Thing # 23 - Learning 2.0 New Canaan Library

# 23-It is amazing that I finished all 23 items on the list. I kept on postponing this, there were always other jobs taking precedence. But it is done, I am happy. I learned a lot. Most important is that I picked up courage to blog. I learned about Flicker, Twitter, adding RSS and podcasts, tags. Now if a patron asks me about these things, I will be able to help. I teach Excel in the Library, and have downloaded practice-exercise on the public computers. I am thinking if I should put it on Google Docs.

I would love to participate if you offer another discovery program. May be next time we should have a weekly meeting and work and learn from each other.

Thing #22- Get a second life

Second Life: Read the suggested articles to become familiar. It was fun to see the Info Island Community. I also looked at Florida's Orange County Library System's virtual library.
I was amused by that residents of Second Life are represented through Avatars. Avatar is a Sanskrit word-one who descends and takes a human form, closest English translation is Incarnation. I did not sign up for an account, Laurie had an account, she let me use that. I was slow but it was fun to play the game-my first time-to make Angie fly, walk, jump, turn around, change gloves shoes etc. I guess this is for people who have time to to sit by the computer, one can really get addicted and forget other things. You can compare it with Solitaire.

Thing # 21--Facebook and Linkedin

Facebook: The very popular social networking site, specially with teenagers. Users can add friends and send messages, update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. To become familiar with Facebook I attended Laurie's class, she also showed us the dummy Library Facebook page. She explained how to keep things private, put tags, add photos.

There have been concerns regarding the difficulty of deleting user accounts, as of last year Facebook has changed its deletion policy and now users can contact the website to request that their accounts be permanently deleted.
My nephews and nieces created Facebook accounts and were so excited about it, now they have lost interest in this and stopped using it and moved on to Twitter. Twitter is the new craze.

Linkedin: is a business-oriented social networking site. The purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. The people in the list are called Connections. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection.

Thing # 20 -Web 2.0 Award Winners

Award Categories and the Winners:
Looked at Employment and Jobs; Food and Travel categories. Employment and Jobs is an important category for a Reference librarian to help patrons. I was familiar with the #2 winner Career Builder and # 3 winner Monster. It was good to learn about #1 Standout. I was surprised to see that no jobs were listed in Stamford, CT.

I like the Food category-#1 Im Cooked-video demo; you had to sign up to see the printed recipe, I liked #2 winner-Urbanspoon-it gave the restaurants in CT.You can find by town, popularity, type of food and by price. Provides very Good information for Fairfield County restaurants

I also looked at the travel category and liked #1 winner Farecast.

#19 Web based applications- Zoho Writer & Google Docs

Looked at list of the web based applications. Also checked Zoho writer and Google Docs. I am familiar with Google Calendar and have used it. For this exercise I used the spreadsheet program for Reference Department's Volunteers schedule and shared it with other collegues. Now that I am using Excel 2007, Google Spreadsheet seemed dull . I also tried their Presentation program -which is their version of PowerPoint. This was OK.

Zoho Writer's- Think Free -View a document without opening it in the Office program was good.

Things # 17-18 Delicious and Technocrati

# 17: Delicious-is a social network where people can bookmark webpages and then add tags to categorize the bookmarks. The idea is to discover something new and share with others. It will help people who are working together on a research or a joint project or seeking information on a certain subject like travel, airplane seating and detailed seatmap etc. The information can be overwhelming.

#18: Technocrati- Checked Discover and Popular features-Under What's popular it gives Top Blogs, videos, movies, news, dvds, music and games. In overview of blogs, I was surprised to see that under Top 100 blogs by Fans and Top 100 blogs by Authority. #1 Boing Boing by Fans became #5 by Authority.
I searched Learning 2.0 in Blog Directory, it came up 6448 and when I searched tags only the number was 73. I also looked at claiming your blog, but at this time I am not interested in it.

Things #15-16 Wikis

Wiki-The word wiki has always fascinated me. There are pros and cons. Anyone can add or delete, or edit; good for the new ideas but at the same time information can be wrong. The participants need to register. It is good in an office or nonprofit organization environment, people can give their opinions before they have a meeting. It saves time. I use Wikipedia information for several things, hoping that only knowledgeable people have their input.

For this exercise, I read several linked articles, for the practical part #16, I added my blog to the New Canaan Learning 2.0 Wiki.