) on using the catalog, finding books by call number, etc?


#10, 11, 12. If I had my druthers, all of my friends, young and old, would live near enough by that I could hang out with them on a regular basis. Unfortunately they don't, but most of them have Facebook accounts! Needless to say, I now have one too. I got to play around with my new photo uploading skills, figured out how to use the isight camera on my laptop, went to Meez.com and created an avatar, and asked a bunch of friends if they wanted to play. It was a little weird finding my Dad on Facebook....like I said, friends young and old. What I find most valuable is the socialness of it. In our fast paced community it's hard to maintain friendships, or just be social. So I'm liking it, a lot. Yesterday I learned how to ichat while logged in. Whee! I think it's kind of interesting that an institution or a department would have a facebook presence. I think of facebook as being a more individual thing rather than a group thing. If there was a way to merge some of the social aspects of facebook with blogs...that would be the ideal. Another one of those 'probably already been done'.



Re: Library Thing & Libraries using social tools. I found Library thing to be the most user friendly and useful of the several book related social sites. It was easy to add the widget, easy to add titles, easy to tag titles. Clearly people like to share their literary opinions, otherwise sites like Amazon would have dropped those social tools in a heartbeat. The concept would be a great addition to any library catalog. Ann Arbors site is fantastic. That's what a library catalog should be like. Easy to navigate, a great way to see what others are into, easy to keep track of personal information needs/requests/information history. Wow! Obviously they have a budget and tech staff to maintain this, but what an inspiration. If we could only embrace some of the social tools, the crucial bit would be to keep them easy to use and easy to find on the website. If done well, I think this is definitely something our comunity would embrace.

Math in real life

Bamboo,
originally uploaded by mamawitch.

This is the bamboo in my garden. As you can see, it is corralled and corseted in ways it probably doesn't like. I am in the process of relocating it because where it was just wasn't working aesthetically. For those who prefer their plants in Latin, this is Phyllostachys bissetti from New England Bamboo. (http://www.newengbamboo.com/.) I got this plant several years ago and according to the folks at New England Bamboo, this variety of 'running' bamboo is only supposed to saunter in these northern climes. Absolutely controllable through regular mowing. That's the theory. There must have been a disclaimer in micro print somewhere, something like "unless planted in optimum soil conditions." Nine months after planting, I discovered just how happy my bamboo was the morning I almost broke a toe on one of the shoots - eight feet from the mother plant. On closer inspection, they were all over the place! And here's the kicker (pardon the pun), each of those shoots could be separated from the rest of the runner and planted, growing eventually into a clump of its own. Now, I have an elderly neighbor who worships the smooth, uninterrupted, uncorrupted green that is her lawn and at least two of those runners had made a beeline for her yard. Part one of crisis management: remove all runners. Part two: corrall mother plant. Part one = labor intensive and partially completed by flashlight after elderly neighbor had gone to bed (no lie). Part two involved the largest garbage bin I could find. Just for reference, it's 4 feet deep. Part two also involved sinking the bin into a 4 foot hole that I had dug, falling into it (the hole, not the bin) at least twice. After repotting (rebinning?) the bamboo has been contented. Enter the need for relocation. A crane would have been the best tool choice to accomplish this, but I don't have a crane. I had: a climbing rope (about 24'), two shovels (one short, one long), a 2x4 (3'), a heavy duty chain (4'), 8 bricks and a Jeep Wrangler (1994, 2 door). Also, a lifelong fascination with how the Greeks, Romans and Ancient Egyptians maneuvered large heavy objects. Leverage. That was the key. Precise positioning of the bricks (after a suitably large amount of soil removal) coupled with coordinated leveraging and pulling. Also crucial was the angle of leverage and pull. Did I mention that this was planted beside a fence, betwixt trees and therefore had to be pulled out and immediately turned to get through a gateway? My math teachers were way off the mark - I am not inept at math!

Hilda

Hilda,
originally uploaded by mamawitch.

This is Hilda, in whose chair Prince sat. Hilda was a beloved member of our family for 14 and a half years. She died this past spring and we've all been missing her terribly. Fortunately, she was willing to sit still periodically for photo shoots. This particular image was lurking on our digital camera's memory card - a lovely surprise! So I learned how to upload photos from the camera, transfer them to flickr, play around with contrast, color, sharpness etc. in flickr and now put it on the blog. I'm on a roll!

You Tube

Well, this certainly was an interesting exercise! It only took me 45 minute to find the box labeled "embed."

Regarding this funny clip, (Linda says we actually have children like this in the children's room) I first saw this in one of my graduate school classes. It was used as an example of how even very young children can be taught to mimic the adults around them. Thankfully, they can also forget.

My friend Prince*

Lola the Bulldog,
originally uploaded by Scandblue.

One evening a couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the Den, which is at the back of our shotgun-style farmhouse, with my laptop on my lap when CLICKETY, CLICKETY, CLICKETY! in raced Prince, with a ginormous smile on his face. Prince lives around the corner from us and he is a Very Happy dog. When he sees us he is in danger of levitating off the ground because his tail is whirling around so fast. Evidently Prince had been begging to come into our house for a long time and this time ! it was O.K.!! He was ecstatic. 75 pounds of solid muscle came rocketing into my lap (the laptop narrowly missed obliteration). He then checked out the rest of the first floor. He zipped out the front door, leapt off the porch, ran around us, his owner and the front garden (twice) before begging to go back in. So we did. And the first thing he did was to make a beeline for the den where he climbed into Hilda's chair and sat with a happy grunt...

