Week 10: #23 Is this really the end? Or just the beginning...

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? My favorite was FD Toys & Flickr….the possibilities with what you can do. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? I now feel as techno-savvy as the young customers that we serve or maybe not. There is so much out there that I still don’t know about and hopefully I can continue on learning. Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? I couldn't believe some of the videos on YouTube and what we can do with it. What ideas do you have for using these technologies at Harris County Public Library? What else do you want to learn about? What other web 2.0 applications are you interested in? These technologies are what our customers use daily, weekly, monthly, or occasionally. And we have to have the knowledge to help out customers with the new or newer or the newest technology that we know of. We probably cannot provide the technology, but we can tell the customers about it. I fully appreciate and understand that we need to be aware of what's out there and I'm certain that putting all of this together and monitoring it was a lot of work for many people, so thank you for that. I would like to thank all the iHCPL team who put this training together for us. The people behind the video productions, the writers of the discovery exercises, the people tracking our posts and who dutifully sent out the bling every week. It has been extremely the best and most useful training program I have participated in since I came to HCPL. This was the best and awesome! We just need to continue from here on…. This is not the end, but the beginning to better our self....we can learn each and everyday, there is no stoping on what and how we learn......

Week 9: #22 Downloadable Media

I like our HCPL Overdrive site. In the past I have checked out an e-book and eaudio before and would check out more if I had more time to read from my computer or just regular book. I prefer to do the audio and video downloads from home, but I don't get the time, since my daughter wants to play games whenever my husband or I are on the computer. I like the overdrive collection better than the two other sites that we were asked to look at. The LibriVox site offered audiobook downloading for free and the Wowio offered free e-books. The sites aren't bad and they're easy to use and download stuff from. I did get account with Wowio, but didn't find anything that I would really read right away. I like the some of the classics that they have. I still like the HCPL Overdrive site better than the other two sites.

Week 9: #21 Podcasts, Smodcasts!

I went through all of the suggested podcasts directories listed and went searching for a podcast that interested me. Also, another part of the discovery exercise was to find some interesting library related podcasts such as book review podcasts or library news and add it to the RSS feed for a podcast to my Bloglines account. I used the Yahoo! Search to find podcasts. I found the Denver Public Library Podcasts site. It has podcasts of stories for kids, book reviews, author interview and various literacy topics. Pretty neat! Also, I found interesting things at the Orange County Library System, which was the first public library to offer RSS (Really Simple Syndication). The library provides their customers with the knowledge of an author visit at the library, find out about the next book sale, and learn about health and business programs plus more by using the Library's RSS. Their OCLS Children's Podstory, where the children and families can enjoy listening to their storytellers share their favorite tales. I do think podcasts are very useful, as a way of reviewing information that people may have skipped over when it was first presented to them. It’s very useful tool to have. I am still trying to keep up with what I have learned.

Week 9: #20 Discover YouTube and other video sharing sites

There were some many videos on YouTube for me to go through in one day. I do have personal YouTube account and I have posted videos on YouTube before. You just have to be really careful when you post videos on YouTube. You have no knowledge of who will watch those videos when you make them public. The library can use YoubTube in so many ways....such as 1 minute marketing (that already happening), short storytime videos of library staff reading books and peorforming fingerplays or songs, or puppet shows by staffs and lots of others ways that library can use YouTube. YouTube is here to stay and we as library should use the technology to help promote us to the best or our abilities.

Parade of Avatars & Becoming a Video Producer

I was clueless about some of the Avatars from different people, but I was able to create a simple video using my daughter's 4th birthday party pictures and some indian music. Using Animoto -- the process was very simple and user friendly. I downloaded pictures from the computer and also the music. I will use it again to create some other some videos in the future. It was lots of fun to create and I was able to post it on my blog and send to family and friends to watch. This was great non-realted iHCPL thing. Watch my posted video!

