#23 The end (just in time)

Finally finished. I enjoyed doing the Learning 2.0 program. Even though I feel that I know quite a bit about the things that were covered I’d never actually used any most them.

I’d never written a blog before (I did attempt it once but I’m very boring so I gave up).

I’d never used flickr or online image generators. I’d heard of rss feeds but never realised that it was so easy to use and so handy. I was a bit worried about that task as all the people at the library that got there before me had had trouble with it and didn’t like it. I think it’s great and bloglines has been my homepage ever since.

Library Thing was good but I’m not sure if I’ll have the time to keep it updated. I’ll try and get back to it and use it more. It would be nice if there was a way to add a list of books that aren’t in your library, but you’d like to read. I have trouble remembering all the books I plan to read.

Rollyo was interesting and something I’d never heard of before. I like the idea of it and think it could be handy on a library website.

Del.icio.us was great! I really liked the idea of del.icio.us and plan to continue using it in the future, although when you install the buttons onto a computer with internet explorer 7 they don’t really fit well. But I think del.icio.us will be handy for me next year when I so a bit of travelling.

I didn’t like technorati. Not a bit. Maybe I missed something? But from my experience with it, I just didn’t like it.

Wikis were great. I use wikipedia quite a bit but it was interesting to see what other areas wikis can be used for. I think they definitely could have a use as part of library projects and possibly personal projects.

Google Docs and Zoho writer was something I was looking forward to. I love the idea of not having to use a disk or storage device. Accessing files from any computer with the internet is great. I think we should run lessons on zoho or google docs in the library as I think it’s something the customers could make use of and I just think it would be a good idea for as many people to know about it as possible. I think it still has some improvements to make but it's a great tool that I will defintely use in the future.

Youtube is good but there is so much rubbish on it!!! That task took me the most time, not because I was enjoying lots of videos, but because there was not much good on it. I think it’s a good resource if you have an idea of what you’re looking for but if you just looking for anything good to post on your blog (like I was for the task) then it can get a bit annoying.

I like podcasts, and will try in the future to make more time to listen to them. I’d be interested to see what other staff have found and liked. I’ll have to check their blogs.

And ebooks, well you know what I think of those. I just wrote about them earlier today. .

Overall, I’d say my favourite tasks were, zoho/google docs, del.icio.us, podcasts, and my number one top favourite was rss and bloglines!!

My only advice for future programs would be not to say it takes only 15 minutes a day because it seemed to be a bit more than that. Maybe 2 hours a week sounds better, which is really just a bit more than 15 mins a day. I think actually trying to do these tasks in 15 minute blocks is too difficult. Even one hour and 15 minutes a week sounds better than 15 mins a day…

But overall I think it was great and thanks to the organisers for all their work. It must be difficult to keep up with so many blogs but I think it would be a fun job as well. I’m already looking forward to Learning 3.0

Glenn 2.0

#22 Audiobooks (Books 2.0)

I’m not sure yet about downloadable audiobooks and ebooks. I think it will still be a while before they take off. Looking around the world ebook fair site I don’t think they’d do too much business with your general library visitor. All their titles seem to be quite old. If they had best sellers, and more recent and popular authors then I could see its use being more likely than it is now. Also, I didn’t think the children’s book on the site would be of too much interest either. I think once more recent titles become available as ebooks it will still probably take some time before Australian content became a part of the site. Maybe some of the classic fairy tales and kids stories would be alright but I don’t really think ebooks will be a big part of libraries services for a while yet. I can’t really picture kids being read stories from a computer screen as they lay in bed falling asleep. I think ebooks will become popular when the option of printed books isn’t as available as it is now. I know that ebooks are supposed to be cheaper, and you can buy special screens to read them from etc. but I still think they’re a long way off.

#21 Glenn 2.0 is now subscribed to 3 podcasts and 1 smodcast

I don’t do podcasts. I tried one early this year but I just don’t really have the time to listen to them. I like the idea of them though. I used to listen to the Smodcast podcast that Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier do and they are great, and it’s entertaining and funny. But it goes for about an hour each time. I think I listened to the first 5 or so but then started falling behind so I stopped listening to it.

