Curiosity - Last weeks of Project Play

I'd like to think of myself as curious, but then again, I like to think of myself as a lot of things. I guess I'd have to look at my actions to determine if I'm curious, and participating in Project Play is a 'curious' action. As mentioned in the video, being curious is not a comfortable, safe endeavor. Not that this exercise has been totally uncomfortable, but it has been a bit unnerving at times. It really would be much easier to just ignore everything that is going on with the Web and technology in general, and sometimes I'd like to. We are required to make decisions about whether something is worth our time to invesitage and determine if we will adopt it at an increasingly rapid pace. Project Play has allowed me time to take a look at many potentially useful tools that I would have had to spend far more time searching for (if I even knew what to look for.) Will I use every tool we looked at? Not really, no. Will I keep 'playing'? I hope so.

I have added the LibrarianInBlack blog to my RSS feeds to keep an eye on what is coming. I have plans to use a Blog for a teen read program, we'll use Google Docs at the Library and I know I will find all kinds of uses for YouTube. I'm not sure I have a use currently for MySpace or I'm going to do much at this point with MashUps, but at least I know of their existence and can always bring them into the mix if there is a need.

Thank you Jean and everyone else at Project Play for a great program. I hope there is more in the future!

ttfn. - JoAnn

Mash Ups

I guess I don't really get Mash-ups, or at least how I would use them at the Library. I've looked at many of the samples provided this week, and I've looked at some of them before (librarything), but I don't quite understand what the difference is between a Mash-up and say using RSS feeds on you MyYahoo page (rather than setting it up using pipes as in the video), or... is that a 'mash-up' and I just didn't know it? I'll play with it a bit more.

Youtube

Another black hole! I spent way too much time trying to find a video to link to. There are a lot of very creative people out there! Here is a pretty good one - Dancing Cows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiLpxWeBF8Y

It is interesting to see the comments posted about the clip. I don't want to get into a discussion about the benefits of organic milk, I just like to see happy cows.

How can we use Youtube? I would love to get the older summer reading kids involved in doing something we could post. I think it would be a good opportunity to let their creativity soar, and teach them something about copyright laws. I would also love to do some storytelling using folklore or fairy tales. So many wonderful tools, so little time.

Screencasts

Ah screencasts;) I tried creating one on at both screencast-o-matic (which did let me record, but I couldn't get it to play back) and Freescreencast.com (which let me set up an account and view a screencast on how it works, but I couldn't find anyway to actually use it after the software was downloaded). And it would have been fun because I set up an Excel spreadsheet to show how to use the Fill Tool. Sounds like fun, but either I'm doing something wrong, or the free tools just aren't built very well.

I can see a use for Screencasts in training staff, patrons and the board on many, many computer functions and even on tours of various web sites, but I'll have to put it on my to do list and do a bit more research when the need arrives.

TTFN - JoAnn

Pod Casts

I added an RSS feed to the Denver Public Library Podcasts. They have wonderful stories. I now have another place to send children to listen to stories. I have an idea for using Pod Casts for our summer reading program--I'll have to think on it for a while, but I think it will work. Thanks Project Play for the inspiration! TTFN and stay warm!!

I spent a little time in MySpace and FaceBook, just to take a look around. I agree with Judi Sohn's comment about Facebook being a blackhole. So many interesting things/people/places, so little time. One of the things I noticed about the Library accounts was that they don't have time to keep them updated. Oshkosh last updated theirs on May 24, 2007 (when I looked on 2/11/08). I wonder how anyone has the time to keep up - unless you spend a lot of time in that 'black hole'.

I looked at the list of other social networking sites and so many of them sound interesting, especially the travel related ones (for me). I guess we will all have to become specialists in one area or another - or maybe I'm just getting older, sometimes its hard to tell if its me or if there really is an overwhelming amount of 'stuff' to keep up with.

Remember the Milk and Jott

Learning about new tools is always fun, but try as I might, I can't think of a use for Jott. 'Remember the Milk' (cute name) maybe, but I find Outlook to be more useful. I create a lot of 'to do' lists and project plans and if I didn't have access to Outlook I might have a use for 'Remember the Milk'.