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

Wow, I can't believe that i am finally here. The first 3 weeks were tough for me because I 've never use the blogger before and didn't know what to blog about. Now I feel more comfortable with it and definitely see the usage for my job and personal life in the future.

I enjoyed the most along the journey were the discovery of all the online tools. photo editing tools, Animoto ,library Elf, online image generators. . . They were all fun to play with and would be very helpful in my daily life.

This was a great training program. I've learned a lot about the emerging technologies on the web. But I think it would be better if this training could be break down to several smaller ones so that we have time to "digest" the knowledge before move on to the next.

Week 9: #22 Downloadable Media

I've used HCPL's digital site to download music cds to my own computer before. It's not too hard once you have the overdrive software installed onto your computer. I also visited the LibriVox and Wowio. It's seems that their collection were very limited.

Week 9: #21 Podcasts, Smodcasts!

I searched in Yahoo podcast and had fun to listen to a concert from the Library of Congress. Also, I've added Library Journal - Audio Reviews to my Bloglines account. Glad to know that I have an option to "listen" to news/information.

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

I created an account on Facebook because I want to see why almost every teen uses it. I have to admit that it is a quick way to chat and share news among all your friends without going any where and also it's the trend among young generation. So if libries want to reach out to the young generation, MySpace and Facebook would be a good place to start. Also, I checked out the special interest groups such as "Rate My Space" group, dogs, and Infield, they could be fun to visit.

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

I've received and send links from YouTube but never posted anything. Take a look what I have found -big wave. On YouTube, I found out that only some of the videos were good to watch. I will try to post my own videos later to share among friends.

update: This video is amaing. Take a look!

Week 6: #15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0

The major feature on Web 2.0 is that Web is no longer "read only", it's also writable. With all the tools Web 2.0 offers, new web sites such as Flickr, MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube pop up and become so popular. In Web 2.0, Web moves from simply being sites and search engines to a shared network space that drives work, research, education, entertainment and social activities—essentially everything people do.

While all these changes happening to the library users, in order to continue to serve them, libraies need to provide new services such as using instant messaging, building Weblogs to meet users online, creating MySpace profiles to build connections with users online. With iHCPL training, we will be able to provide better services to our users.

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

I created an account in Zoho and created a test document with a picture. Copied and pasted text is easy enough. But moving a picture around wasn't straight forword.

Week 7: #17 Blog About Technology

I enjoyed the online tools very much. With Online Photo Editing tools, now I can edit my photos any time, any where as long as I have Internet access and it's all free. The image generator is also wonderful. It's so easy to use. You can get amazing results without putting too much effort. I wonder what would happen when Internets went down?

I added a comment to another participant's blog. Hope someone will comment on my blogs soon!

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

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. This idea of "sharing" a website with public is new to me but after looking at some examples of how other institues used it, I can see library useing it to share information with public. But because the website is "open" to public, it could also be easily abused.

[wiki ihcpl]

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

I added tage "Technorati" to this post to make them accessible through Technorati search. Of course, it didn't show up when I search for "Technorati". Then I found out that I need to "Ping" it manually so that it will be indexed properly. I will worry about that later. Also, "Label" a post only means that it will be picked up when do a search in www.blogspot.com.

Tag: [Technorati]

Week 5: #11 A Thing about Library Thing

This is the result from Customize comic strips. Check it out!

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

If you check out books a lot from mutiple libraries, you will be happy to have Elf to help you to keep track of things like when holds are ready, what books are about to expire without logging in to each account.


tag: ihcpl

Week 4: RSS & Newsreaders

I created a Bloglines account and subscribed to 3 feeds. First two -CNN.com and Librarians' Internet Index: New This Week - were pretty easy to subscrib. Then I used Blogline's search engine to find the 3rd one - Library Journal News .

Week 7: Wikis

• Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them.

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content.

Create a blog post about anything technology related that interests you this week.

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

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize your bookmarks.

Us.ef.ul was very helpful when I try to figure out how to use Del.icio.us. It is definitely an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed anywhere. Need to play with it a little more to use it as a tool to build an expansive knowledge network.

Week 3: Photos & Images

I created an account in Flickr and upload a photo into it. Photo editing tools such as Pixer , Snipshot and Picnik are fun to play with. I was using Pixer to edit my not-so-clear picture and it turned out pretty nice. Take a look below:
after->

before->

Week 5: #10 Play around with Image Generators

Created an account in LibraryThing and added a bunch of books to my library.

So glad to learn that there are so many tools to building an avatar. Try FDToys , Avatars from Yahoo!, Customize Choose and Meez. I had problems to create an account in Meez though.
Here is an avatar I created using using Yahoo Avatars.