Week 5 Task # 10

Well I said I would turn off the PC, but this is just too much fun (yes, I'm serious!)

Made my own romance novel cover at http://www.glassgiant.com/romance/ , also made a snowglobe and did my own makeover (hah hah hah).

Love my little avatar, made at http://www.doppelme.com/

And put a message for you in coffee at http://www.imagechef.com/

A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto

incredibly apt - look at this

Week 4 Task #9

OK, more on RSS feeds! First thing I did was to visit a couple of sites I already know about and see if I could subscribe - http://taste.com.au has a great feed - if you live in Australia and love to cook, you should already know about this website, so no more information! Found a couple of others using stumbleupon (recommends websites according to your preferences and does a pretty good job at picking interesting ones) and subscribed to those - once the novelty of this wears off I am really going to have to prune these subscriptions, as there is no way I will ever have time to read them all!!
Visited feedster to have a look for information on public libraries - initially received a lot of irrelevancies, tried a phrase search which returned more of the same. Hmmm. The topic search was more interesting. Found a travel website which sounded OK. Overall, not incredibly impressed.
HINT! For those of you working on IE 7, I have a very nifty little button in my toolbar that tells me where a site has feeds.
I added Melbourne news to my bloglines via Topix - wonder how it knows where I live? Also added some Offbeat news (who can resist a good brain-eating amoeba story?) Found that they have a Libraries news section and subscribed to that too. Using "Dandenong" was too specific for a Topic search.
Google blog search made me sigh a little with relief - nothing like a little familiarity sometimes when you're off exploring new worlds. Lots of blogs that mention public libraries, including some belonging to Learning 2.0 participants. Seems as though a lot of public libraries have new books blogs - unfortunately not us, though (as yet). All so easy when you know how! Monash has events listed (love the lovely Google) but mainly American stuff. A search on "Dandenong Library" revealed a blog written by one of our customers - (an "ah ha!" moment for anyone who questions why we are doing this program!) and another - (including a photo of the library! OK, maybe we are only barely visible in the corner of the photo, but still!) and another! right, moving on....
(sooo easy to get sidetracked!) Technorati picked up quite a bit on Dandenong and some incredibly vile racist stuff about the Sudanese. A reminder to me that the net has it's dark side. I also learnt that people are ripping pages out of our manga books (there's that dark side again!). OOo, found Natalie's blog!
Fed up now :-) One last thing before I turn off this computer ... checked out the ANZ Ref Centre and have discovered that it lets you feed searches - which seems like great way of tracking what's going on in the media. I've fed in "Dandenong Library" and have found an article by one of our talented staff and (in some ways thankfully) that's it. *yawn*

Week 4 Task #8

Well after some very entertaining times, we have discovered that it's actually not us doing something WRONG with Bloglines that's creating the problem - it's our blessed security software at work! Thus the fact that it is now some ridiculous hour at home and I am busy playing with feeds. Oh well. Bloglines is very interesting and I'm very pleased that I can pop RSS links into my own Blogger blog also. I couldn't see the tab to make it public, so have included a small screenshot of the feeds I have subscribed to.

Plenty of applications for this technology in a public library - people can subscribe to our blogs (for instance, latest events or new items in the library), we can set up feeds to sites we think people might want to check out, etc. etc. For myself, I've subscribed to a large number of extremely frivolous sites. So for right now, it seems like a new way to spend even more time online doing frivolous things, but now that I actually know what that RSS button does, I will see where it takes me!