I didn’t really have an idea of how many podcasts were out there until this exercise when I searched around the three directories. I didn’t like yahoo. It seemed to just have mainly American results. The other two were quite good. I liked the look of the books and writing podcast I found using podcast.net but it seems to be out of date and the rss link doesn’t work. I found another good one with writing tips though which I subscribed to. I also found a travel one which I listened to for a bit and found quite interesting. It was a podcast by Rick Steves which I believe is from an American radio station, but it was good and interesting with some good travel tips. I subscribed to that one as well. I also decided to subscribe to Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier’s podcast but I couldn’t find it in podcast.net or podcastalley.com. I did find it using yahoo though. They call their podcast SModcast by using the first letters of each of their surnames. I highly recommend it to anyone that appreciates their style of humour, particularly if you like their dvd commentaries. They can be very offensive though.

I would have liked to create my own podcast for this exercise but there are two reasons that I can’t. I don’t have the equipment, and I don’t have anything interesting to say.

I now am subscribed to four very different podcasts, as you can see on the right. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to listen to them sometime.

Oh, I almost forgot. Podcasts in the library. I think it’s a great idea. Our library has done it once with a Chritos Tsiolkas session at our Northcote library but none have been done since then. I think it’s a great idea to record author talks and other interesting events that the library puts on. It is good to go back and listen to the talks again, and also for the people that missed it to have the chance to hear how it was. I think that by making these podcasts available on the website will ultimately increase the number of customers that will attend author talks in the future. It’s another great way of promoting what the library does.

#20 I too can youtube!

This was harder than I thought. I’ve used youtube before but mainly looking at stuff people send to me, and usually it’s funny or interesting. And obviously I’ve used it a little during the learning 2.0 program. But when I had to find something on my own to post in here I had a bit of trouble. There is so much rubbish out there!! I browsed randomly for a while and found nothing, and then I typed in “Christmas humour” thinking that a nice funny Christmas video would look nice on my blog. They weren’t funny though. Not one. I also found some “vlogs” which I guess I can see the point of but I didn’t see anything that interested me. Not something I could do myself, I’m not that interesting. I enjoy looking at youtbe for the old tv show themes that I used to watch but can’t remember. A while ago I found the opening credits to Pugwall which was a show I used to like, and Supergran, another show and book/s that I loved. But these weren’t really something that I wanted to post on my blog. I was surprised that I actually learnt a bit about youtube during this task. When I started searching for music videos I found videos of people with guitars showing how to play various songs. I liked this and didn’t know stuff like that was on there.

After looking at a lot of videos that were just made by random people and weren’t very good, or were live and didn’t sound great, I found some good ones. I have decided to post one on here from Belle and Sebastian, another favourite band of mine. I chose this video since it sort of combines music and books, which the library does now quite often with bands playing every couple of months or so. Libraries never used to be noisy with bands playing but I guess it’s just another aspect of libraries 2.0 – the way libraries will be in the future to relate to the people of today. I know web 2.0 is all about information technology, but I think libraries 2.0 is a bit more than that.
It turns out that I did find a couple of non-official music videos that weren’t too bad so I’ve added them below. If I knew how to upload videos to youtube I could put up a couple of the music videos I’ve worked on but I don’t have the equipment.

This first song is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, I had to go through a lot of different videos on youtube to find one that looked ok and sounded good, but I couldn’t not put this song on – it’s too great.

This other video was just another that caught my eye. Another great song with some great images.
When posting youtube videos onto my blog I have to adjust the width and height settings otherwise the video is cut off a bit on the right hand side. For these videos I also tried adjusting the colour settings to make it green like my blog template.

#19 Web 2.0 tools

I recognized quite a few of the sites mentioned in the web 2.0 awards. The first category I clicked on was music. I saw that last.fm was one of the sites mentioned so I will talk about that.

