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.