An Apropos Quote

Be Open To New Ideas. Never stop learning and adapting. The world will always be changing. If you limit yourself to what you knew and what you were comfortable with earlier in your life, you will grow increasingly frustrated with your surroundings as you age.

— The 100 Simple Secrets Of Happy People by David Niven, Ph.D.

Thing 21 - Twitter & Tweet, Short & Sweet

Here's a short video on 'Twitter' from the Common Craft Show people.

http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter

or at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

Thing 20 - Relax and Reflect

Wow! What a ride! We are certainly an ‘on the go’ society. I know that technology changes human behavior over time. Our young people seem to take to being ‘wired’ by osmosis while most older people will need ‘wired’ training. Will our young people need to be trained in ‘non-wired’ communication techniques?


What will we hear about ‘Social Networking Fatigue?’



What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?



Working on this project with a small group of co-workers definitely created an enjoyable camaraderie and bond as we got to know one another through our questions and our blog posts. As with the others in our group, I absolutely love listening to and discovering new music through Pandora (http://www.pandora.com/)!



How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?


I feel much more confident about discussing and helping people with some of these ‘social networking’ tools. Since we are in the information business, we need to know about and feel comfortable with these new communication techniques. The structured presentation made investigating these ‘Things’ both easy and fun!


What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?


I appreciated being able to work on this at home – mostly, on my own time. Having to watch the clock and getting constant interruptions at work would have decreased significantly my joy in working through these lessons. It would have been less stressful, however, to have a week to work on each lesson instead of having to often complete two lessons a week. (Vacation time off and other personal commitments made it difficult for most in our group to take these lessons to the depth desired and provided for in some of the links – making it frustrating, at best.) I believe that it is also important to remember that ‘starting’ a new project takes more time and support resources than once you get a rhythm going and have identified your 'go to' people and places.


If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again choose to participate?


Absolutely! Yes!! Even though I already had some knowledge of many of the elements presented in these lessons, the breadth and depth of this organized Web 2.0 presentation made me look at things that I had previously resisted (Facebook and Flickr), gave me additional information and possibilities that would have taken much more time to discover on my own (Search Engines and Online Applications/ Tools), and created a bond that I truly value with certain co-workers.


Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?


Yes. I was surprised to find Google at almost every turn. And, after having read that Google is making a bid for Twitter (http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Loud-Whispers-Hint-at-Google-Twitter-Deal-66726.html), I find myself, along with many of my co-workers, wondering...


Will Google rule the world?

Gmail

iGoogle

Now, off to start on the first of my next 'Googol' of cups of tea!

Thing 19 - Gaming

I love playing games and solving puzzles so I really enjoyed this 'lesson.' I must admit that, after I browse through a number of online newspapers each morning with my cup of coffee or tea, I reward myself by playing a couple of quick games on the Washington Post website. So, in this lesson, I started by checking out those same games (Sudoku and Play Four - an eight clue crossword puzzle) at Yahoo! Games (http://games.yahoo.com). The features and looks were much the same but the notations were tiny in comparison so I will stick with the easier on the eyes version at the Washington Post. I did, however, enjoy Yahoo's Daily Jigsaw and will probably pay a return visit soon.

I also enjoyed perusing the www.FunBrain.com and www.PrimaryGames.com websites. Great resources for both parents and teachers! However, unfortunately, these sites contain lots of ads that are cleverly disguised - looking like part of the gaming possibilities. So, children would need to be closely supervised and, hopefully, educated about these pitfalls when on those websites. I remember having to spend lots of effort to find and then paying dearly for computer games appropriate for my children. These are free! And, what a variety!

There is one site that was not on our lesson that I feel needs to be mentioned in this post - our very own revamped and wonderful Sno-Isle Kids section on our www.Sno-Isle.org website! This area is very visual and easy to navigate with links to games, book lists and more. I am ever so happy to recommend this site! My one wish would be that, when clicking on the 'Library Catalog' button on the kids site, you would be taken to the AquaBrowser/Visual Catalog instead of to the Traditional Catalog.

In conclusion, skills such as math and reading must be practiced. Games make practice and, therefore, learning fun and relatively painless. How wonderful that libraries (often lumped with museums and their association with antiquities) are willing to look to the future and help insure their own sustainability while providing for the needs of their patrons.

Thing 18 - Maps and Geotagging

I am lucky to have had a mother who not only took me regularly to a library, when I was growing up, but also taught me how to read maps. She loved maps. And, she was a pilot. So, not surprisingly, she wallpapered a particularly long wall in the back hallway of our home with the sections of her old flight maps of the USA - making the lower 48 about 15 feet wide. These maps showed landmarks on the ground that you could see from a small aircraft - even something as small as a shed in some locations. (Yes...these maps were quite a gathering spot for family and friends on many a memorable occasion.) My mother would have loved this lesson and thoroughly loved this technology! Boy, how viewing things have changed!

