Reflections...

I really enjoyed the general idea of the web 2.o training. I think my favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey have been delicious, myspace, flickr, blogging, and the music networks. Although I knew about many of the topics I haven't had the opportunity to try them out until now.

I think that it would have been nice to have a little more flexibility with the schedule. Some weeks it was very easy to fit in time to complete the tasks, others not so easy. While it was nice that it was okay to catch up on a week the next week, occasionally it would have been nice to have been able to go more at my own speed and go quicker when able to.

I think the biggest challenge was just finding/making the time to complete the lessons. While I understand that SIL was approving us for the time to work on this, many of us still had to complete the same duties as normal alongside with these additional duties, which proves to be difficult.

If given the opportunity to participate in another discovery program like this in the future, I would choose to participate. I think that this is a good idea, as we are seeing more and more of our patrons coming into the library with questions re: things that we are unfamiliar with. Even if we don't use these things ourselves.

Gaming

I have played and watched a lot of online games with my children, so I did not find it complicated at all. I did try out several of the games, however, I have not found any that I am really interested in playing. I am not much of an online game player, I would prefer to stick with good ole' board games.

Google Earth

Write a post to your blog and talk about your Google Earth experience? Did you find what you were looking for? What surprised you about the program?

I have used Google Earth, in fact my son had to learn/use it in school. Yes, I was able to quickly and easily "fly" to my destination. Since I have used Google Earth in the past, I am not really surprised about the program.

Avatars & Second Life

Do you already live in Second Life?
If you don’t already live in SL, would you like to live in Second Life?
Why or why not?

No, I do not already live in Second Life, and I have no desires to at this point of my life. I am a very busy person and do not have enough time in my "first" life, much less second life.

By the way, my avatar really doesn't look me, looks pretty ridiculous, in fact, but I couldn't really see spending any more time on this one.

Google Docs and Zoho

I am amazed that I have not heard of Google Docs or Zoho prior to our 2.0 training. It just goes to show you that are are so many more tools that are available out there. I don't know that I will use either on a regular basis at this time, although it is good to know that these are available. I do like the idea of being able to collaborate with others and be able to make changes to one document rather than having multiple documents floating around.

Search Engines

Today I practiced searching using Rollyo, Mamma, and Dogpile. I suppose I like the format of Mamma the best, it just seemed to be the easiest (cleanest format) to look at. For the most part, the searches that I performed on all 3 came up with similar results, so I was not surprised with the results.

Podcasting

Which library podcasts did you listen to?
Do you see podcasting as a useful tool for Sno-Isle Libraries?
Any ideas about which topics our patrons might be interested in hearing?
Do you have any experience with listening to, or creating podcasts?

I listened to Infoblog (Book Expo America) and Uncontrolled Vocabulary (Doing the Wikipedia thing already), although I admit it was difficult for me to get into them and didn't listen to the full podcasts. I felt that I was spending too much time searching for a podcast that I was interested in, and finally settled on these 2. I see that more and more libraries are using podcasts to get information to their users, and I do believe that this could be a useful tool for SIL. I am not sure which topics our patrons would be interested in hearing, and other than this training I do not have any experience with listening to or creating podcasts.