Thing #23: The End

My Reflections…

Well, I learned a lot from this program – way more than I thought I would.  It wasn’t that I was scared to play with the 2.0 stuff, it was more that I either didn’t know it was out there, or just didn’t have the time to mess around.  At least this learning program gave me an excuse to play.

There were a couple of tools that seemed to be pretty useful, and that I’ll probably continue to use in the future:

• Zoho
• Bloglines
• WordPress
• YouTube
• Flickr

If I were to change anything about Learning2.0, I would allow more “at work” time to play with this stuff.  A half hour per week isn’t enough time to do most of this stuff, especially if we have to blog about it too.  I would also try to get the managers involved in promoting it among the staff.  I know that my boss didn’t with us, but I don’t know if that was the case with her main branch.

Either way, this was fun – I’d do it again if we offered something similar in the future.

Thing #13: del.icio.us

For Thing #13 we were supposed to explore a website/program called del.icio.us.  I looked around and it seems to be a pretty useful little tool.    I especially like that I can access my bookmarks without having to remember which computer I was using when I bookmarked it, nor do I have to carry around a flash drive.

As far as using this for research, I think it would be a great tool.  If I were to research a specific topic, I could see what other people found and bookmarked for their own research projects.  It’ll probably come in handy in the future.

Thing #9 – explore feeds

For this “thing” we were supposed to explore the different ways we could find news feeds.  We were given a couple of different links to play with, and basically told “go with it.”  So I did.

I tried to use Feedster first, only to find that the site wouldn’t load.  Because of this, I can’t give a fair review of my experience at that site.

So, I looked at another link on the list called Technorati.  This site allows its users to search for blogs based on subject, tags, and other stuff.  At first glance it’s very busy and kinda clunky.  I expected to click on the various headings and get a list of blogs, but it didn’t work that way.  If I wanted a list of blogs, I had to use the search bar instead.  I guess it worked OK. 

I found interesting stuff on Technorati.  I even added a couple of them to my bloglines account.  One of the feeds I added has to do with horror movies (it’s a guilty pleasure), and the other has to do with cooking (it’s a necessity). 

Would I have found these blogs without Technorati?  Maybe, if I had thought to look up this kind of stuff… but let’s face it, after so many years with the internet we get into a rut that consists of email, news, and research for school/health/whatever.  It’s doubtful that I would have taken the time to look for blogs, let alone blogs about horror movies and cooking.

Thing #8 – Bloglines

Since I’m at home sick today I figured I should do something work related…  so of course I thought about the 23 Things we have to learn.  Thing #8 is an online tool called Bloglines, which is basically an online newsreader to help us keep track of the stuff we look at the most.  It’ll let me know when a site is updated so that I don’t waste time looking at websites only to find that they don’t have any new info on them.  This extra tool can be a wonderful thing, especially as my free time becomes less and less.  But then I worry that I’ll miss out on finding new, interesting webpages to look at.

One of the questions we were asked is “How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?”  People are always interested in the new stuff.  They want to know which books are new, when are the new movies coming in…  you get the idea.  If the library has a web page for new stuff (not just new non-fiction) the public might use RSS to keep track of this page.  It might increase circs and create a new excitement among our customers.

The library is also trying to keep its customers and employees informed about library news.  If we add a RSS feed, it would be easier to stay informed. 

To see what I’ve subscribed to, feel free to visit: http://www.bloglines.com/public/danieBOB.