#12 (week 5) Summarise your thoughts

HI! Well, yet again, I've really enjoyed my journey with Web 2.0 technologies. And it was interesting that in my final week I had a customer come in for a computer lesson who wanted 'advanced' internet training and I was able to introduce her to blogs, bloglines, Delicious, and give her a quick intro to the social sites, and she was blown away by the world it opened up for her. So that was really good confirmation that these things are valid to our customers' needs. And I'm sure I'll be telling people about Geni and Authors on the web, and the social sites.

I can also see how these technologies can useful to us in our work. I really liked the GoAnimate cartoon about lost library books-- a great way to communicate with kids-- and thought Animoto would be useful for creating short videos for promotions, training, etc.

Apart from the initial hiccup with Ancestry.com!! (which was fixed promptly at my suggestion) I found the whole programme flawless- well written, fast responses and well thought out. It was easy and interesting! And most of all I had fun learning. Well done!

What stood out for me-- I think probably Go Animate, because I really enjoyed making my own cartoon :-)

Thank you for this great experience!

#10 (week 5) Social networks

Glad you liked my cartoon! I had a look at Digg and Stumbleupon, and signed up for Stumbleupon, as it was by far my favourite. As you say, the wonderfully random nature of the things that come up when you stumble is amazing, and there were a lot of positive or human interest stories, as opposed to Digg, which just felt like another newspaper to me.

Two stories I stumbled upon were 'sidewalk chalk guy' from gpprime and 'Teenage handbag thief outpaced by 72 year old ex-sprinter' from the Telegraph newspaper.

'sidewalk chalk guy'
Was a collection of photos of sidewalk chalk pictures. Absolutely amazing. Some of them (particularly the laptop) you look at and just can't believe they aren't real-- they look so amazingly 3-D!
http://www.stumbleupon.com/toolbar/#topic=Arts&url=http%253A%252F%252Fgprime.net%252Fimages%252Fsidewalkchalkguy%252F

'Teenage handbag thief outpaced by 72 year old ex-sprinter' from the Telegraph newspaper.
I really like these kind of positive human interest stories, and we don't get enough of them in newspapers (I've stopped reading newspapers for that very reason-- all the doom and gloom). It was a great article, that reminds us we're often capable of more than we'd believe. Link embeded below:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/toolbar/#topic=Senior%20Citizens&url=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%252Fnews%252Fnewstopics%252Fhowaboutthat%252F4602626%252FTeenage-handbag-thief-outpaced-by-72-year-old-ex-sprinter.html

#9 (week) 4 Go animate

Hi! In some ways this was quicker, though a bit more technical, and the over all amount of time taken to produce a finished product was probably longer. Nonetheless a very creative process and with heaps of potential for all sorts of things! I enjoyed myself, and found most of it very intuitive, though I got a bit frustrated a couple of times when it wouldn't let me do what I want.

I loved the cartoon on the little boy who lost the book. Excellent potential for educating children without being intimidating. This sort of technology has heaps of potential for all sorts of uses.

GoAnimate.com: Witch transformation


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!


http://goanimate.com/go/user/0OW-5etQvOOU

#8 (week 4) Animoto video

This video was lots of fun to make! Though it did take a bit of time! This is an excellent free service. I can see lots of aplications for libraries-- making training videos, or promotional videos. It's a little bit of magic the way it creates the video behind the scenes. The only thing I didn't quite understand is that it didn't use all my pictures-- I think perhaps because the ones it didn't use were real photos rather than images from the net, but it didn't tell me there would be a problem with them. Any way, can't complain, it was heaps of fun to do!

HI! Well, I tried out Bookjetty. I really like LibraryThing, and have to say that so far I'm not convinced that Bookjetty is better. I like the layout of LibraryThing better, and I like the fact that if there isn't an image of the book, you can add your own (don't seem to be able to do that with Bookjetty?). However, I added a couple of reviews, and I am impressed by the link into Amazon. We'll see. Anyway, I've added some books to my bookjetty account. Here's the link:
http://www.bookjetty.com/people/Willow/books
Willow

#6 (week 3) Authors on the Web

I investigated AuthorsOnTheWeb.com and AuthorYellowPages Great resources, though I found them a little limited for my tastes. My favourite genre was not listed in the yellow pages (magical Realism) and a lot of authors I tried were not available. However, I found one of my favourite author’s websites (Joanne Harris) on AuthorYellowPages and found a really quirky publishing company that’s well worth a look (Twelve books) on AuthorsOnTheWeb.com . Links to these websites are embedded below.

I liked the links to authors' blogs, and thought this one by Kate Mosse was quite interesting:
http://katemosse.com/blog/blog.asp

twelve books, a really quirky publishing company with some great books:
twelvebooks.com/content/books.asp

One of my favourite author's websites, Joanne Harris:
http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/

Lily Allen

Just found this, no. 1 in UK, and I can see why :-)

#5 (Week 3) Litlovers

HI! What a great resource! I really like the idea of this, and was interested to look through the list of resources on books. I'm sure the list is constantly growing, but my first few choices weren't available. I finally decided on "Water for Elephants" (which I loved). I found the range of quotes from critics interesting, and thought the questions for book clubs were particularly insightful and though-provoking.
I also liked the fact that the site has tips on dealing with book clubs and reading groups. As I do storytimes, I took a look at the advice for reading to pre-schoolers, under "Leading a Kids Book Discussion" and thought the advice on reading was practical and insightful.
I also had a quick look at lecture 6: How to Read: Plot. As a writer, I thought this might be interesting. The course very succinctly covered the basics of plot, a really good short guide to this complex topic-- I was impressed!
Thanks,
Willow

#4 (week 2) Genealogy

Eeek! OK, so I get dunce of the week award :-( Can I suggest, though, that instead of giving the warning not to download the family tree builder in My Heritage in step two, that it needs to be an addenda to step 1, in case there are other fools like me who don't read to the end, but read step 1 and then go do it, then read step 2 and go do it!??

I've raised my logit with profuse apologies, and have awarded myself dunce of the week...

So, as a result of having been burned by My Heritage, I have chosen Geni as my favourite. It really surprised me how easy it was to use, and doesn't have that irritating (and fatal) download step. It was so easy to add my tree, and to embed it in my blog, and I could imagine wasting many an hour filling in my family tree-- much better than trying to draw it all out on paper!

I would probably recommend Geni to customers, though to be honest, I see more customers at the research end, rather than at the filling out end.

License to Play week 1

HI! Well, here I am again, and it's sad to see that though I fully intended to keep using my blog, I didn't really, and it's taken a new round of learning to bring me back. Having said that I did use it a couple of times to store YouTube videos I was particularly interested in! Very useful!

Week 1 has been a cinch, because I already had a gmail account (just had to clear out a load of unsolicited emails from Bebo, and shut down the Bebo account :-) ), and already had a blog, which I'm more than happy to ressurect.

I do think that blogs were a great place to record what you're up to, what you're interested in, and also keep a record of books you've really enjoyed, but I've suffered from an over busy life and haven't got around to doing any of that. The hope is there, anyway, and perhaps this programme will kick start me into action.

I've taken a look at the ACL blogs before, and I think they are great, though I will have to get myself contributing to those more too. I like the informality of blogs-- the informal process of sharing information, and the chatty atmosphere-- but also the way they can be quite professional, with authors setting up writing blogs for example. I've also found them a great source of information on what people out there are reading.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the new programme.
Willow.