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!