Since I have had Google Earth installed on my computer already for a number of years, I actually started this lesson by updating my old version to the new 5.0 version that was released in February of this year. It was lots of fun trying out all the new buttons and exploring their new additions of sea (Oceans) and space (Mars). I did find that some areas on 'Earth' are clearer than others. Likewise, there are some streets that you can 'walk,' in the 'StreetView' on Google Maps (http://maps.google.com), and others that you can't.

After reading Twilight author Stephenie Meyer's blog last year and finding that she had never been to Forks, WA but had used Google Earth to 'visit' and explore the area, I 'traveled' there myself to see what she could see. I repeated that visit during this lesson and found that it was much clearer last year. Could the town of Forks have asked to be fuzzied up a bit? Certainly, in reading comments posted since January 2009 under the pictures, there is a great deal of interest, from people in all parts of the world, in visiting Forks in person - Spain, Japan and some South American countries, to name a few. Would they be as interested if they could see it more clearly?

When we were working on Thing 7, Flickr Fun Photosharing, I explored the geotagging option on the Flickr website. I truly hope that more photoservice websites start offering this service. Talk about a truly comprehensive showing of the perennial guffawed vacation photo night with family and friends. You don't even need to be in the same room anymore!

Thing 17 - Avatars and Second Life

Here's the avatar that I created at Tektek.org.

Second Life reminds me of the Graphic Novels that have become so very popular - very visual (though a bit flat and artificial) with few words or 'sound bites.' I'm sure that there are many young people who enjoy this method of exploring new places and things. The time to create these worlds must be enormous. Since I already spend quite enough time daily at a computer, I am not anxious to 'live' in Second Life. I hardly have enough time to do all I want to do in my first life!

Thing 16 - Online Applications and Tools

ZOHO

Work.online

And I thought that a wiki was easy to use. I am now totally enamored with Google Docs (http://documents.google.com/) and, particularly, Zoho (www.zoho.com) - with its wider range of software! The enthusiasm that I have had for the possibilities for wikis, I must now transfer to the online applications and tools we learned about in this lesson. They have just so much more to offer than a wiki! More templates, more import options, more export options, more print options. These look and feel like the same documents that you create with Microsoft Office Suite. In Zoho, the 'Spell Check' feature is available in 75+ languages! Zoho also has a 'Work Offline' feature where changes are synced with the online version once you are 'switched' back online. (What an answer to power outages, disruptions with internet service, and slow processing when multiple users are using the same wireless connection!)

I can see small businesses flocking to these online applications. Both small and medium sized businesses could particularly make use of the additional applications, provided by Zoho, of Invoicing, Database Creation, and Applicant Tracking System.

My main concern with some of these online applications is in the 'publishing' of sensitive information that might be included on payroll spreadsheets, etc. How easy is it to 'hack' into all this online data?

Thing 15 - Search Engines

I chose to explore these search engines by looking at how they would deal with the letters 'ICF' - which can stand for a number of different things - Insulated Concrete Forms, Intermediate Care Facility, among others.

In Rollyo, I had to choose first from a number of categories (ie. Home Repair, Health, Parenting, Top News) before it would give me any results. (And, I could only search one category at a time.) In all categories, they listed the sites, in which they had conducted the search, in a box off to the left of the page. I like that it was possible to link to the home page for each of these sites. In the Home Repair category, the search turned up information on Insulated Concrete Forms. In the Health and Parenting sites, the search turned up a number of associations with those initials. The News category turned up a real variety. An added bonus to Rollyo is that their search page can be customized to suit your needs.

In both Mamma and Dogpile, most of the results were vendor sites. In Mamma, there would be a note by each result stating 'Sponsored by ___' or 'Ads by__' and in Dogpile, (Found on__). Unlike Google and Yahoo searches, which separate out their Ads and Sponsored links in boxes to the side and top, both Mamma and Dogpile keep all their results in one list. Another helpful tool in Google and Yahoo is the drop down menu that shows up during the initial input of your search - before you press the Search button. This helps to identify what you are really looking for.

I enjoyed reading through the UC Berkeley search engine page, found at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/SearchEngines.html, and some of its links to other interesting pages. I will return there in the near future, I'm sure. One of the eye-opening tidbits of information that I learned from this article was that "80% of the pages in a major search engine's database exist only in that database" so "getting a 'second opinion' can be worth your time." I plan to expand my use of search engines with my very next search.