you know....

Yes, I still would I'm afraid!
Thank you Karen, Kathy and Hantie for all the huge amount of work you put into this programme and I know many people got alot of fun and learning from it.
Thank you Karen especially for your relentlessly positive attitude and encouragement for those of us who would rather be reading!
I must say in the end dragging my feet somewhat was to my advantage as I learnt some good tips and shortcuts from other people who cheerfully shared their learnings including the tip to start at exercise 22 and work backwards! (hmm... working from both ends to the middle made a weird kind of sense and seemed to go faster - go figure)
My most important learning was a sad one - I'm still a very impatient person! But I must say that I'm finding using image generators alot of fun and I can see myself getting creative with birthday cards and teamday agendas in the future. I might even youtube some more pandas.

exercise #7.2

Went into the readers club New Review feeds and tried downloading the feeds to some of the review categories. Everyone of them came back with " page cannot be displayed. Clicked on "unshelved" and followed the process to get the rss feed. When I went into my bloglines account it wasn't there, however, I then did it from my bloglines account and it worked perfectly.
I think I would prefer to add rss feeds from within my Bloglines, rather than going to other sites and sending the links to bloglines. I find it quicker to go into bloglines and then go through the search tool within it to the specific sites that I would want to subscribe to, rather than having to browse a lot of options and then choose a site and the feed.

exercise #7.1

http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs

I am interested in books and news so these are the feeds I chose. This could be very useful if I was disciplined enough to check in to them a couple of times a day. I could see this being useful if a bloglines account was created on the information desk in the library and checked for latest news and reviews regularly. I know a staff member who subscribes to the Unsleved cartoon feed and puts selected ones up on the back of the staff toilet door!

exercise# 8

Had a look at the Social networking book mark and went into Voicethreads. Some of the notes summarized the content which could be useful - some made no sense whatsoever, another language altogether! Some of the tags were Americanlibraryassociation, avatars, networking and pageflakes.
I couldn't imagine why I would ever want to go into this site, but then I'm not into exploring this sort of thing anyway. I wonder would you not find Synkron if you googled it? Tried it and sure enough it took me to the exact site. I went back to synkron on Del.icio.us and followed a few links to users but they just seemed to take me to more and more lists.

exercise #9

Working ass backward so this one a little more difficult - should have done #8 first.
Very mixed results with the searches in blog directory and blog posts - some seemed to have little to do with the search.
What a messy site - way too much on each page, very slow to navigate around. It seems that search results are only going to be as good as the tags that people have put ontheir blogs. - I guess the librarian in me wants something more structured.
Got a result of 1257 blogs about learning 2.0 - initial reaction was good grief it's taking enough time to work through it without bothering to blog about it!
Don't think I'll tag my posts - this is all giving me rather a creepy feeling of understanding about how kids can be preyed upon.

exercise #10

Had a quick read of most of these. The one that really struck a chord was Michael Stephens "into a new world of Librarianship" with a series of statements he publishes his intent to use web 2.0 to enhance the library experience for his users by engaging them in the whole process. I was also very impressed by the statement below which I think illustrates the importance of not getting technology for technology's sake.

"Librarian 2.0 controls technolust This librarian does not buy technology for the sake of technology. “Techno-worship” does not exist here. Without a firm foundation in the mission and goals of the institution, new technologies are not implemented for the sake of coolness and status. Technology is put to the test: Does it meet the users need in a new or improved way? Does it create a useful service for putting users together with the information and experience they seek? These are some of the questions this librarian asks when planning for technology. This librarian creates and nurtures a living, breathing technology plan."

