Week 6 - You Tube and Google Video

I found this is very interesting. I spent some time discovering You Tube and Google Video. I had heard of You Tube but had not ever ventured into this technology before. I enjoyed looking at Lego and watched the humorous version of the Lego Beer Song and Lego Beatles songs. I explored the libraries use of videos for staff training and promoting reference help. The Art Express 2007 featuring the HSC Art of 2006 exhibition was particularly interesting as my twins did their HSC Art that year. Marika's work was selected for Art Express. This is another form for recording special events at your library like poetry readings and book launches. It could also be useful for oral history interviews especially if people have interesting or unusual objects to show. It gives more animation than just photographs. In keeping with my Seascapes theme I am going to try to embed a video I found in Google Video on lighthouses in very stormy weather (a 3 minute You Tube Video). I really like the background music which accompanies the surging waves crashing against all the lighthouses pictured.

Week 5 - Wikis

I have been looking forward to learning about Wikis as I have heard the term in use but did not really know what it was all about. I have enjoyed looking at four of the Wiki sites listed. These were the Mint Museum (North Carolina), Library Success, Book Lovers Wiki (Princeton Public Library) and Montana History Wiki. My favourite 2 sites were Montana History Wiki and the Princeton Public Library Book Lovers Wiki as I think Wikis are very useful for individuals contributing to local history information and book reviews. These two sites were very easy to use and were clearly organised and set out. These are two information fields where information gathering is always expanding and many people maybe involved.
Book Lovers Wiki at Princeton Public Library. I liked the "snapshot in time" for the Book Lovers Summer Reading Club Wiki. It is clearly set up and very easy to navigate around the Wiki layout. I especially liked the index to the Reviews and the breakup into alphabetical categories. Entries were given star ratings and some gave links to biographies about the author.
Montana History Wiki. This site is clearly laid out and was very interesting to use. The alphabetically arranged subject guide allows you to link to other useful information e.g. Geneaology guide has books you may find helpful. African American in Montana lists the layout and tells how many oral histories on various people. This site is very clearly organised. A great resource!
Mint Musuem at North Carolina. Different aspects of the Museum were arranged in headings such as Visit, Experience, Learn and News. Under the heading Experience you can go to view the collections using the Mintwiki. Entries contained links to other information which maybe of interest to the viewer. This allows information and resources to be accessed by a wider audience by going online and others to add their expertise and knowledge.
Library Success - a best practices wiki. This wiki had many, many headings which you could search under and I recognised headings from the Web 2.0 Learning Programme so far. Headings included sub-headings and other related topics such as Selling your library - Displays, Marketing, Fundraising Promotions. Under Information sharing and education there were the major collaborative tools - Wikis, Blogs, RSS and Learning 2.0 programme. These are terms I have just become aware of through this training programme.

Week 4 - RSS (Real Simple Syndication) Feed Readers

It is a picture of me at Mystery Bay

It has been over five weeks since I have had time to work on my blog with Christmas preparations and work committments. I work four three hour shifts a week so I have been working at this mostly in my own time. I started four weeks ago collecting my 5 RSS but when I went into finding my feeds they were not to be seen. I did enjoy looking for sites such as Art Talk, ECO Media, ECA Early Childhood News, ABC News - Environment along with the Powerhouse Museum's picture if the day blog. Practice makes perfect so I started again. It took me four attempts to complete this activity as I found it difficult to remember my passwords even though I have recorded them. I did have problems with getting the URL feed to be valid. I think RSS feeds are a very specialised service which would not be as useful for the general public library user. This service would be more beneficial for specialised library services, university libraries and library managers who have to do a great deal of reading and paper work. I do like the idea that the information is sent to you so you do not have to do so much searching. Once set up this could be a very useful tool. I chose as my RSS feed for my blog The Art Newspaper - RSS as I always enjoy art and craft as personal interests.

Week 3 Flickr training

This is one of the photographs I sent with the nswpln2008 Tag as part of the Flickr photo sharing. As part of my work performance measures I have taken on displays to promote the library collection. This is part of the Christmas display at Lawson Library. The children are decorating the tree with prepared decorations for us.

After listening to the video clip about Flickr and sharing images I can understand where the speaker is coming from. There are always two sides to a coin. Photo albums are so much easier to share with relatives who may not own a computer. I always add other related articles in amongst my photographs to add interest. My daughters save their photographs on discs to store their images against computer breakdown but these still require a computer to view them.

I followed and looked at the tasks and also searched tags such as Mystery Bay, seascapes, seascapes lighthouses and found many lovely images. When viewing the slide shows these images really came to life and were very beautiful and dramatic.

This Flickr image of the Mystery Bay coastline by stegasaurus brings back very happy memories.

This has been a very challenging lesson to post this image from Flickr. I wish I could be back in Mystery Bay just to relax and unwind. It is such a lovely spot and I am going to miss not spending time down there this year.

I am so pleased that I am able to get back into my blog and that it did not disappear into the unknown. Last week I worked through the tasks set and chose the sand dollar templet for my blog. This was very fitting for my theme on seascapes. I actually have three very beautiful and fragile sand dollars at home which were sent to my husband. This week I hope I will learn how to decorate my blog with pictures either from a photo disc or web based picture file otherwise I will have to make time to have a lesson from our internet trainer.

At last I have got this far. I found it confusing and had problems knowing when and which user name, e-mail address and passwords to use. As I am a private person it is a little daunting knowing that other people will possibly view your blog. When I am typing away I feel I am just talking to the computer.
What I hope to learn from the programme is to get the confidence to use computer technology and explore the various sites within the course of Learning 2.0. Your never too old to learn but the technology of the computer age can be very overwhelming and frustrating. I enjoyed looking at the library blogs at the beginning of this weeks lesson especially the Southern Tablelands History Matters. Blogs can be a very creative way for libraries to publish events and allow the public to give feedback.