Last.fm is great for people that love listening to music. I’ll explain it for those of you that don’t know much about it - when you download the software, the site is able to see what music you play on your computer. On my home computer I have about 10,000 songs and constantly play them in my winamp application. Each of these songs registers with last.fm, even when not connected to the internet, the software remembers what has been played and sends it off to the site next time it is connected. Each week the site updates and tells you who you’ve been listening to the most with weekly charts. There is also an overall chart. It also lists your ‘neighbours’ (people that have been listening to similar music) You can see my last.fm profile here.

I had a look at some other web 2.0 award nominations and found the one sentence stories. I really didn’t think this was too great. Didn’t really see the point in it. There were a couple that were almost interesting but if I’m going to waste my time on the computer I’d rather be doing something fun (like playing hobowars on facebook) or something interesting. One sentence stories get boring very quickly.

Speaking of facebook, the video below is a song about facebook, which I found quite amusing.

Google Docs

Google Docs looks a lot simpler than zoho. A lot less buttons. I think this is the one I will continue to use after the learning 2.0 program is finished. It doesn't seem to show you page margins with a ruler across the top so I don't know if I'm writing to the edge of the page or not. I also don't see as many functions as zoho uses but I don't need smiley faces. I just had a look at the other tabs (insert and revisions) and have found that it seems to cover all that I need.

I think this would be very handy for school groups writing assignments. Last year a group I was in emailed so many versions of the same file to each other that it wasted a lot of space in my inbox, and after a while some of us were checking and editing the wrong file. Google Docs would have been a much more simpler way to do things. I didn't know about it back then though.

I found it interesting that the word 'zoho' isn't in the google docs spell check, and the word 'google' isn't in the zoho spell check. I liked that in Zoho you could publish a document to your blog as a draft. That doesn't seem possible in Google Docs.

#18 Zoho blog publishing follow-up

Well, it looks like it transferred across to blogger ok. It seems like the smiley faces seemed to stay (although now they take up a whole line, I don't really mind though - I don't really use smileys), and the links look ok. I noticed though that my one line spaces between paragraphs were a lot bigger when sent to blogger and I had to delete a couple of blank lines so the paragraphs were not so spaced out. Now it's time to have a look at Google Docs.

#18 Zoho documents

Zoho writer

This is a task I've been looking forward to. I didn't skip ahead like some other people have because I like to do things in order. I was actually looking forward to learning about Google Docs but I realise now that this task is more about Zoho. I think I'll try google docs later anyway. One thing I've noticed already about Zoho writer is that it doesn't automatically capitalise I's when typing the word "I" - I guess I've become used to this from writing in Microsoft Word. I'll have to go back and capitalise them all before i try publishing to my blog.

Online word processing is a great idea and would be very handy for many of our customers here at the library. Currently our internet computers don't have any software for creating document, and our word processing computers don't have any internet access. This makes it hard for customers that wish to email resumes, open attached files, etc. Also, our word processing computers have a feeand zoho and google docs are free to use. I think it would be a good idea for us to run a class or a session on using these web applications.

As you can see above I've tried linking to a couple of website from this document. Hopefully that will all transfer to my blog ok when I post this on there.

I'm not too sure how to post to my blog but I'll give it a shot. I think I'll try the publish link... It's odd that the words google and blog aren't in the spell check....

#17 Contributing to a wiki

I thought this would be more difficult than it was. I tried doing it without reading all the tips and watching all the videos. The PBwiki tour site wasn’t working so I didn’t even look at that either. I just had a look at the actual Favourite Blogs page and hit ‘edit’. It then asked me if I wanted to steal the page from another user who was currently editing it. I felt a bit mean, but I did steal it. The other user had apparently been in the edit mode for 27 minutes so I assumed that they weren’t doing anything but had just left it open. I tried to do my editing quickly because I didn’t want anyone stealing it from me!

I added my blog. Instead of adding [brackets] and typing out the url I just added the link the same way I do when typing in blogger. I just wrote the name of my blog, highlighted it, clicked on the create link button at the top and then cut and pasted the link into the box, and selected URL instead of new wiki page or whatever the other option was.