Week 3 Task # 7

OK, well blogging about technology ... first, I can barely remember what it was like NOT to own a PC, my first PC was a Mac with an unbelievably tiny monitor, black and white like the picture. Awwww shucks, ain't it sweet? Bit different from the flat-screen wonders of today, yes? I like to think that I am something of a techno-holic - love the lovely toys produced to make life easier/prettier/more fun! My iPod is a wonderful thing and it's been a long time since I've bought a CD anywhere but iTunes. Another "toy" I adore is my GPS nav system, which means I can actually find my way from Hampton to Ascot Vale without needing to do a "quick" detour via Niddrie or over to the airport!
As for the online world... I live on the net and my current addiction is facebook, though I think it's giving me a complex about how many friends I've got in comparison to some of my other friends! I do pretty much everything online, from paying bills to finding out about anything I need to know.
I am hoping that at work we will be able to work some of this Web 2 stuff into our daily tasks, as I truly believe that if we put our heads together we can produce something new and interesting, which we can use to help our patrons. I can see possibilities for ELLA, for readers' advisory, for adult events, youth, reference, you name it!
Cheers,
Donna

Week 3: more flickr stuff (#6)

Hello all,

Well, I've just discovered what a mashup is - and hey, I thought it was just something to do with potatoes, but NO! I created this adorable (if I do say so myself) playing card by "borrowing" (ahem) an image from flickr - there are some very clever photographers out there! - and using the playing card tool recommended on the site. Fun, yes?

Let's see if this works ... I've been playing with a mashup called PictoBrowser (http://www.db798.com/pictobrowser/) , so you should be able to see all of the Librarian Trading cards posted on Flickr (provided it works, of course)!!!

Flickr continued ... (just for fun)

Very excited - found the flickr mobile site (http://m.flickr.com/), which works really well! I can now get photos from my Mobile phone onto flickr and onto my blog. I love this shot of my cat, Elmo (Mo for short).

Week 3: flickr (hints)

CIMG0147
Originally uploaded by ameithyste

Hello again,

A couple of hints with flickr - you can either sign in to flickr by creating a yahoo! account or just browse and copy in a photo. People have had some dramas connecting up their blogs, so DON'T PANIC if you can't do it - it doesn't really matter. If you want to try and connect your blog to flickr, use this link: http://www.flickr.com/blogs.gne and put in your blog's details. Then you can find a photo you want to put into your blog by searching or browsing through the massive selection available. Click on the photo until it is as big as it can get. On the top of the photo you have selected there should be a series of small "buttons", one of which says "blog this" (see left). Click on that, pick your blog from the list and you should be OK! If you aren't connecting up your blog just right-click on a picture, save it and add it to a post in your blog.

Anyway, the other photo is actually one of mine. I am not a brilliant photographer, but somtimes I get lucky and I do like this shot. It was taken in Fiji just before I started in this job.

Cheers! :D

Week 3: flikr

IMG_0551
Originally uploaded by ameithyste

Week 3: flikr
flikr seems like a good thing, but now I've ended up with a yahoo! email address to add to the collection! Anyway, this is my photo of the Great Wall of China, from a trip a few years' back. China is an amazing place - i've been twice now and am considering a third trip. But how to decide when there are so many amazing places in the world to visit?

Week 1 - better late than never!

Week 1: Learning
Habit 1 – Begin with the end in mind
Habit 2 – Accept responsibility for your own learning
Habit 3 – View problems as challenges
Habit 4 – Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
Habit 5 – Create your own learning toolbox
Habit 6 – Use technology to your advantage
Habit 7 – Teach and mentor others
Habit 7 ½ – PLAY! Have fun! It's never too late to become a lifelong learner.

Hmmm, so we're supposed to say which of these we find most difficult... well, I love to learn and am always looking for a new challenge, love to solve problems (or at least try!) I also like technology (just check out the contents of my handbag) and believe very strongly in the value of play, PARTICULARLY when it comes to technology. And I love to teach/mentor. Perhaps the first one - sometimes I can go off on learning "tangents" and dash off trying to find out about new things that I don't really need to know about for the specific purpose. But that's fairly typical of me (easily distracted)! Anyway, hope you're still having fun and thanks to the anonymous Springvale staff who reminded me about this particular task by doing their homework properly!

Week 2: Blogging
Well, my first ever Blog, how exciting! And not so tricky to set up (although a tip from me - don't try putting GIFs into your title bar, as you will never be able to get rid of 'em). Hope you're all having fun. Bye! :-) Donna