Week 9, Thing 23

I can't believe that I'm done with O! What a Geek!!!!! I think that this was a great way for the staff at Omaha Public Library to continue life long learning. I felt like everytime that I attempted an exercise, I was either honing a skill I already knew I had or learning something new. Sometimes when I was learning something new, I got frustrated and had to put it on the back burner for awhile, but eventually I figured most things There were some parts I thoroughly enjoyed and other parts that I utterly detested. I think that my favorite exercise was the image generating exercise where we could use Wordle and makemebabies.com. I loved manipulating the images! Now that I'm done with O! What a Geek, I don't think I'll blog much on this blog, but I will continue to blog on my myspace. As for life long learning, I will always be an advocate and do what I can to try and learn something new every day.

Week 9, Thing 22

For this exercise, I decided to check out Tumblebooks since I have never checked it out before. At first, I was frustrated but then I actually started to enjoy exploring. I ended up looking at a Spanish book called "La Estacion De Los Bomberos" just to see how well I could understand it since I'm taking a Spanish class. I realized I have a long way to go to understanding Spanish, but that I do understand a little. I think that Tumblebooks is a good resource for parents to know about and also for us to know about. Since our remodel at Sorensen, we have had some complaints that our children's computers don't have the games that they had before we closed. In particular, we don't have as many read-along Arthur books. From now on, if a patron wants a read-along book I will refer them to Tumblebooks!

Week 9, Thing 21

I have never dealt with podcasts much before. I knew what podcasts were of course, but I never paid much attention to them. Podcasts are really a neat bit of technology. For this exercise, I decided to check out podcastalley.com. At first, I was really confused, but then I became a little bit more comfortable. I'm still not sure though that I like podcasts. Anyway, I discovered a podcast called "PotterCast: The Harry Potter Podcast". I thought that this podcast was funny and interesting especially since today is Halloween and I'm dressed up as Hermione! I liked the fact that subscribing to this feed was really easy, and I do think that podcasts could be used in the library. You would definitely need someone who understands them better than me though. Podcasts would add an element to our webpage that might interest teens and other technology savy people.

Week 9, Thing 20

I've experimented with YouTube before, and I have to admit that I've always enjoyed YouTube. There is so much on there that you can pretty much find whatever you are looking for! I tried looking up Laurie Halse Anderson since we had our Young Adult Author event last night and came up with numerous Speak videos and a couple of interviews. I also decided to look up some M*A*S*H videos and found this Klinger Tribute that I thought was pretty funny! I've always been a fan of M*A*S*H and even went to the exhibit at SAC when it was here a couple of years ago. I got to see Klinger's Cleopatra costume! Anyway, I think that it would be neat for the library to have some videos on their website of events that we hold within the library. It would have been nice to record a video last night of Laurie Halse Anderson and then post it to our site.

Week 8, Thing 19

I decided to check out allrecipes.com since I love finding new recipes and am constantly checking out new cookbooks that come into the library. Signing up for an account with allrecipes.com was really easy. As I explored allrecipes.com further, I discovered alot of features that I liked. I liked how you could search for recipes by name or by ingredient. Another feature that I really liked was the budget cooking section. In this section, you can find recipes if you are on a budget and can even browse slow cooker recipes. This section also has numerous acticles on saving money while cooking and meals for a certain amount of money. In addition, you can input your own recipes and use tools to organize them which is definitely a feature that I will utilize. The only trouble is finding the time to put the recipes in!

Week 8, Thing 18

I really enjoyed playing around with Google Docs, and I plan on playing around with it more later on. I think that this is a really neat web-based application. I can see myself using this as a bridge between home and work and as a bridge between my family and me. When I type up something at home that I might use at work, I run into the problem of the fact that at home I have the newest version of Microsoft Word and the library computers will not open it. This is such a pain! Google Docs will definitely help with this. I can also see myself using Google Docs when I'm working on family-related things like geneaology research. I could share the document I created and get input from family members.

Week 7, Thing 17

I did not like this exercise. I spent alot of time trying to figure it out and got nowhere. I read up on PBWiki and even created an account for myself using my work email. I got the confirmation email and clicked on the link it told me to and then it wouldn't load the page. So I tried opening a new page and going to the Favorite Blogs Page and tried to add my blog so everyone would know that I visited it, but it said I needed a wiki password/invite key which I never received. I finally ended up giving up. Maybe someone at my branch will figure it out and then will help me.

