23Things Reflections
This was a great learning experience for me and it is hard to put down in a few words what I thought about this endeavor but I will try.
1. Blogging is easy and a great way to spread the my library news.
2. I like using Blogger better than Tumblr.
3. Online Communities is where everyone is at
4. Made a Facebook fan page and that was THE BEST thing that happened with the 23Things.
5. I like the Online Meetings. I will use this more to cut down on travel expenses.
6. I now have Picasa & Flickr accounts thanks to the Photo Sharing lesson. I hope I can remember all the logins and passwords.
7. Patrons love pictures. Staff helpers like being able to access websites to dress up the web pages.
8. RSS & Feed Readers - The hardest thing for me to make myself do is go and keep up with these. My email takes forever and I struggle to find time to go look at other sites during working hours.
9. I was already Microblogging a little with my Twitter account. I’m not into sharing all my stuff on all the different sites. Facebook is about as far as I go.
10. Working with the staff on some of the Cloud Computing processes was fun. I will try to use the google docs more often and collaborate with staff and board on the web.
11. Instant Messaging isn’t something that I will use much at work. Some days I am the only one here. I would use it in a setting with more people.
12. I have used IM for years to keep up with family. I showed several of my patrons how to use Meebo to access more than one account. The younger people love it.
13. Practice makes perfect and that was my learning experience for Video Sharing. I forget that not everyone likes every part of the story like I do. EDIT will be a key word for the future.
14. Screencasting intimidated me. I put this lesson off because I felt so lost. After I bit the bullet and started to play with it I found it fun and see where it would be useful in the library
15. Slide Sharing - Animoto is so fun to play with. It is easy and the patrons thought that I had spent hours putting a slide show together. (my secret) It really jazzes up a web page.
16. I also played with ZOHO
17. Shelfari is on my web page and this has been the 2ND BEST THING that I learned with 23Things. Patrons love the pictures of the new books that I just put out as the library owning.
18. Wikis - I don’t feel comfortable adding or editing an already existing resource unless it is blatantly wrong. I didn’t find any that were. Confession, I didn’t look real hard. Our town doesn’t have a good web resource so I didn’t really want to start something there. I did add to Eric’s Wiki for the 2nd activity.
19. Summary - A good project that I am glad I participated in.
20. I expanded my knowledge about many online resources that can be used in the library and my personal life.
21. Would like to see this available to more of the general public.
22. Biggest drawback was lots of accounts and passwords and time to play with every gadget. I tried to keep it simple and stay with a main source such as google but couldn’t keep myself from trying other things. I will continue to experiment with all of the sources in the lessons.
23. Congratulations to the creators of this project. You did good. Thanks for your time and support to all of us across the state. I’d jump on board for another round sometime.
Update 4-23
I have done a lesson on each week of my 23 Things Kansas. This has been a great learning experience. If you see a week that you want an explanation about leave a comment. Next week we have wrap-up webinar sessions. I am looking forward to finishing.
Week 13 - Slide Sharing
http://show.zoho.com/public/osbornepubliclibrary/Kids%20After%20School%20-%20Kids%20Walk%20Kansas1
This is the URL for my Slide Sharing presentation. These are pictures of our after school program. We are walking across Kansas and each week I have the kids doing different physical activities. We have walked 358 miles and we need to get to 433 by the end of the month. I know we can do it.
Update 5-24-10 - I put another slide presentation show on my web page. This one is for summer reading and has all our information for our programs on it. Our web page is www.osbornepubliclibrary.blogspot.com
Week 14 - Library Thing, etc
I made an account on Shelfari and added to my blog. I also put it on the library blog and am going to try to use it to show the latest additions to the library. Visuals are a good thing for patrons.
Shelfari was very easy to use. It let me rate books, mark them as read or want to read, mark them as owned (which is useful for the library) and it lets me make a wish list. This might be a good tool for others to rate also.
This will be much easier to use than typing out all the titles on the library blogspot.
Bookshelf →
This will take you to the addition of books to our library
Follow-up on Week 10 - Videos
I used my flip to create a video the day the rotating book truck came. I did a narrative as I filmed showing the empty shelves, how I went about choosing how many books I took off of the truck, the time the truck came, the inside of the truck, the stacks of books that I had to begin on, and finally the full shelves again.
I put it up on youtube and I thought I could edit it because it is a clip that is 7 minutes long. I have not yet figured out if I can edit it. I may have to go back to the original and edit there and repost.
But anyway it is on youtube and it is called The Day the Book Truck Came and the link is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TMCABI94fs
I hope to get better at this
Update on Week 8 - Cloud Computing
I have worked with one of my co-workers with the google docs. We put the library calendar up there so we could make changes and see how it works. It is easy to add people to do the editing.
I am trying to use the documents in google a little more also. This should help when I post on the library blogspot and adding things to other sites.
Thanks for sharing this tool.
An update
Just an update to the photo lesson. I now am uploading photos to our library Picasa account. This has been useful in adding photos and slideshows to our library web page. www.osbornepubliclibrary.blogspot.com
I have a high school student help me keep the web page current and this will make things easier for him also.
Thanks for all the learning tools through the 23thingskansas.
Week 9 - Instant Messaging
This is something that I have done for many years. When my kids went away to college this was an inexpensive way to keep in touch. We use windows live with the webcam so that we can see the grandbaby. We also got my 80+ year old father to IM his grandchildren. This was also a great way to check up on him while he was living alone. We could tell if he turned his computer on for the day.
IM is a great way to pass notes and memos within in the work area. Questions can be answered in less time than it would take to track down the person you want to talk to. It is also a great way to get many co-workers together on a project. Our library is small enough that we don’t use messaging between workers. I used it at my last job though. I worked in two different buildings and chatting between the buildings saved lots of time. I think this is a tool that would be very useful in a large library setting.
Meebo was a great tool to learn about in the library. Many patrons have multiple accounts and this site let them go to one place and log-in to them. I have used this site for several months now.
I have gotten on the IRC channel to see what it was like. It was confusing at the start but once I knew where to type, it was like any other chat room. Thank you Liz for chatting with me.
Like all of the lessons so far, even if I have used the tools in the past, I have learned something new. I will try to use the chat tool more often when we have webinars and other group on-line chats. I usually just sit back and read.
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