Then he dashed outside again.

I love it when Prince visits.

*I've never been able to capture Prince on camera since he is always moving. This must be a close relative. Photo courtesy of Scandblue on Flickr.

Feeds, Blogs and Bookshelves

Last Friday afternoon I had way too much fun here at work. There were three of us on the desk and it was quiet enough that we could play around with blogs, finding blogs, going off on tangents because of blogs and feeds. The tangents segued into exploring book sites like Librarything which we all jumped on with glee (but not before subscribing to a few others and messing about with those too). It reminded me of being a kid when I had friends over and we'd all be playing around with some version of the same thing. Someone would say "Hey, what's this? How does this work?" and someone else would answer "Oh, that's ...Here's what you do." And at the same time someone else would say"Hey, check this out!" Ideas bouncing all over the place and everyone willing to share. What a blast!

Results? Love Librarything and can see subscribing to it eventually. Especially relevant since I lost my book log/journal. I will now attempt to reconstruct it online.

Am learning lots more about how to put stuff on my blog, like photos. I'm itching to play around with flickr etc.

RSS

I first explored RSS last year when an acquaintance of mine went on and on about it. I just couldn't see what the big deal was. I tried subscribing to some bundled stuff, which was boring and a waste of time. I couldn't figure out how to subscribe to what I wanted to and, since I had to log into something just to get to all this stuff, I dropped it. Now that I've revisited the topic, I think it's kinda cool. It defenitely helps to know how to subscribe to particular sites (duh!) As for finding those sites, I used the random, leap frog method, which was to find something I was interested in and look at what they subscribed to. Not the most efficient way of going about things, but much more fun. I found the blog search tools ineffective and frustrating. Will I keep using RSS? Possibly, probably, not sure. What I would like is to have an icon that sits on my desktop that I could click on, which would take me directly to my RSS feeds - rather than having to log into igoogle every time.

Later...Things 5 & 6. RSS has definitely been a very helpful tool. I've managed to keep on top of all kinds of things and find new stuff via links. It's been great! I've also played around lots with Google reader and found some other really useful stuff for my Other Life.

Bugs and Birds

So a week or so ago I went into the Pony shop during my lunch hour to buy a helmet and a decent bike lock. At 8:25 that morning we discovered a scheduling crisis with the car and I, in a fit of generosity/carbon footprint guilt, volunteered to ride my bike. Actually, my daughter's bike.* But then we couldn't find her lock or my helmet thus the visit to the Pony shop. I found a lock and a spiffy new helmet and, of course, a spiffy new bike. Maybe it was the intoxicating combination of tools, grease, mechanical bits and wheels. Or the allure of speed and the ability to change gears without mishap. Whatever. I now have this fabulous new bike and I've been cycling everywhere. I'm in danger of becoming a cycling nut. One of the great, unanticipated pleasures of all this riding around is experiencing wildlife. This past weekend I found this catching a ride with me:


Please note that the photo is a pale imitation of reality. This little jewel of a beetle looked like it had been created out of polished copper with deep emerald green inlays. I later discovered (because I had to know what it was) that it's a Japanese Beetle and the scourge of gardiners near and far. I still think it's gorgeous.





I also heard a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that looked like this (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

As well as a murder of crows, several bluejays (chasing a cardinal), and a variety of finches.





And as a background chorus, was the drone of cicadas and crickets.














Aren't they gorgeous? Next toy on my wish list is a digital camera.


*My bikes: #1 A Schwinn 3 speed bought with my babysitting money when I was 12. It has Issues. #2 A Motobecane 10 speed I bought at 15 when I wouldn't have been caught dead on a Schwinn 3 speed. It doesn't like potholes or changing gears.

Just FYI, I will not ever appear in spandex.

Photos part II

I lied. The perfectionist in me wasn't satisfied with the photo. I had to figure out how to crop it, futz with the brightness and, just because it was an option, play with the color saturation. And I couldn't get through this process without the odd #%^ creeping in. I need to go knit a few rows to take the edge off. But the photo looks good, don't you think?

Later...Reflecting on Things 1,2,3 & 4. I know I'm already a lifetime subscriber to lifelong learning since I'm notorious for jumping into things feet first, sometimes without looking. I like exploring and learning new stuff. I'm not particularly goal oriented with it, meaning I don't always have an absolute end in mind, it's more about the process. My weakest point, hands down, is having confidence in myself as a learner.

I figured it out!

Cool! I figured out how to modify the image all by my lonesome, with a minimum of drama and inappropriate language. Fun, fun Fun.

Re: picture

Them thar leaves are various versions of Basil. The smell of ripe basil is, in my humble opinion, heaven on earth.

!

Well this has been interesting. Creating this thing wasn't difficult but formatting has been a challenge I haven't mastered yet. It's a little frustrating. Is there any way to play around with where the title is in its box? Like, where it is on the image? Is there any way to resize or crop the picture I found? I'm guessing photo changes need to be done in photoshop and then imported. Sigh! If anyone has the skinny on this, can you let me know?