Ruchi's 4th Birthday Party

Week 8: #19 Web-based Apps: They're not just for desktops

I set up an account with Zoho and had a great time exploring all of the different fonts, colors, size, etc. I can see how useful this tool can be for both work and pleasure. This would great for customers and everyone who forget their disks or USB drives and need something to save their documents. I like the fact that it can be accessed at any computer anywhere and by anyone who would need to have access to it. I also think the MS is great too. There are some documents that I wouldn’t want on the web. I tried out the publish options and posted it to my blog. This application was new to me, but I have heard from friends who are all tech gurus.

Week 8: #19 Web-based Apps: They're not just for desktops

 

Crescent Layer Bars

 

Prep Time: 25 Min

Total Time: 2 Hr 20 Min

Makes: 36 bars

 

INGREDIENTS

1 can (8 oz) Pillsbury® refrigerated crescent dinner rolls

1 cup white vanilla baking chips

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup slivered almonds

1 cup cashew halves and pieces

1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated)

 

DIRECTIONS

1. Heat oven to 375°F (350°F for dark pans). Grease bottom and sides of 13x9-inch pan. Unroll dough into 2 long rectangles. Place in pan; press over bottom and 1/2 inch up sides to form crust. Bake 5 minutes.

2. Remove partially baked crust from oven. Sprinkle vanilla chips, chocolate chips, almonds and cashews evenly over crust. Pour condensed milk evenly over top.

3. Return to oven; bake 20 to 25 minutes longer or until golden brown. Cool 10 minutes. Run knife around sides of pan. Cool 1 hour. Refrigerate 30 minutes or until chocolate is set. For bars, cut into 9 rows by 4 rows.

 

High Altitude (3500-6500 ft):  No change.

Technorati Tags     recipes,Layers,Crescent,Bars

Week 8: #18 Social Networking: Making friends in the comfort of your own home

WHAT IS SOCIAL NETWORKING? A social networking is a way to seek an association or link with other people. There are so many social networking sites available to everyone, but the most popular one is MySpace, which I have heard of. Others sites that were part of the discovery exercise which included Facebook, Ning, Yahoo!360, LinkedIn, Xanga, Rate My Space, Threadless, Infield Parking, and Dogster & Catster, which I have not heard of before. I went through all the sites and discovered that I like the look of the Facebook, Threadless, and MySpace the best. I got account for Yahoo!360 and Threadless. I might get account for MySpace, since I know some people who have MySpace account and joining will make it easier to keep connected with them. I also like to design things so Threadless was good place to have account for.

Week 7: #17 Blog About Technology

Have you ever thought about living in a world without modern technology? We wouldn’t have the personal computers, cell phones, satellites, or any other device that relies on technology. What would the world be like if all the technology we’ve developed, discovered, and invented over the last 30 years suddenly stopped working? This last month we had a very small taste of what it would be like. Technology is great when it works; when it doesn't work you just want to throw something at it. Our world has grown to rely on technology for even our most basic operations. Can you imagine life without technology? Can you imagine the kids of today without technology? Without technology, I wouldn’t be blogging right now. Technology is great!

Week 7: #16 So what's in a wiki?

I didn't know what a wiki was until I join the Leadership Planning Council when I first started working at HCPL. I'd always thought of wiki was short form for Wikipedia. But the idea of having a wiki that can be for a specific group is very useful. I really liked the iHCPL Wiki and reading the various Favorites lists and adding to a few of my own to the wiki. It’s was fine that each person had the control to edit the wiki, but sometimes that can be problems too, if lots of people are editing some documents. While searching via Google, I came across the Princeton Public Library's Book Lovers Wiki, where people can review books and it was well designed. I also liked the layout of Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Wiki.