Week 7, Thing 16

I've taken a training class on wikis and now I've read about them for this week and I have to admit that I'm still confused. Wikis are something that I feel you really need to know what you are doing to be able to utilize. I've honestly never played around with wikis before and have been kind of leary of them because anyone can change a wiki and how do you know if the information in the wiki is correct? Anyway, I really liked the "Book Lovers Wiki" which was developed by the Princeton Public Library for their 2006 Summer Reading Club. I think that this was a really neat way to keep track of what they were reading for the Summer Reading Club. I thought the reviews were nice to have at hand, and I wish that they had continued to add reviews to this wiki.

Week 6, Thing 15

In this blog, I guess I'm supposed to talk about some of my thoughts on Library 2.0 and what it means to me. I think Library 2.0 is a wonderful tool for us to learn about and utilize. To me, Library 2.0 means keeping in touch with family and friends. Myspace and Facebook are part of Library 2.0 and are the main way I keep in touch with alot of my friends and family who don't live in Omaha. Most of my family lives out of state and I only get to see them once a year if that so Myspace and Facebook are two great ways to stay in touch and communicate with them. As for my friends, it seems like life can be so busy so it's nice to be able to keep in touch with them on Myspace and Facebook. I like stopping by their page and leaving a comment or even subscribing to their blog so I can get updates if they write anything.

Week 6, Thing 14

I have to start out by admitting that I'm not really that impressed with Technorati. I honestly won't use Technorati after I'm done with O! What a Geek, but it is nice to at least know about it so that I can know what people are talking about if they mention Technorati. When I played around with Technorati, I liked that searching was pretty easy, but the results weren't always what I wanted. As I explored more, I seemed to always pick blogs that had advertising on them which was really annoying to me. I'd click on a blog that sounded normal and end up with x-rated ad attached to it!

Week 6, Thing 13

Wikipedia defines del.icio.us as a social bookmarking service for sharing web links. I created a del.icio.us account a long time ago and promptly forgot my account login and my password because I have so many accounts at different sites online. I can't seem to remember them all, and I don't seem to have enough time to check them all. Anyway, I think Delicious is a neat idea because it can help you keep track of neat links that you find while browsing the web. I am constantly finding interesting sites online, writing them down on a sheet of paper, and then I always seem to lose the paper so Delicious could help me with this particular issue. Delicious is also pretty easy to use. If you have a Delicious account and have downloaded the Delicious bookmarklets, all you have to do is click on post to delicious link. Then it will be posted on your Delicious account.

Week 5, Thing 12

I wasn't all that impressed with Rollyo. It was very easy to sign up and start a search roll, but personally I would not find much use for Rollyo. It feels like I'm signed up for so many things online that I can't remember them all. On the other hand, I can see how some people may find Rollyo helpful. The following link is for the Rollyo account I created. Just cut and paste it.

http://www.rollyo.com/index.html

Week 5, Thing 11

I've known about Library Thing for awhile. I've even attended a lecture on Library Thing while at the Youth Services Retreat in Ashland. In fact, I think I actually had an account a long time ago, but I couldn't remember which email I used and what my password was so I had to create a new one. I found the sign-up process very easy and not confusing at all. I think that Library Thing is a really neat tool to utilize at home or for a library that serves the public, but you definitely have to have time to mess around with it. On one hand, I guess you could not spend alot of time and make it very simple, but you could also get very involved and very detailed. For me, I could get very detailed with my personal collection at home if I had the time because I have hundreds of books, dvds, and VHS tapes on my bookshelves. I just picked a couple of books out for this exercise though just to play around with Library Thing and experiment a little. The following link is to my library. For some reason, it won't link by clicking on it, but you can cut and paste it and then go to my library.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=khoefer0284&shelf=list

My new sweet baby - Colby!

What do you think about my little new baby Colby?
MakeMeBabies.com - What will your baby look like?

My new sweet baby - Hope!

What do you think about my little new baby Hope?
MakeMeBabies.com - What will your baby look like?

Week 5, Thing 10

This is probably the most fun I've had so fun with O! What a Geek! I loved being able to manipulate different images. I was browsing some of the blobs and saw that Manya has used www.makemebabies.com. I thought that this sounded pretty interesting so I went to this site to try it out. I uploaded one of my photos and one of my finace's photos to see what our kids would look like. Then I decided to play around with my photo and one of a celebrity. I picked Bruce Willis who happens to be one of my favorite actors. I played around a lot more with different pictures,different celebrities and had a great time, but I think the previous two pictures are my favorites. When I tried posting these two pictures to my blog, I had a little bit of a problem and messed up a couple of times. In the end though, I figured out it out and got both of my pictures posted to my blog.