Learn & Play @ CML Completed! Or is it...?

Wow, what a scramble at the end of the program, but what a great program it was! Loved learning about Delicious and Wikis. Twitter, not so much, but at least I know how it works and how it can be used in the workplace. I was excited to see people participate in the program I thought never would. It was even more exciting to see those same people relying on their peers for assistance. This was a great team building exercise.

Now to keep on learning. And like I said when Learn & Play @CML was kicked off, now I don't feel guilty exploring new technologies at work. It does relate to work in so many ways!

MOLDI

Electronic access to materials is a great idea and I see libraries moving more and more of their collection access engergy and monies into this endeavor. For years, MOLDI has provided access to some pretty good titles available in ebook and audiobook format. Now, that being said the selection eflicks so far is mediocre at best. When I heard that they began to offer movies, I decided to browse the various genres to see what they had. I didn't recognize any of the titles, but did recognize Todd Bridges on the cover of a movie called "I Got Five On It" Seriously?

If you haven't used this service before take a look. Its the future for our audiobook, music and movie collections. And just think, no more worries about scratched DVDs or CDs with smeared with jelly...at least I hope that's jelly. Eew!

Podcasting

Wow, this one took me a lot longer to get a handle on than I thought it would. I started poking around the podcast directories last night as I was trying to rush towards a midnight finish, but alas I got too sleepy.

All the directories I used seemed kind of clunky to me. I've been listening to podcasts for years, but only when I came across them by accident or more recently through iTunes. After two days of searching I did find a couple of new podcasts that seem promising. I added them to my Google Reader aggregator. One talks about the automobile industry and the other helps teach listeners Japanese. Yes, I do love cars and my taste change every week. The Japanese language site is fun. Its hosted by a native English speaker and a native Japanese language teacher.

Once found, adding them to Google reader was e-a-s-y! Yippee!

Youtube!

I've been a fan of Youtube for a while for both its amatuer and commercial content. Recently, I was able to watch an entire Japanese drama through Youtube, I would not have known about or have been able to view otherwise. Unfortnately, for my partner and a friend at work it was a sappy sad drama that I couldn't get enough of. This fan made music video does a great job of summarizing the drama, even if you can't understand the lyrics...I need a tissue...sniff.

Tooling Around

The library toolbar is a cool addition to your browser, especially for the library's power users. With one click, customers can see the latest additions to the catalog, search the catalog without visiting the library's homepage and so much more! At work, I don't use it as much because I can't get my default search tool to be Google (always reverts back to the catalog), and I'm always on Aquabrowser any way.

I was surprised by the recent additions to the Power Tools page. I enjoyed learning about Lively. I had not heard of it before and I'm curious if our teens are using it. Hmmm...

Web 2.0 Award Winner: Revolution Health

At first I couldn't figure out why this site was an award winner. It isn't any different that a lot of other health sites I've seen. Then I found the option to maintain all of my health records online and talk with others in their online community. Now I've watched those interviews on t.v. where people say, "I saw doctor after doctor and they couldn't diagnose my problem, then I found an online community of regular people like you and me and I found out what I had!" Hmmm...okay. I guess I'm lucky to be heathy, because I wouldn't feel comfortable taking medical advice from some anonomous stranger. However, the Web 2.0 list was interesting.

Google Docs

So I've been updating my resume and instead of keeping a copy saved in emails to myself, I thought I would try Google Docs and complete thing #17 to boot. Well, I was a little disapointed. My uploaded resume, originally created in Word, lost some important formating and ended up looking kinda funky and not good funky either. While this didn't work, I can see how Google Docs can be useful if you don't always have access to Word. For me, turning my documents into PDFs makes the most sense when I need to be able to access them from anywhere. Long live student pricing on overpriced software!

Wikis

As I make a mad dash to finish before the stroke of midnight, I realized that I did this exercise eons ago and forgot to write about my experience! As many trollers on the internet, I've come accross more than a few helpful entries on Wikipedia. I've always thought it was a great source for tough to find information. But its one I rarely cite for customers, even though I've yet to find incorrect information, and have found the entries to be great stepping stones for finding more information on a given topic.

However, it was when I made my little entry on the Learn & Play wiki sandbox, I realized what it is actually like to enter and edit on a wiki. It was great! I did my edit, and when I went back a few days later I noticed another user put their link in the wrong place. I went ahead and moved it where it belonged and realized how powerful a wiki can be thanks to many editors. Even though I have always found the Wikipedia articles helpful, and knew that almost anyone could edit the entry, my gut told me that, multiple editors would cause problems and not solve them. Boy was I wrong. Like the Hip Hop Kids would say, "Multiple editors don't cause problems! They solves 'em! Yo!"

I love Hulu!

Posting not about a thing, though I should because I'm so far behind. I'll start catching up once the craziness of life and work subside. Hopefully by the end of this week.

Anyway, I had to share this SNL clip from Hulu. If you've never visited Hulu, take a look. You can find high quality video clips of your favorit shows and videos. Sure, you may have to watch a 30 second commercial, but its worth it.