I then went to play with changing some other entries. I added my favourite book at the moment. When I got to the bottom of the page I realized how messy wikis can get and it didn’t really look like something I’d like to read through. It would be nice if it was a bit more organized, and also would be good if you could tell who write what. But I guess for a wiki like this with so many people contributing to a page it’s bound to get messy. After I got to the bottom of the page and started adding my entry I thought to myself “Why not put it at the top?” so I did. I went back to the top and made my entry the first one that would be seen. I just wrote a short entry about how I like Diana Gabaldon’s books. I was actually quite proud of myself that I figured out how to do this, and it was fun to put my own little bit in.

I also added in a link to my favourite music (The Salteens) and saw that other people had added pictures so I tried that too. I’m not sure if anyone will read it but it was a good way to find out that contributing to a wiki is not that difficult. It will be interesting to see how long my entry stays at the top of the page.

#16 Wikis

Wikis seem to be interesting tools for sharing information, and allowing others to share their information as well. They’d be useful for student groups working on group assignments/projects and could be useful for use in libraries. I had a look at some of the library wikis linked from the learning 2.0 exercise and found how they can be useful, and I can see how it would be useful for our library to adopt some of the ideas. I particularly like the book lovers wiki which allowed people to review books. If our library did this, I’d probably write reviews for it myself, as well as read other people’s reviews.

Currently our library is involved in creating a wiki – Wikinorthia – which should be up and running soon, and will involve three different library services and include local information which can be added to by anyone in the community.

A good example of the usefulness of wikis was on Saturday night when the election was being counted. Soon after the result was known, wikipedia entries for John Howard and Kevin Rudd were updated to include the events of the evening. Someone out there had nothing better to do than update wikipedia entries late on a Saturday night… though, I guess I didn’t have much better to do either since I was checking to see how quickly it would be updated….

#15 Learning 2.0, Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Task 15.0

It’s an interesting time to be working in libraries. I’ve only been employed in a library for a year and a half and it’s very interesting to see how things are changing, from Library 1.0 to Library 2.0. It’s also interesting to see how other libraries are changing as well. When I did work experience in a library many years ago we used to stamp books with the due date, not scan them. But now that is the common way to do things and kids these days would not even know the way it used to be (unless they borrow a very old book with the stamps still in it). And now the way libraries are used is going through more changes, as technology evolves and Web 2.0 becomes more well known and integrated in to the way things are done, information that used to be found in books (or sometimes on CDROM) can be found anywhere, from anywhere.

Libraries are becoming more integrated with the community, and hopefully will continue to be. Instead of being us (libraries) and them (public/users), web 2.0 is allowing ‘us’ and ‘them’ to come together to just be ‘all of us’. With users contributing by tagging, using their own terminology, they may then find it easier to search for what they are after, particularly the younger users that have grown up with the internet and use terminology like tagging and blogging everyday. I know some people at this library had never heard the word ‘tagging’ before this learning 2.0 program begun.

Google seems to be the first place to look for most students, general public, and even staff here. Even though the online resources that the library subscribes to often more authoritative information, it is more difficult to find, and I’m not sure the effort of educating users of how to find use these resources will make too much difference. The fact is that it’s still not as easy to use as Google. The number of clicks of a mouse to get to the information the user is looking for is, in most cases, much less than the number used when using an online database. Logging in with a library card, then finding your way around the database can often take as many as 4 or 5 clicks. I think the usability of these databases needs to be improved in the near future if they are to be used more often by the members of the library. Anyway, those are my thoughts on Library 2.0, web 2.0, etc. I’m already looking forward to web/library 3.0!! I tried to get into Second Life recently but my computer isn’t good enough and keeps on crashing. I guess I better get more up-to-date equipment before I start using the up-to-date technology.