Week 6: #15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0

In Web 2.0, the internet becomes the center of a new digital lifestyle. Without the web we wouldn’t be were we are today. Today’s world, we don’t just use the internet or web just to visit sites or search something, but we use it to share network space, which drives our work, research, education, entertainment and social activities—basically everything people do every day. Everything is always connecting to one another and to the Web such as PDAs, MP3s, laptops, cell phones, cameras, PCs, and TVs. Web 2.0 is here to stay and already there is Web 2.1 or Web 3.0 out there, so as library workers, we need to learn the new, newer, and the newest technology to assist our customers and the keep on learning. Did you think about —Flickr, MySpace, FaceBook, del.icio.us, YouTube, LibraryThing, WeeWorld, and Library Elf—being part of the Web. Did you here about these programs few years ago? Our mission as library workers or on a personal level is to read and learn about the new technology that is out there and it should be part of our job duties.

Week 6: #14 Getting not-so-technical with Technorati

O my God! Information overload………I know why people spent so many hours on the net…….Technorati is wonderful, but it’s going to take some time, which I don’t have right now to spend searching on this site. I did claim my blog and added few favorites and tagged also. This is another smart tool that I wish I would have more time with. Once again I astonished by all the different things that people are interested in. I hope to check more sites out in the near future. It’s going to take some time to absorb what I have been doing this past few weeks.

Week 6: #13 Tagging makes the web 2.0 world go round

I already had a del.icio.us account and had a good amount of bookmarks already in my account, but ihcpl helped to increase my listings of bookmarks and I added several favorites to the listing. ihcpl offered quite a few bookmarks to my bookmark listings which I took advantage of. The only thing is now to add the bookmarks that I have at work and home to del.icio.us, and then I won’t have to worry about finding the website that I need either at work or at home or at somewhere else. The site is great!

Week 5: #12 The "Library" Elf will remind you!

I registered with library elf today. It's a resourceful and practical service. It wouldn’t help me, since I work at a library, but could be very helpful to parents who have to keep track of their and their children’s books. It a very beneficial service to them and I can see myself telling parents about this website and service it offers to the parents or anyone with 2 or more library cards. Brilliant site (all the credit goes to the person who thought of it) too bad I didn’t think of it.

Week 5: #11 A Thing about Library Thing

This was so much fun. I already had LibraryThing account and was already using it, but I been lazy adding books to it and this discovery made me go back and revise and add books that I have recently read to my library. I also looked at the others sites and created account with All Consuming. I will go back and catalog my movies and music from the past to present. It's so much fun going through the discovery. You can see books from my library @ My Library Catalog

Week 5: #10 Play around with Image Generators

Week 5: #10 Play around with Image Generators

This discovery was soooooooooooo fun! I can't believe that programs out there fo creating the most creative graphics and images. I had so much fun with FD Toys and Avatars from Yahoo!, which I already had so I didn't really play with much. I liked the Meez also and from a variety of image generators I visited the HappyFaceGenerator, which I created the Header picture and went to FD Toys to create blog header. It was so fun. Next going to visit Meez again to create more images. This has been discovery has been eye-opener to all the possiblities for be the most creative in your work(and you don't have to the artisy kind to be creative).

Week 4: #9 Finding Feeds

I searched Feedster, Topix, Syndic8 and Technorati and thought that all of them were good, but I liked the best was the Feedster because of easy to use and visually it looked good. This has been very interesting and found several blog posts I was interested in. I opened lots of feeds on the Bloglines account and that's where I found several of the ones I subscribed to. I can see how people could sit in front of a computer all day and not even realize the time. There is so much information out there. Now I just need to find the time to read the ones on my Bloglines list. I have from top news stories to cooking and the weather, parenting and shopping. Like Grace Notes, I added decided to check out Feedster's widget tool. It's pretty clever and I did a search on iHCPL, then clicked Create Widget, added my information, and added to my blog. Also created Widget for Feedster and added that to my blog. I now have a widget on my sidebar that will show me new posts made that mention iHCPL and on Feedster. That’s so cool!

