Great programme and fun!

Once again I really enjoyed the Web2. I found the genealogy sites really great and these would be useful to customers. The very easy way to set up a family tree would be particularly appealing to customers. When I've got more time, I'd like to go back to that.
The kids in the library would love Go Animate. I found it a bit frustrating and a bit of a time-waster for me, but probably because it's not really something I would get into.
Thanks to the Web team once again.

Week 5 - Social sites

Well had a look at Reddit and others. Read a story about a museum dinosaur interacting with kids. Thought there's a lot of info that really isn't of interest to me on these sites, although I'm a big Facebook user, which I got into with the first Web2. Joined up Newsvine as that's really more of interest with more factual information. Read a couple of stories on Newsvine about Hilary Clinton in Israel and another article about Obama.

So frustrating!

http://goanimate.com/go/movie/0I_zVIXN1Xjg/1



Well wouldn't say this was me! Took me ages to figure out how to add voices, etc. Lots of playing around with very little success, but our young kids in the library would love it. Now going back into it, realise it hasn't even worked properly, but will have to do for now. I get the basics.

http://animoto.com/play/y4geNScDcb8cpuComrQOAA

This was great. I never thought I'd be able to create a video. Did the easier option with using the Animoto pictures and music, but at some point, would like to be more creative and use my own resources. Great for libraries, in that we could do promotional vids and post on sites such as Facebook.

Authors on the Web

http://www.readinggroupguides.com/content/index.asp

Some really great interviews with librarians on this site. Questions you can answer re book groups you hold in the library and great ideas. Good site for bookgroup lovers.

Not too much luck with widget!

http://www.bookjetty.com/people/ciao55

Well Widget bit didn't work, so will have to try again, but for now this is my Book Jetty link. Had a bit of fun with this week's exercises. Would definitely show really keen readers, but it is a bit time consuming. Enjoyed looking at numbers of people reading the same books and reviews.

Book Jetty

Well trying to do the Widget thing and not sure if it's worked!

Litlovers

http://www.readinggroupguides.com/content/index.asp

Looked at the reviews, etc., for great book I have just finished 'Eat, Pray, Love' by Elizabeth Gilbert. Did one of the online courses - 'Literature Matters' - Why We Read'. Found this a bit simple but had fun reading the tip sheets. These were for the plots/characters of the Mills and Boon type books.

Lots of Fun!

Loved doing the family tree via Geni. Have always wanted to get started on this, but never enough time. This is so easy - just click on arrows and you're away. Realised my family was a bit complicated with ex's, additional kids, etc., so probably a bit more complicated than most. Lots of tidying up to do. I think I would definitely recommend this to customers who wanted to get started, but were overwhelmed by the whole thing.

her family tree from Geni.com

View more of Mary-Anne's tree  |  Get your own family tree at Geni.com

Well here we go again!

I can't believe it was in November 2007 that we first started Web2. Where has the time gone? It was fantastic way back then when we all got so enthusiastic with this programme and then became frantic Facebookers, etc!!! It's great to get back to it. My first thought, was oh, no, can I remember where my blog is? Do I need a password? etc., but no I just clicked on and there I was. Nothing to remember!!
I look forward to all the exercises.

Exercise 23 - THE END!

Can't believe I made it! Has been an up and down time, but really one of the best training tools I've ever used in ACL. Congratulations to you Jayne for getting it up and running. Not too sure how much has stayed in my brain, but now when people talk about 'blogs', 'technorati', 'podcasting', etc., I know that this is not a foreign language. Of course the MP3 player is a great carrot to get us to the end, but there are so many things to be gained by this programme. Now we can help our customers, we can understand our kids' conversation and if we're feeling lonely, we can always go on Facebook and find some friends!

Exercise 22 - E books

Well, I've probably said it before, but this is something I definitely know I wouldn't use! Will I prove myself wrong?? Sorry, reading a book on-line is not my thing. I'm the person who puts on the CD, pours the glass of wine and curls up in the couch with that lovely invention - THE BOOK! But this was a great exercise, as had never looked at Netlibrary and really wouldn't have had a clue how to help customers wanting to do so. So I've at least learnt that much. The only thing I would possibly use are the journals or perhaps material I required for a study purpose, when I couldn't get a hard copy.

Exercise 21 - Podcasts

This seemed to be quite frustrating for us all in the workroom. I tried looking at Podcast.net but really didn't have much success. Kept coming up with this ActiveXcontrol thing. So read the exercise re Bloglines and RSS feeders and thought, how on earth do I do that? Had completely forgotten that exercise. But low and behold, when I went in to my Bloglines account, I remembered it all. Yes, knowledge that is only stored in the brain and never used, is not of much use! On going in to Bloglines, found the 'Using Bloglines To Track Podcasts' article and that simplified the whole exercise. From there I could add an RSS feed for a news podcast to my Bloglines account. I think I'm getting to the point of information overload!

Exercise 20 - Part 2 of my success

Well I had to write another post to say how great I felt actually posting the video. Seemed to be impossible and a lot of fussing around, but success at last!

Exercise 20

Well I started looking at this and thought what a lot of rubbish is out there! It was only when I asked a colleague who uses it regularly, that I struck gold. He explained the benefits of it for music, etc. I did a search on one of my favourite bands, Runrig, who were performing at Loch Lomond in August, soon after our visit to Scotland. And yes, it was great, I could watch the concert or parts of it. So that was exciting. Now I'll have a go at placing the video on my blog. Here I go!!

Exercise 19

Since my passion is travel, I decided to look at the Web 2 awards under the travel area. I looked at Farecast first and found that was just really an American site. Not much point if you're not in the States. This was actually awarded the first place. The airfare predictions were all from US cities, nowhere else. So then had a look at the 3rd placegetter, Real Travel. This looked more interesting from the word go, but then when I tried doing a search on Samoa and accommodation, I could only get the hotel option. So it really seemed like it was geared to travellers doing the more expensive route. Don't think I'd ever use either of these tools. They do include travel planners, but then other sites do that too anyway. Interesting to see Facebook was in first place for the social networking. I think that's a great network to use, but then again, after my initial additions to the site and 'finding' friends, I haven't done much, so feel now I'm a bit anti-social!!

Exercise 18 - Week 8

Well I really liked this. Thought they were great tools. Google Docs is really appealing, so straightforward and easy. I love it when things you need to do are in your face, instead of you having to search and read long complicated instructions. And there is the e-mail link right in front of me. Great! I wrote a document on Zoho Writer and found it easy to 'save' and find again, which is always the key!!

Exercise 17 - Sandbox

This was fun after the initial hassle of the password. Really easy to use and great to see some other favourite restaurants, holiday places. Some of these are a bit thin on the ground, as a lot of people aren't up to this yet, so will definitely have a look later on as well. Yes, definitely an area of the web just to play around in, I guess like the old sandbox of our youth!

Week 7, Exercise 16

Well, it was good to have a short concise sentence on Web2 explaining what a Wiki is! Was interesting looking at the library wiki's and I was wondering how on earth there is any control of what goes on, is edited, etc., when I read at the beginning of the 'Library Success:A Best Practices Wiki', that they now required email addresses because of vandalism problems! I think wiki's could work well (sorry, keep putting the apostrophe, as plural version looks funny otherwise!) within library groups. For example, children's librarians could set up one and post resources, information, etc. I think there needs to be some sort of limit, but then does that mean I'm changing the format and idea anyway and creating something else?