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So, this is it. The journey of a thousand gigabytes is coming to an end. It was interesting, frustrating, daunting and enlightening. Among the useful things that came away from it was the RSS feeds. What a neat thing to be able to get the news updates in one place. I may use that for my own intellectual questings later. I also thought some of the photo things looked like fun, but I do not currently own a digital camera and I always forgot to bring in my photo disks, so I did not try to upload one of my own photos to my blog. I liked Tumblr. It was so easy to access and use.
I did not really like myspace or facebook. They asked for too much information. It made me uncomfortable to put so much personal info out there. I also started receiving spam at my work e-mail after starting this project. Hindsight being 20/20, I think I would have rather have set up a new free account and ran all the connections to this training through that. Well, so much for hindsight prior to starting something.
On the happy note, I was able to explain a wiki to my mom and actually sound like I really understood it myself. She has the same disability as I do, we both knew the original Wiki, who would chase tennis balls until the human throwing them would get tired. So we both picture a small beige doggie when we hear the work Wiki!
So, all in all, this has been an interesting tour. Thanks for the opportunity!

Could it be? Could Tumblr be even easier than Blogger? I think perhaps! It was so easy that even I could do it without having to search my memory for ages trying to recall all the techi-talkie. It offers a wide variety of do-ables in an easy to access format. I LIKE it!

You Tube, Metacafe, viddler, blip.tv....oh my!

Ok, so I got sucked down the time waster vortex there for a while. It is so easy to do! I was able to find a connection to my alma matter on both you tube and meta cafe ( it was the same clip) , blip.tv just plain scared me, it looked so racy and viddler didn't impress me at first glance ( I didn't stay long because I was feeling guilty from spending so much work time on You tube.)
It was fun and easy to find things on you tube. As far as library use goes, I know we have used it for showcasing some of the YAAB activities.

Easy access through bloglines! I like it! I hadn't realized how easy it was to access Bill Moyers wit and wisdom. Now, when I check my bloglines account (which may be the part of this whole training that I liked best) I can update my knowledge on what Bill Moyers has had to say recently. What a deal!

Records aren't dead, so why would cd's die (they well just become more collectable!)

what a world of stuff available. I really like the archive with it's way back machine. It was fun to look up fvrl.org and see how it has morphed over the years. The stacks of books really were cool! I miss them! The Sound effects archive was fun and could really be useful for flashing up a blog. I didn' t bother to add any sounds to my blog though. On a slightly different note, Culture Grams (on our homework help page) has made the National anthem of most countries available, so we really do need a way for our patrons to plug in a headphone and also transfer to another medium, so they can use that effect in their reports.
Your last question, are CD's dying. Records have never died, there is still no better way to get a chipmunk sound than playing a 33 1/3 at the 45 or better 75 speed! CD's will only die because marketers want us to buy new and different (not neccesarily better) things, thus making CD's collectable to nostalgics.

This GoogleDocs application has a lot of potential. I can see a variety of uses for my job as it is and also for entertainment. If one is reasonably comfortable with Word, then it is easy enough to use. I did have a little difficulty getting my first document to post over to the blog. Hopefully this one will post easier.

Inspired on the London Subway


The child, her eyes cry out to me
and the stories that they tell,
Show wisdom that aught not be
in the eyes of a child.

Fear and hate are rolled in one
and stored behind those eyes,
covered neatly with a blanket of
bravery and lies.

Her father had too much to drink
and her tiny world is wrought
with fear of what his anger might bring
in the cold and the dark.

So, we stand and hear the tale
of children everywhere,
then turn our backs and walk away
and leave them standing there.

A child is a gift of God
A light from above
to be nurtured with tenderness
and love.

Fun stuff, just for fun

I liked the Rss Bloglines best out of all the techniques we have overviewed. The least impressive was the myspace and facebook. There is currently an article in Teen Ink about not using facebook. I haven't read the article, but I do feel that these to sites and many other things on the web make a person too visable to people they may not want to be seen by. Enough said there.
In the other for fun things, the blog readability test was fun, but I think it may not be accurate. Afterall, it said my blog was college level reading. I can't believe it is that high, or perhaps standards have plummeted since I was in school.
The sketchcast looked interesting, but not enough so to join up.
I really liked the yahoo answers. It was easy to search by topics and find some information that I had not ran into in other searches. I suppose one might want to take some of the answers with a grain of salt.

