Mission Complete !!!!!!!!!

Exercise 23: I have finally completed the Summer 2.0 program. This was a great learning experience. Personally I had already known about most of the technologies discussed in this program. My favorite part of the program was exploring the different mashup's that were available for usage with Flickr. I enjoyed reading everyone's blog posts and the different perspectives of the participants on the various technologies that were introduced through this program. I will always be a lifelong learner because I realized along time ago that technology is constantly changing and in order to be a asset you have to explore the different technologies that are out there. I expected more people to participate in the program. Maybe next time we can have some additional incentives to draw other participants. If another discovery program was offered I would participate.

Great program.

Audiobooks & E-books

Exercise 22: I visited the Project Gutenburg website to look for technology books but they were outdated since they only publish books that have expired copyrights. I decided to look for children's books and found some of my old favorites that I can have my kids read. I found Grim's fairytales and Mother Goose. There are also older versions of Encyclopedias available using this site.

I visited audible.com and like the audio books in the biography section. I have the audiobook for confessions of video vixen because I think that hearing about someone's life in their own words makes the story more interesting. This site is very useful for disabled persons who are blind.

Podcasts

Exercise 21: I explored the podcast.net, podcastalley.com and yahoo podcasts. I prefer the podcast.net website because I was easily able to access the website and view podcasts without having to sign in. I had to sign into yahoo and I had to download something from podcastalley. On podcast.net I typed in dreamweaver to find some tutorials and subscribed to the RSS newsfeed on my blog. Podcast's can same our department alot of time and energy when it comes to training. We can make podcast's available via or website to assist individuals with their technological needs.

Youtube

Exercise 20: I always enjoy watching the videos on youtube. I use youtube to add videos to my Hi-5 and myspace pages. What I don't like about youtube is the fact that kids can easily get an account using a fake age without any additional verification of their real age. These kids are able to view inappropriate material easily because some of the videos on youtube contain profanity. The library can use this site to store tutorials or other short flicks that can be catlouged into dynix. When students are searching for information on a topic these links would appear and take them directly to these videos.

I included a video from youtube which shows some beautiful Virgin Islands photographs and video.

Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

Exercise 19: I like OmniDrive which is used to store your personal files like music, photos and documents via the internet. This makes these files available to you from any location. You are given 1 GB of free space to upload your files. I am going to use this site to backup all of my countless music files that I have stored on my PC. I don't really feel safe posting up personal documents. The website is said to be using 128bit SSL encryption that keeps your files safe while they travel the web but hackers can still get through that kind of encryption especially if you are using a unsecured wireless network. I don't want my personal business floating around the net and then have people contacting me trying to blackmail me. In a library setting I don't really see a good use for it unless there is a document or application file that needs to be installed on everyone's computer in the office. You could upload that application to this site and then go to each person's computer and download the application. I don't really think thats needed since we have other virtual drives that can perform that same task.

Web Based Applications

Excercise 18: Zoho writer is a great tool to utilize when you have a group project to complete.  In my courses that I am taking we work in teams to complete team projects.  We use Zoho writer to share documents and make revisions to the document.  It was very time consuming when we were all typing our information into separate word processing programs because we would then each have to post our information separately and then combine efforts.  With Zoho writer we were able to make our additions to the same document which saved us a lot of time.  Zoho Writer is very similar to other word processing software and contains the spell check and word count tools which are tools that I constantly use for my classes.  I am publishing this information to my blog directly from zoho writer. 

Week 7: Wiki's

Exercise 16: I visited the St. Joseph Public Libraries wiki and liked the autobiography section. In this area you can create your own biography and they have resources available to help you do this. There is a link to a book called "Your autobiography : more than 300 questions to help you write your personal history" which has call number information. When you click the link it takes you directly to St. Joseph's catalog of books.

Wiki's can be edited by anyone and aren't reliable sources of information. I use Wiki's as a starting point when I doing any type of research. At the ending of Wiki's there are usually links to more reliable sources. Since the author's of these Wiki's took the time to do some research and post it for me to see I piggy back off their efforts and continue my research with their suggestions. This cuts my research time down considerably.

I think the library should use Wiki's to encourage local historians to write about island history. Wiki's allow different authors to add to existing articles and I think that the history of these islands are available in a piece peice manner. You get some information from one historian and another one has the finishing piece to the puzzle. For some reason Virgin Islanders don't record their history and its very difficult to find information. Current events can also be posted into a Wiki. Any articles that are found relating to a particular topic can be listed on the Wiki page.

Exercise 17: I checked out the PBwiki and added my blog to the favorite blog list. I added three movies to the favorite movies list. I followed Bethany's lead and added a link to my movie slections from the imdb movie database. I noticed that your are able to save the lists on this site as a pdf and see the last person who edited the page.

I think we can use this technology in various departments within our unit for supply lists. As a person needs supplies they can post it on the list. Since the list is open to everyone with the correct password a complete supply list for a department can be compiled.