Roll on our web person and being able to engage our customers in all aspects of our library service. I hope my new knowledge of what's possible will help the decision and vision making process.

exercise #11

Book lovers wiki is quite a good set up - quite an attractive site. The staff reviews looked well managed - just a fairly short paragraph about the book. Library Success was pretty boring - standard wiki format - an inhouse tool maybe? A good way to store training notes, instructions and other types of information you would normally put into a manual for staff.

exercise #12

Added a comment to the favourite blog page "favourite holiday spots" with a link included in the text.

exercise#13

Tried one I found through FD toys but it wouldn't let me upload. This one did.

exercise#13

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/billboard.php

exercise #14

Very very easy to do - not a lot of clicking around to perform a relatively simple function. This could be a very useful tool for The Reading Experience. Staff could create lists - particualrly those who read in particular genres, that other staff could access for reader's advisory. Not that I'm thinking of doing it - too busy actually reading the books!
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/freddieteddie

exercise #15

Learnt a lesson because I created a search roll BEFORE I registered ( I'm an anti registerer!) then found I couldn't publish it to my blog, so had to go back and register - then it all worked from there.
http://rollyo.com/freddieteddie/my_latest_news/

exercise # 16

Created an account, created the document below, saved it in Zoho and posted to my blog below. I expected it to be like a Word document and be an attachment that needed to be opened - look more like a page, not just post the text that I wrote. However, it does give you alot of features that are similar to Word.

Once upon a time there was a little panda who was so cute he was videoed and stored on Freddie Teddie's blog.

There he was so happy that he wanted to stay forever. So he did.panda baby

exercise #17

Decided to look at widgets seeing as I didn't have a clue what they are, but have heard the term before.
Looked really simple and easy - followed the instructions to post the podcast for BBC world radio to my blog from Shoutcast Radio - BBC World Service. This told me I had successfully saved it to my blog - yay! This is easy! But nothing there.
Tried enlisting Kathy's much more expert advice. Ended up going to BBC World service website and tried subscribing to the podcast that way - then we both floundered from there. We did manage to put it into Bloglines as an RSS feed, but couldn't make it link to my blog as promised. So - not as simple as it seemed. Half an hour later we were still trying to figure out how to post the podcast to my blog. Got as far as adding a sidebar - have no clue how we got there. How disappointing when it all looked so very simple at the start.

exercise 18

Definitely think that library videos can be a marketing tool for programmes such as rhymetime and the school holidays, author talks etc.
I think that if libraries got together they could come up with some pretty stunning stuff e.g eLGAR libraries doing a series of library promotions for the whole of the Auckland region.
I could spend many hours looking at cute panda babies playing. In fact spent more time than I should so only quickly looked at the library ones. I've seen Conan the Librarian before. Rather liked the library prank about the children's books and Walter the farting dog- the Librarian handled it pretty well.
Wanted to upload the panda video to my blog, but my choices of username kept coming up unavailable and I'm not a sticker - I gave up at that point. However, went back and had another go and here it is. How cute is this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51CnDa-Cu2w

exercise # 19

I thought getting podcasts would be really simple and straight forward and I look forward to the day when you can get them with a couple of clicks, not a million! Finding and looking at them was easy, but linking was not. Can't say I found anything useful, but maybe in the future when I have time to spend exploring more.
My podcast link is:

exercise #20

All three sites were very messy . Only Amazon had To Kill a Mockingbird which is a classic and it wasn't in ebook form. They had a button to click on to suggest to the publisher that it should be in ebook form which is a good option. Project Gutenberg and LibriVox were both a very messy layout and neither of them had To Kill a Mockingbird.
Kindle looks like the most useful site if you have a kindle reader. However, unless they can make a Kindle smell like a new book it won't be getting my vote yet.

exercise #21

Rotorua's Bebo page was much more interesting a first sight than Aucklands. Visited Myspace and looked at Michael - scary he's from Auckland . Interesting that you can look up people from your old school if you so desire - which I don't really - maybe one day.Like the fact that Myspace let's you in to look around without logging in first. Facebook won't. I registered but it took such alot of faffing about I couldn't be bothered going in to look. I'm 30 years younger though - good opportunity to choose a new date of birth.

Exercise #22

Looked at Bethpage Library in myspace. Wanted to read "information wants to be free" but it was offline.
This is the way to communicate with the teens - they don't want to talk to people our age in the library so why bother getting them in - put the library into their space. One of the comments was "it's not about being cool, it's about connecting with the kids in a meaningful way". Or words to that effect.