#14 Technorati

I didn’t like it. I had had a quick look at it earlier during tasks in previous weeks and didn’t like it then. I thought I may be surprised though, as I was with del.icio.us, and find that it’s useful but unfortunately I just didn’t really have too much interest in the results that were returned. It seemed to just display American results. I also did a search for ‘sports’ just to see what results I would get and found blog posts about American football and the national rifle association. I even searched for my own blog name but it didn’t come up. I prefer the google blog search, at least I can find my own blog using that.

I also looked at the most popular searches and found that words like youtube, facebook and google were popular searches. I was a bit surprised to find that ‘goggle’ was a popular search.

#13 Del.icio.us tags and zombies.

I’ve heard of del.icio.us a while ago but never really got into it. I never created an account and forgot about it soon after looking at it. I didn’t think it would be that useful to me. Even now seeing that the next thing we do is del.icico.us I again didn’t think I would use it. After the bloglines set up and signing up to rss feeds I thought that I don’t really need to bookmark things anymore because if I like something I can just add it to my rss feeds.

But then I watched the commoncraft video explaining del.icio.us and it then made too much sense not to use it. That video was great, their site will be the first I tag. I won’t install the buttons on this computer as it’s a work one but when I get home tonight it will be the first thing I do. (Or maybe the second.) I also had a look at The Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users and found that very interesting as well. I’ll be tagging that site as ‘del.icio.us’ and ‘tips’ … I don’t really know what tags I should use but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it.

I’m planning our travel arrangements for next year (we leave March 8th) and have come across a lot of potentially useful travel websites that I would like to look at again later. If I’d been a del.icio.us user then I could have tagged them and found them easily, wherever I was. But now I have to find them again and then tag them. I can see that del.icio.us will be a useful resource in the future.

I can also see how del.icio.us could be useful in the library. I’m not sure if tagging should replace dewey or LCSH just yet but I do know that kids these days understand the meaning of the word ‘tag’ more than they do the words ‘subject headings’. I think del.icio.us would mainly be useful for library staff to tag sites they use most with enquiries, similar to the rollyo searchroll tool, the tags would link to only the sites we have previously seen and know are authoritative. It could save time when helping customers and when using it personally.

Below is a video I found on the commoncraft website explaining what a zombie is and how to survive an encounter with one. And also, if you’re interested in zombies, I’ve also added my friends’ short film below that – Undead Ted.

#12 Finding music with Rollyo

At first I didn’t think I would find rollyo very useful. I’ve had a look at what some of the other staff here have done but it’s all knitting and cooking and things that don’t interest me a bit. I’m happy to search using google, sure I have my favourite websites that I like to use, but I don’t feel the need to combine them into one searchable engine.

That is until I had a look at some of the searchrolls that are on the explore searchrolls page. I saw a search for guitar tablature and then realised that this is a useful tool. I have many different sites in a folder in my favourites on my home computer that I often have to search one at a time when looking for the chords to a particular song. This searchroll would be useful to me! I had a quick try of it but found it’s missing some of the sites that I use regularly so I could make an even better one!!

I registered with rollyo and clicked on create searchroll. I copied the sites from the search I had just looked at but there were only 6 websites included in that search. I added some of my own and ended up with 17 sites. I think if I search for a song using Rollyo and I don’t find it, then at least I’ve saved a lot of time by not having to type it into each of the sites separately.

I can see how this tool would be useful in libraries. You could have searches for different subjects, or aimed at different user groups. At the moment we have a useful links link on the library website. This could easily be replaced by rollyo search boxes that include all the sites we currently have listed in each of the categories. The employment category search box could include all the major job sites in one (eg. My Career, Seek, jobsearch.gov.au, etc.)

Did I use too many links in this blog?

#11 The LibraryThing Thingy

I liked LibraryThing. It was easy to use and understand. I started by adding some of my favourite books and series and could easily spend a lot of time adding a lot more, which I may do later. At first I didn't really see the point of it. If I wanted to see what I had in my library I can check my shelf, everything is in order there and easy to find. Though after some playing around I decided that there was more to LibraryThing than just adding books. I quite liked the LibrarySuggester and the UnSuggester was interesting but a bit random. I think I'd like the Suggesters a bit more when I have more things in my library.

