Reflections on Web 2.0 Training

Many thanks to the remarkable Web 2.0 team for all the time and effort spent opening these many doors to features of the Web I was not familiar with.



The areas of the training I will be using again (and again) include Pandora (so many playlists - so little time), Flickr (finally I'll be able to organize and share my photos), Hulu and Fancast (to catch up on all those golden oldie shows), and creating a Wiki for my book group (rather than relying on e-mail and spreadsheets alone).



Those areas I'll probably not venture into again include my Avatar (quaint little character that it is), and gaming (too many good books lying around to read), and blogging - however, they were all worth learning about and creating.



I have shared many of these with Sno-Isle patrons - and with family and friends.



Thank you again - and any time there is another similar opportunity for training - count me in. A very worthwhile experience.

Gaming

I tried out Yahoo!Games for a quick 5 minute game or two. The first time I played the colored brick game I got to level 3 - the second time to level 12. After ten minutes my wrist was getting quite tired and I was ready to stop playing. For me games are a way to kill some time and to relieve a little stress, but I rarely play them. However, I recognize the importance to young children and teens (and to some adults), and am always looking for new sites to recommend.

Mapping

I have used Google Earth for quite a while and am always amazed at the new features it continually adds. I enjoy the ability to "fly" anywhere in the world to "visit" and explore. A recent addition includes the Wikipedia feature - detailing the area you input (census info., etc.). also, the ability to look at actual photographs of the area that others have added. Street view is an especially fun feature - giving a birds-eye view (including people on the street) of the area.

Avatar

This was a fun exercise - however, I don't believe I'll ever be using my avatar (except to amuse my children in an e-mail). I wasn't born in the gaming generation (I did play pacman a time or two - but that's about it). Here she is..

Online Tools Zoho and Google Docs

This was an especially informative session for me. I was not aware of these particular tools and will be using them frequently from now on. Both were extremely easy/self-explanatory to use. Since I am working at several branches and on different computers, using these applications will make it easy to retrieve documents I'm working on from any computer. The ability for instant collaboration and to chat with others on a document is a great feature. Tagging to mark the document will help in retrieval. Great exercise...

Search Engines

I have completed the search engine assignment (though actually a librarian will never be "finished" with exploring the variety of internet search engines out there and comparing what works/doesn't with each one. I have a list of them that I keep and when times are a bit slow at the reference desk will try them out. Great fun!

Podcasts

Three library related podcasts I listened to, after searching Podcast Alley for library sites, were the Salt Lake County Library System, Library Channel (Arizona State Univ. Library), and LibVib (national library newscast). I discovered that there were many interesting casts - author talks, storytimes in foreign languages, and the latest in news information regarding the library world.
This could be a very useful tool for Sno-Isle to incorporate into the System (I especially enjoyed the author talks).
There seems to be no shortage of topics for patrons in almost any area. I did find some very good ESL podcasts that would be of signifigant interest to many patrons. Also, several podcasts in science and history that could work for school assignments.
For myself personally, I will probably stay with just my I-Tunes downloads for music