Last but not least

Overall, I got a lot out of participating in 23 Things. I found RSS feeds, which I knew about, but had never used, to have the most impact on my daily comings and goings. Being able to have one place to view new content from the web sites that are the most important to me is awesome!

My other favorites are Library Thing and Flickr!! So that's pretty significant to have 3 new "things" to use on a regular basis. I would definitely want to participate in other trainings like this, because it is so important that we have some knowledge of what's new out there in the wide world of information technology. Anyway, I'm signing off now so Thank You and Au Revoir Mes Amis!!

Net Library, Project Gutenberg

I have used Net Library before, but found it to be not very easy to download to my MP3. Not someone who has a lot of free time, I found it was easier to burn our cd books onto my device, so that I could listen while I go on walks. Our Playaways are great for that too! I also took a look at Project Gutenberg and was impressed by all the titles that are available as audiobooks. I will definitely download one of these. I was super excited when I saw that Project Gutenberg has books in other languages to download. However, I found out that the books in French are only available as e-books not audiobooks. Tant pis!! Hopefully in the future there will be French audiobooks available for downloading.

Podcast Discovery

I used PodcastAlley.com to discover some interesting podcasts. I went to the Travel Category and found an interesting podcast called Irish Fireside; all about travel to Ireland and Irish culture. In the Education category, I found many interesting language learning podcasts; French, Spanish and Italian, Chinese and others. The library related one that I found is "Book Bites for Kids," which is the one I will sign up for getting the RSS feed.

You Tube

Well, it took me a while to find a video that I thought was worthwhile. There's a lot of soso stuff that you could waste a lot of time watching. I thought this one was pretty good, but the music that went along with it was annoying, so I muted that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIXN8BGmOes

Web 2.0 sites

I played with Craigslist and GoogleDocs. GoogleDocs is very user friendly. I love how you can access your saved documents anytime/anywhere you are using the Internet. Craigslist is interesting: how you can find things for sale, jobs, events, based on where you live. It's a very well organized site, I think.

Zoho Writer and Google Docs

I've used both Zoho Writer and Google Docs. I used Zoho Writer for this exercise and Google Docs months ago. I find that they are both very adequate word processors. I noticed that Zoho Writer has the ability to e-mail your document or post it to your blog. I suspect Google Docs also has the capability, but I'll have to check.

Sandbox Wiki

I'm sorry to say that PBwiki would not let me in no way no how. I appreciate the idea of a "sandbox" to play in and express whatever we wish, but I couldn't get in!!

Wikis

Wikis seem to be a really useful tool. All of those that I looked at require you to have permission to access the workspace. This permission is essential of course, otherwise you'd have all sorts of pranksters posting to your wiki. Wikis seem to be the tool to use, if a group of people need to collaborate on a project. I really loved the book lovers wiki!

Library 2.0

I really enjoyed reading these articles, especially "Away from the icebergs" and "Into a new world of librarianship". I liked the iceberg analogy, that we should avoid pitfalls such as the unnecessary "collecting" of items that already exist and are accessible to our patrons on the Web. The latter article, "Into a new world...", lists those qualities a "Librarian 2.0" should have, such as involving our users in decisions about library services, and making library services available where the user wants them, whether in the traditional library or at home on the Web. In my opinion, all of these articles, make us aware of "the big picture" with the library world; that big changes are occurring.

Technorati: The only search with any results was in Blog Posts. I searched for the key words "Learning 2.0". The results were relevant and kind of interesting. I also searched for my favorite blog, "French-word-a-day" to check out what tags are attached. I played around with the site and looked at Travel and Family blogs. I don't think I'll use this site very much.

Delicious: This is kind of cool. For instance there is a website French-Word-a-Day, which is a blog that I always read, so I entered that in Delicious and got a list of other people who have bookmarked this site. It was interesting to see how they tagged this site and what other sites they have bookmarked. I'll definitely go back to Delicious. Very interesting!

Rollyo: I honestly had a lot of trouble with this site. First of all, it was extremely slow loading. Then when I finally got into it and learned about how you could create your own web engine that would search just sites that you trust, I was kind of excited for it to work. I figured I would make my own travel and health search engines. I gave up though because it was too sloooow.

LIBRARY THING
I definitely see this as a potentially useful tool. By using the tags field, you can later search your list of books. Anyway it's kind of fun to keep a running list of the books you've read. Here's a link to my books: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ktglibrary

Here I am in Paris!

Merlin and Searching for RSS Feeds--
I think I've about exhausted my enthusiasm for RSS Feeds. I've subscribed to some good ones as I mentioned in my previous post and I'm really enjoying these. I check my bloglines account almost everyday. I've explored Merlin, but am not overwhelmed with enthusiasm for this site. Hopefully I will enjoy the rest of the "23 Things."

RSS Feeds and Newsreader

I have set up 14 RSS feeds to my Bloglines account. I really think this will be a useful tool for me to be able to access some of my favorite information all in one spot. One of the very useful feeds for me will be the Washington post Metro section- Maryland feed. We've just been getting the Wall Street Journal delivered at home so I need to know what's going on locally. Of the 14 feeds, I've included some of the blog feeds of participants of '23 Things' and 3 library related feeds: Library Journal, Unshelved, and LibraryBytes.

I'm no techie, but there are many aspects of technology in our everyday lives that I really like. Two of my favorites are cell phones and the internet. My cell phone is my constant companion: I can find my children at any time and I keep all my appointments on my phone and am reminded a week ahead of them. The internet is just amazing for finding information on any topic. I know that we all know this. It can't be emphasized enough. I just love using it!!!

Thing 6

I wasn't too successful with mashups. For instance, I couldn't really find out how to use mappr. However I really love the mapping program included in flickr.com, where you simply search for a place, say Dijon, France. A map pops up with lots of photos that you can click on to enlarge. I think this is done with "geotagging"(people who put their pictures on Flickr can add information about where they took the photo.)

Immensity (S. Caterina - Salento - Puglia - Italia - Italy)

Immensity (S. Caterina - Salento - Puglia - Italia - Italy)
Originally uploaded by Gojca

Isn't this beautiful? My son might go to this area of Italy in the future, because he knows a family that he could stay with for a few weeks. I love this Flickr-- I just searched Puglia, Italy. In my free time I know I'm going to be looking at all these gorgeous photos!

First Post/7.5 Habits

71/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners- The easiest of these for me is "Play" because I really love to learn new skills. I've successfully learned French and now I'm tackling Italian; I love to learn new recipes and knitting techniques. For me, this is play. I'm not that good at keeping the end in mind(Goal Setting), because I'm so enthusiastic about whatever I'm learning, that I don't think much about what I hope to achieve. It usually works out fine though, so maybe I am subconciously thinking about goals: I do end up travelling and using the languages I'm learning; completing my knitting projects and recipes, etc.