The Finale!

I have finally made it to 'Thing 23'. This has taken a whole lot longer than nine weeks but I am very happy with what I have achieved. Every one of these 'Things' was foreign to me before I started. Even the simple things like setting up accounts and blogging were new and a little scary. The most memorable exercises were with Flickr. I will continue to use some of the sites and tools we looked at and this was a great opportunity to learn about them. I would definitely partcipate in another program like this.

Books Online

Thing 22. In Google Books my search for 'quilting' books came up with thousands. I had a closer look at the first few pages, most were snippet view or limited preview. This site could be useful in helping to select a book to purchase or checking the contents of a recommended title.
I went to the 'Find in a library' link out of interest for a couple of books. One book went to the National Library of Australia Trove site and the other to WorldCat.
A subject search 'quilting' only brought up one book in Project Gutenberg. I was only able to view the contents pages online.
I have learnt something about copyright through this task. I was surprised that Animal Farm by George Orwell wasn't available in full text as I understood it to be in the public domain. I have discovered that this work is in the public domain in Australia but still under copyright in other countries. The copyright status of the book I looked at in Project Gutenberg stated that the book wasn't copyrighted in the United States but to check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook. I doubt that anyone would be prevented from downloading the book though.

Podcasts

Thing 21. I had a look at Podcast.com and Podfeed.net as well as Podcast Alley because the link to Podcast.net under the discovery resources didn't work. I found this 'Thing' rather tedious as I had difficulty in finding a podcast of interest. Too many to search through and I feel like I have spent hours looking! The best library related podcast I found was the 'YA Literature Review' on Podcast Alley. I found quite a few other suitable book review podcasts but the last episode was 2007 or earlier and I was trying to find something more recent. I did come across a few interesting things along the way though like the podictionary.

YouTube

Thing 20. YouTube was quite foreign to me as I haven't spent any time looking around the site before. My search for 'Little Red Hen' brought up over 400 videos. The description and length of video was helpful in selecting what I was looking for, a short video of 'The Little Red Hen' story. I had fun looking and came across a great 'Little Red Hen rap' but it was longer than I wanted. The YouTube handbook had a few tips for searching and I found by putting in more keywords I could significantly reduce the number of videos that came up for each search. The words 'Little Red Hen stop motion' brought up only this one! I thought that finding a video seen on a previous visit to YouTube should be easier to locate than having to go through the search process again. I discovered history that shows recently watched videos but they disappear when you quit out of your web browser.

Thing 19: My Choice

From the Web 2.0 Awards shortlist I selected Netvibes from Start Pages. I like the idea of a personalised page that can be accessed online from any computer . There was a lot of information on the site including a tour, frequently asked questions and examples of both private and public pages. I was very impressed. I had a look at Netvibes pages set up by Dublin City Public Libraries and Cranbury Public Library so it could definitely be used in a library setting.

Google Docs

Thing 18. It was good to be able to log in to my google account and not have to set up another account and password. I found Google docs very easy to use although a little slow responding when trying to edit the text. I also uploaded a word document that I had previously typed up from the desktop and added extra text.
Very handy being able to access documents or presentations from any computer. Being able to share documents with selected people eg. library staff could be useful. With regard to school students I wonder if assignments would ever be submitted to teachers and marked using an application like Google docs.

Learning 2.0 Sandbox Wiki

Thing 17. I didn't do very well with this activity. I've created a log in and proceeded to add my blog to the favourit blogs page. I tried to follow the instructions but it didn't come up as a link so I removed it. I added something to the Favourite Flowers but don't know if I have done it right. The only other entry on the page was added as a comment. I could have done with more examples to follow. I will go back to it later but right now I'm moving on to Thing 18.