Icebergs

Finally got around to reading the five perspectives on the future of libraries for thing #14. I actually enjoyed Anderson's "Away from the "icebergs"" article. His statement, "But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons." stuck with me the most. Like he said, its impossible for us to train every customer that walks through our doors. Our products need to be simple to use. Amen brother!

Yummy!

I created my own Delicous account in addition to looking at CML's account. Creating the account was simple, but getting the buttons to appear properly in the toolbar was anything but. A fellow Learn&Play'er asked me about this the other day and I didn't know. However, after doing a little investigating today I was able to figure it out. Yippee!

If you haven't created your own Delicious account, don't wait! Its great having access to all of your favorites from any computer. And it organizes them nicely to boot!

Twittering

Just figured out how to send messages from my phone to my Twitter account. I'm going to try it for a while and see which my friends prefer. My friend Tyrone loves Twitter and sends messages out all the time to both his friends and Twitter. He's been on my case about not posting anything new to Twitter since I opened my account...which was back in April.

I've actually learned to tell when I need to reply to a text from Tyrone. He frequently sends out funny revelations and quotes, so it took me a while to figure out. Texts directed towards me always begin with word "Hey".

The LibraryThing...thing

I've finally added some books to my LibraryThing account today. It had been so long since I created the account that it took a few tries to get my password correct. LibraryThing is an interesting concept, especially for someone like me. Unlike many of my colleagues I own very few books. I've moved so many times that I refuse to keep more than I have too. So I've always been a great advocate for libraries. Why own the book when I can borrow it from the library?

I did run into one glitch with LibraryThing. Can anyone tell me about the Jave script error messages when you are trying to add a book? I got this error a number of times today and it was quite frustrating. The only work around I could discover was selecting another entry to click to have the book added. Sure, I could eventually figure it out myself, but it could take a while and I'm still catching up. Help!

Back it Up!

Thanks to Ben the Libraryman I found the great image generator, LetterJames. The following image is for my friend Masako. We used to work out together at the IU Bloomington gym. After a while we began to notice another guy at the gym that was always there when we were and he always wore a jersey with the number 92 on it. So Masako this one is for you!

Google Reader

Amazingly I've had a few moments this afternoon to complete thing #8. This time it was easy. Instead of using Bloglines, I decided to use Google Reader since I already access it for email. Everything in one place. Yeah! I did have trouble coming up with 10 feeds to keep track of. I was amazed realize that I only keep track of about 5 sites religiously. Now its even easier! Now to see if the new sites are worth keeping track of. Hmmm...

No Need for ConCERN

The new particle accelerator is now running outside of Geneva and as of yet, nothing has been produced that could destroy the earth. I must admit that I had some concerns when I first heard about the lawsuit to stop it earlier this year. Why? The accelerator was built to recreate particles found immediately after the Big Bang. It is assumed that if created these particles will immediately break down, but how does anyone know what will happen? And if something bad is created, like say a black hole? The Cern scientists say, "We'll just turn it off and the black hole will disappate." Oh, I'm so relieved because of all your experience with black holes...looking at them from billions of miles away..hmmm. Anyway, yes I'm still little concerned, but if it works as anticipated, we'll learn about dark matter and ways to make computers and iPods even smaller!

I'm so behind, I'm ahead!

So its nearing the end of week 5 of Learn & Play @CML and I'm just now doing a post for Flickr, which is from week 3. Egads! Between deadlines and vacation its been difficult for me to make time to play. I've been hearing this from other participants as well. Luckily, we all have the 3 week buffer at the end of the program to catch up before the prizes are drawn. So I figure in a way I'm ahead of the game. Phew!

Anyway, I went to Washington State to see my brother, niece and sister-in-law. Here are some pics I've uploaded to my Flickr account.

Joining the Party

So I registered my blog and officially joined the party today. To celebrate I decided to include a YouTube video for your enjoyment. Yes, its in Japanese, but you don't need to understand the language to enjoy the scares. Enjoy!

Learn & Play @ CML Has Begun!

Yesterday Michael Stephens kicked off our program with his great Hyperlinked Library presentation. Be it Michael's presentation or Gerald's great finish, everyone I've talked to is really excited about Learn & Play @CML. Two of my colleagues have already started their blogs and watched the 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners.

Its exciting to have friends to bounce ideas off of. Today we talked about our blogs and worked on how to link to each other's blogs. I haven't figured how to do that yet, but we're working on it!

I also watched Tonya's latest talking animal video on her blog. Don't miss it!

I Get to Play at Work?

As we prepare to launch Learn & Play @CML, I can't help but think how fortunate I am to work for CML. Since graduating with my MLS in 2004, I've struggled to keep up with the latest and greatest technologies, many of which are freely available on the web. Other than my work through CO-ASIS&T, the only exposure I receive is when customers need assistance using one of these technologies. I then take a few moments to explore it enough to answer the customer's question. And that's it! I go back to the daily grind and miss making opportunities to explore it further. Now comes an opportunity to learn and play with these technologies at work and at home following a structured program.

Sure, I could have done this on my own, but to be honest, I always felt a little guilty playing with this stuff at work. I always assumed it wasn't "work" related. Now when I have a few free moments I plan on poking around and playing with wikis, blogs, widgets, and more!