I already use a similar thing to the LibraryThing on my facebook page (Visual Library) which includes books that I'd like to read. It would be nice if there was a way on LibraryThing... I just realised I could probably add 'read' and 'unread' tags but I imagine that would take a lot of time. I'm not sure if LibraryThing will be something I continue to use in the future. I added random books from my library onto my blog. Not too random at the moment as I only have books from two authors in my library at the moment. I also added a search box to search my library on my blog. I had to adjust the size a little as it went off the page at first, but it's fitting nicely now.

While on LibraryThing I joined the group Librarians Who LibraryThing which looked like it had a lot of interesting topics and discussions. I'm sure when I have more time I will have a look at a few and possibly subscribe to the rss feeds that are available (am loving bloglines by the way!)

It would be nice to have a MusicLibraryThing. I do have a last.fm account which is great but to have my own music library online would be interesting. Is there a site that does that? If anyone that reads this knows - please comment.

#10 Generating images and wasting time.

I've spent a little time today working on task #10 playing with online image generators. I've found some good ones, but there are also some stupid ones. I liked the graffiti one above which was done at LetterJames Image Presonalisation. The picture below that was done at Church Sign Generators. I thought this was a good one to do, especially after seeing Chasers War on Everything last night do similar signs of their own.















Another one I looked at but didn't like was the Christmas Disaster Generator. That one was really just a waste of time. The Will Ferrell Movie Generator looked interesting but that got boring very quickly. It's amazing how many are out there and it would be very easy to spend a
lot of time playing on them. While looking at the Generator Blog I only made it down to "d" before stopping. There are just so many! The crossword generator looks fun (I've been known to make crosswords by hand in the past). I think I will actually use that one in the future.

So I guess next I will be having a look at the library thing. I probably won't get a chance to do that today because I should finish some work. I have a customer who wants to know the history of a brick that she has - yes, a brick. So I better get onto that. I will hopefully be back soon to write a quick blog about the Librarians. It's had some mixed reactions here at our library.

#9 Finding rss feeds.

Since I’ve already added my 10 rss feeds to my blog I don’t really need to search for any new feeds but I thought I’d have a quick look at the searching tools in the exercise. Overall I didn’t really like them.

I found ‘topix’ completely useless. It pretends to have some sort of Australian focus by opening on an Australian version of a home page but when you search by post code, which it says you can do on this first page, it finds all American results. I really didn’t like this tool at all. If I was interested in the fact that the Red Sox had won game 2 then this would be the site for me, but I just didn’t like it at all.

Google blogs was ok, it wasn’t too difficult to find my own blog, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to find others to look for. And it was easy to use and straight forward which I liked… unlike technorati. I had a quick look at this and just found the site too cluttered and not really user friendly. I think we look at this again later on in the program so I’ll give it more of a go then.

Feedster initially looked straight forward and easy to use but I found that the text under each search result would run off the end of the page. I’m not sure if that’s an error with internet explorer or if it’s a problem with the site. But I would probably use this site again if I was looking for a particular blog or podcast.

I had already found all my rss feeds before attempting this task and I found them quite easily through google. Perhaps google blogs may have been a little easier, but I think using feedster, topix or technorati would have just slowed me down. Overall I think the easiest way is to just look for the rss symbol on sites you visit and add them if you think it’s necessary. If I start searching too much then I could end up with too many feeds and I don’t want to waste too much time reading every single thing from every site that I’m interested in, then I might just stop using bloglines altogether. I already added two more rss feeds today when I come across a blog about the librarians tv show. I think that’s the best way to find feeds, or if I’m recommended a feed from other people, I don’t need to search and add my own.

#8 Feeding my bloglines account rss

October has been a busy month. It may only have 31 days but it somehow managed to have at least 6 weeks. This month there was:
Carer’s week
Mental Health Awareness week
Worksafe week
Anti-Poverty week
Children’s week
Senior’s week
And also the Northern Notes Writers Festival.
And World Osteoporosis day and World Teachers Day. How do I know about all these weeks? Because I’m the one that has to stick up all the posters promoting them, and there’s not enough room at this library for that many posters!

