Method Number 5--Flickr

The image i am including the link for is the lighthouse of Sabine Pass in Louisiana.

The link is:

http://www.lighthousefriends.com/

Personally, I would probably use Flickr when I become more comfortable using it.

I would like to share many photos with family who live across the country butI did not know how to do it. Also family vacations would be fun to share with grandparents. Web cam is good for this as well but being able to provide grandparents with daily photos would give them something to do during the day.

Professionally, I can see the use of Flickr because many of our patrons have already asked about how to go about creating picture images and I personally was unable to show them. I had to ask our computer library tech to do it. Flickr will help me better serve my community in this way if and when asked again.

I briefly looked at the website Picasa and the only thing i like better on this is i like the map layout that it does.

Method #4- RSS Readers and News readers

These are the sites I chose to subscribe to for this 12 step training:
www.thesuperficial.com celebrity gossip
www.weburbanist.com Haunted houses, urban legends
www.about.com --paranormal phenomena newsletter


These sites aapeal to me because I am interested in the superficial because the writer makes fun of all the celebrity goof ups and is not afraid to comment how idiotic some of the things celebrities do. Half of the celebrities I do not know or have ever heard of because, i do not watch much television so it also lets me know who is who. My husband subscribes to the site so it also lets me in on what he is looking out. The writer is obviously a 20 something male based on what is written and the pictures he puts in and with his articles.
The weburbanist and the paranormal are sites that I enjoy reading just because this type of thing interests me. I have had a lot of things happen to me and am aware of a variety of things for known reasons, therefore it is nice to know that I am not the only person who has experiences in the paranormal realm.
I probably will keep up with the sites above and may add more if i find them interesting.

A Dozen Ways to Two Step-Method Three

Some of the tools and concepts offered by for web clouds are quite useful for me while others I would never personally use. Some of the tools I would use would be the spreadsheet, the slideshow presentation, and planners/calendars. I like the spreadsheet because I could use this for budgeting puposes. Putting this in a cloud allows my husband to also access this and see where we stand. The presentation slide show aspect would be used to create a photo album like of trips and vacations. Other family members could also access this with our permission and experience our trip with us. The calendar/planner would be quite useful especially when my children begin school so both mom and dad are aware of school events, appointments, practices and all as well as who is going to be taking who where and when.
Many of the othe tools I may not find as usuful at this time, but professionally we have patrons who would find some of these applications quite useful in a cloud environment. I am not sure of the population of patrons who are even aware that clouds exist who come into our library, my guess is that there are only a few. Clouding would need to be a good computer training class--we offer once a month to patrons to learn about computers. I can see wonderful benefits of using clouds within our library especially with organizing eg. patrons organizing their itunes, schedules and all and being able to use these tools can be help in this endeaver.
Personally, I am open to the benefits of clouding, however being a skeptic naturally I have many concerns related to privacy and confidentiality. With all the people who have a wider computer knowledge base and hackers out there, there is going to eventually be someone who can get into your information. I agree with on og the individuals who made a comment in one of the articles about what to do if and when clouding is no longer free.

ADozen Ways to Two Step--Method Two

Some of my initial thoughts about Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 were quite negative primarily because it required me to go beyond my comfort zone. As I worked through the 23 things during the summer some of my views have changed. I am still not very comfortable with all aspects that Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 have to offer but I feel a little more confident as I am working through them.
Initially, many of the terms had little or no meaning to me. I would see them when i would search the web, but I had no clue what they were and what their functions were. There are still some terms I do not know what their meanings are, but it looks like they are going to be addressed in this training, for instance I do not know what a folksomonomie is. The terms continue to have little meaning until I am within many of the sites. As I delve into the sites the meanings become a little less abscure.
To our library the terms mean an open door to an array of possibilites. There are so many people from a variety of cultural backgrounds and educational levels that come into our library.
Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 can offer ourselves and our patron new avenues of communication to a broader public. They allow for a large range of modalities in order to reach more individuals as well as a variety of ways of accomplishing this goal of communication. These web technologies can aid users to comment, make suggestions, to further advance the progress of our ever changing work environment. Furthermore, Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 allows libraries to reach out to others they might not have the opportunity to reach otherwise.
Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 is a great way to network and interact with others.

A

A Dozen Ways to Two Step -Method One

This is my test blog for method one.

Edinburgh, Scotland is a beautiful place to visit. During the day you can see lush green grass, Edinburgh Castle and both the old and new town of Edinburgh. Old Edinburgh had a interesting past and some think that Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde could have been inspired by some of the going ons in Edinburghs early history.

Thing 23 Reflection

Some of my more favorite "things" were blogging, facebook, twitter, digg, wikis, utube and podcasts. Not really a good reason other than i guess most of them provided social outlets that are not too personal.
The "things" I enjoyed the least were tagging, RSS feeds, Flicker/Flicker mashups. They just weren't my thing. The others I am pretty indifferent toward.
Challenges I faced primarily was from the frustration relating to me being to get some of the "things" to do what was required on the computer. There was probably a little of both human ignorance to technology and computer errors due to undetermined factors.
I learned a lot from this training. learned what some of the terms meant such as Digg, Twitter, Ning. Many of the terms i had come across in my internet searches but never used because i was unaware of their function.
Some new technology that might be fun to use at our library is blogging. Some of the programs we offer in Youth Services can use blogging to describe what they are and patrons who participate in them opinion of the program. Utube would be fun for storytimes at some point. We just need some of the equipment in order to implement utube.
The teens would probably like to set up a blog, utube and/or podcasts to promote some of their programs especially anime, msnga, and Magic the Gathering.
We are looking for an individual to talk about facebook and myspace to the youth since these are highly used at our library. Many teens pull up or put on inappropriate material and we are wanting to let them be aware that this can have an effect on them in the future in relation to internships, college and employment. Utube and podcasting could act as one avenue to acheiving this end.

Working with youth, many of my patrons are significantly more inept at computer technology than i am and can be quite helpful in creating many of the technologies used in the 23 things program. Many of the things relate or build on each other or showed me a different way of reaching a similar goal eg. utube/podcasting or myspace/facebook.

At first, I really did not look forward to the training because learning these new technologies was way out of my comfort level. My first blogs reflected frustration, but as I became more comfortable my frustration dissipated significantly. I am still not completely comfortable with all of the technologies I learned about, but as I use them more and more my comfort level will continue to increase.

The training although challenging at times has and will open up opportunities for me in the future. I even was able to teach my spouse about one of the technologies and he throughtly enjoys computer technology and is pretty aware of the "things" out there.