Week 4: #8 Make life "really simple" with RSS and a newsreader

This discovery experience was fun, since I already have created a bloglines account before and it was a very easy thing to do. After registering, I browsed through some of the suggestions made for feeds according to my interests. I registered ten feeds to my account as well as two iHCPL participants blog feeds. My choices ranged from CNN to Quotes of the day. The participants I subscribed to include Class Is Now In Session!! and Grace Notes. So far it's been fun learning and reading through the various feeds to see the vast amount of information they contain. It was very easy to create the bloglines account and subscribe to the feeds. This has been so much fun

Week 3: #7 Photo Editing Tools

Here is the black and white of the photo using Pixer

Week 3: #7 Photo Editing Tools

Here is the phots after the photos Pixer editing tool..........

Week 3: #7 Photo Editing Tools

Here is photo before editing tools.............

Week 3: #6 More Flickr Fun

I looked at all of the online applications. It was very over whelming to go through, but it was so much fun too.

The few samples such as Trippermap, Colorpicker, and Trip planner, which lets you build a travel itinerary and photo site were lots of fun.

The one liked the best was the BigHugeLabs. In there I was able to create lots of fun things. I will go back and create other things later date. Picture below will tell you all what I created using my 2 children photo.

Week 3: #5 Flickr Fun

DSC00011.jpg
Originally uploaded by ap6675

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Week 3: #5 Discover Flickr

I learn about Flickr before Yahoo decided to take away their Yahoo Photos. I have been using Flickr since then. It's really great photo sharing site and much more. Flickr is an online photo management and sharing application. Its basically helps people make photos available to those who matter to them and creative new ways of organizing pictures. You can join Flicker for free and begin sharing images immediately. It's great site compare to other photo sharing sites.

Week 2: #4 Online Safety and Sharing

The Internet is a great place to get information, communicate with others, and shop. Internet safety is so important in today’s world. You really have to be careful about typing out your personal information on websites and you really don’t know what happens to the information you send through cyberspace. And most all how can you be sure your children are safe online? As a parent and working in the children’s department of the library, I always tell myself and other about ways to keep their information private when they are online. There are some very important things that you need to keep in mind when you're on your computer at home or at school. First and always remembering to never to give out personal information such as your name, home address, school name, or telephone number in a chat room or on bulletin boards. Always keep your passwords secret and emails are not always private (even though some people might think that). Learn what "cookies" are and what is does and watch out for "spam." Sometimes you may want to be anonymous and most of all decide what information you want to provide. I am very careful about internet safety because of all the happenings you hear about violating someone’s privacy especially children’s. I believe that you should never type on you blog or anything else in cyberspace anything you wouldn't want shared with the world. I teach my daughter who is 4 about what she should tell her friends and I watch when she plays games online. She could go to a site that I don't know type her name or something.......children are too trusting.

Cyberspace is great if use correctly!

For more information on Children's privacy and internet safety for parents.

Week 2: #3 Grab Yourself a Blog

I already have a blog and registered my blog on Harriet too.

Week 1: #2 Learning Style and Process

There are so many things to do and so little time as people say...so my biggest problem will be time. With 2 children, one 4 years old and a recent addition to the family about 2 and half months ago will be my greatest time consumer, so I will need to be very organized with time. I was organized before, but this will be a challenging for sure. I am one of those people who carries around pocket calendar that keeps track of meetings, vacations, birthdays, etc......... so hopefully it will be fine. It's a learning process........think positive.......that what I say!

Week 1: #1 Discovery

Hello everyone, have already registered this week, but didn’t do much. Just came back from a very, very long vacation of sort. Anyway I am ready to start this. It’s always fun and interesting to learn about some new tools that will help you do your job and also learn for yourself. And that what it’s all about! It’s always fun to learn more about up-and-coming technologies on the web that are changing the way everyone and libraries access information and communicate with each other. I can’t wait to catch up with everyone blogs. I am ready to learn and relearn: blogging, RSS news feeds, tagging, wikis, podcasting, online applications, and video and image hosting sites. Let’s get started!

Just Register!

Hello! I just register myself for blogger account and ready to start this iHCPL. It should be fun!