Anyway, I finally got around to creating a bloglines account and finding ten feeds to subscribe to. I’ve posted a link to my rss feeds on my blog so feel free to have a look at those if you have the time. Since I signed up to them yesterday I’ve found that the ABC breaking news feed has fed me 138 new news stories so I’m not sure how long I will keep that subscription going, although it is good to have a quick browse through the headlines. The other feeds havn’t really had any new posts yet but I do think the rss feeds will be handy to look at all the sites I’m interested in in one place. I think it would be handy for the library to set up rss feeds that customers could subscribe to to let them know when their reservations are in. Emails seem to work fine at the moment, but as rss becomes more popular, I think it could be a good option. Also with library news and events. It could be very handy.

I’m guessing that this time next week there will probably be a lot of blog posts going around about the new ABC show The Librarians so I think I’ll try and get my opinion in early – I don’t think it looks as good as everyone is expecting. I hope I’m wrong, but the ads I’ve seen so far just don’t look funny. We’ll see next week.

#7 A blog about technology by Glenn 2.0

Technology has changed so much during my lifetime. One aspect of technology that is interesting is the fact that human interaction is possible in so many different ways now, or, it could be seen as human isolation. So much can be done without seeing or speaking with another person. Social lives can be lived through a computer screen, where you talk to people by typing on a keyboard or looking through a web camera.

Last week there was even another new technology innovation which I found on my desk – bookmarks promoting ‘the national public toilet map’ – Now people don’t even have to speak to each other to ask a simple question to find the nearest toilet! They can just go on an internet and find it themselves. Soon people will have no need to speak to each other at all!! I find that even I communicate more with some people over online communication than actually speaking to them.

When I take an internet class here at the library I sometimes find it difficult to explain the internet to the customers that are learning to use it for the first time. Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend it myself! It really is amazing what can be found with the internet. I try to explain to the customers I teach that basically anything that you can think of is available on the internet… though usually they’re just happy when I show them that you can find the local bus timetable or the cinema session times. But when I mention that you could also find the local session times for a cinema on the other side of the world just as quickly, it opens their eyes to the possibilities of the internet. One customer got excited and ended up taking virtual tours through museums in France.

It will be interesting to see how technology advances from here. It is progressing so fast that when I’m an old man I’m sure I’ll be clueless about many things that the kids use as part of their daily lives. I’m already looking forward to Learning 3.0

My library trading card

My library trading card, originally uploaded by glenn 2.0.

It's been a while but i finally got my photos up onto flickr and have been able to play with some mashups. I've looked at a few, and some look a little useless and timewasting, but i thought the trading card one was interesting. I created this card very easily and quickly. It would be good if the other staff did it too so we could collect the whole Darebin Libraries set!! I don't generally look like this at work though... maybe I should have picked a better photo?? I don't even look like this at home either. I just decided to have a bit of fun while shaving off my beard. Anyway, to see more photos you can go to my flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/glenngreening/ I'll be back soon to blog about technology!

blogging with flickr

mungo storm, originally uploaded by bazpics.

So i've found a way that I can post a blog even though blogger.com isn't working from any of the computers here at Darebin Libraries. If I link my blog up to flickr, and then blog using a photo, it will post onto my blog without me having to log in to blogger!!

I've fallen a little behind with the whole library 2.0 thing because of the blogger.com problems we've been having here (and i've been busy with other stuff) but it should hopefully be fixed soon.

I haven't really got too far into discovering flickr yet. I can't really upload my own photos from here as they are all on my home computer but i have put 3 up just to practice. They can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/glenngreening/ I'll try to add some more photos from home when i can find the time.

The above photo is of Lake Mungo in NSW. It's a world heritage listed site and is the place that my girlfriend Liz is currently at doing archaeology type things with stone tools and what not. I found this photo doing a search with flickr.