Movie Reviews

The Wiki connection

Allrighty, so Wiki in this instance is not the fuzzy tawny puppy that my mom's friends owned in the 70's. These Wikis are so very much more. Some were fairly fun to look over and some were a snore. Wikihow has a lot of really great stuff and a lot of trash, too. It could be a big time saver or a big time waster. The book wiki (I've already forgotten it's name) was a snore.
Our own YA Wiki has some great information. I will want to bookmark that, so I can access it for real work.
This was my first look at the wiki world. I can't forsee myself ever creating a wiki, but I can forsee using the YA wiki at least in my current work arena.

a library of my own

All my life I have wanted to have a library of my own. When I was a child, I glued paper envelopes into my books and made date due slips from uneven strips of paper.
This is almost as good! A cyber-library! Librarything was a fun and easy sight to use. Looking up the books was very easy. Tagging and writing a review was even easier!

technorati

Technorati seems a little overwhelming to me. I like del.icio.us much better. It seemed to be more accessible and friendly. technorati is a little more standoffish and hard to get to know. Perhaps, with some practice technorati will become a friendlier site. When I looked up the key word "learning 2.0" it gave me a wide variety of stuff that didn't seem to connect to FVRL well. Perhaps if I dug through more, or concentrated harder, it would have been more obvious where to look and how to ask the questions to get the answer I was looking for.

del.icio.us

What a fun way to share tips and ideas. This would be a great tool for craft ideas, songs, games and stuff for preschool or toddler storytimes! I liked the IS site. It was fun to look over some of the information made available. This is definately a useful tool for sharing ideas!

So many games, so little time

There are so many fun things to waste time on out there. I had wanted to download a photo, but I kept forgetting to bring a disk from home to try it, however, I found this fun little "Who Site" in among the miscellaneous blogstuff and it embedded very easily over to my blog. It was fun!

Who R U

Isn't this a cute little thing? Bobaloo likes icecream and dancing. She enjoys walks at sunset and playing with her pet kitten.

adventures in myspace

I even managed to cut and paste the shortcut into my blog. For me, that was big success! What a weird, weird, wired world.(say that three times fast) . I chose to go with myspace, because it looked "friendlier" than facebook. It was uncomfortable for me to give as much information as they asked for. I think myspace and social networking areas are not really my thing. I prefer anonymous, which doesn't work as well here. (although, perhaps I could use an alter ego persona, but that seems too disingenuous.) Retroland looked like alot of fun and I would have liked to go with that one, but the important thing is to get an idea of how these things work, to answer potential reference questions, so myspace was still the best option. Although, I believe that any patrons using myspace will probably have a good idea of how to do it on there own. It was easy enough, even for me!

Find me on MySpace and be my friend!

Soci-net via web

Ok, that could be fun! I wish I were a web savvy 20 something again! (It was so much easier to stay up on technologly BC (before children), things change so rapidly now that if one takes a hiatus from learning for a few years, one falls pathetically behind.
For those who are comfortable with this it could be a great connecting tool for YAAB advertising. I didn't like the one guys idea of portraying himself on myspace as something he wasn't (a rock band, etc) There is too much of that type of dishonesty out there and libraries should stay above that type of chicanery.

widget idget

I just could not get the connecting and embedding the meebo widget. A co-worker who is much more net savvy than I said it was difficult. Since I have worked on this for several hours, I am now inclined to table it, until unspecified future time (perhaps an alternate reality. Maybe my evil twin can figure this one out.)
For those who are inclined to chat meebo could be really useful, but for me I find it really strange!

When Life gets in the way

A month slipped by and I almost forgot this project existed. It was a little difficult to pick up where I left off, but slowly it came back. These sights for finding RSS friendly stuff were interesting. I liked syndic8 best. It was easiest for me to find things of personal interest on. It was fun to look over the library wiki sights, but it was not so easy to find one that I could connect to through RSS. Finally I found one. Being able to connect with other systems to share information like successful programs and really great crafts would be a really fun.
The ability to access information through RSS can be really entertaining. I can imagine that some of our regular internet using patrons would find this a fun thing to do.
However when we only see the things that feed into our own little world views, we do not grow as well. We do not see other peoples perspectives. Even if we are not in agreement with other world views, it is good to hear what others are saying. Occationally we may learn something new, or evolve our own train of thought.

bloglines, the RSS dimystified, only sorta.

That was an interesting expiriment. I can see the point of it, if we need to help others set up and access this thing called RSS. If I were on the net at home, I might even find it useful. Since I am a part time net user, this lesson may or may not stick well. I don't really see myself spending much time with RSS. At least, not for the seeable future.

flickr other things

bubbl'r is a fun little distraction. I wasn't able to get my little collection of kitty quips to translate over to my blogspot, though. If I had internet access at home, which I don't for a variety of reasons, I could easily waste alot of time messing with this site and other photo-toys.

Flickr reflection

Okay! that was kinda fun! There is so much more to learn there, but I think I get the basic idea of how to transfer photos from flickr to my blogspot.

Falls @ Mt. Rainier

Falls @ Mt. Rainier
Originally uploaded by demay

Take time to listen to the waterfalls

Columbia River Gorge Waterfalls

Columbia River Gorge Waterfalls
Originally uploaded by Scott Lawson

My soul is at peace in places like this.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

O Brave New World, the adventure of keeping up with new tech

I am determined to catch up (at least a little) with all the tech advances that have burgeoned onto the scene since I was last aware of tech stuff (pre childbirth1). It is up to me to learn this, there is no miracle pill that will install this information into my brain, no upgrade that I can plug myself into, except to just dig in and try! I am sure there will be times that I feel totally lost and frustrated with this Brave New World, but I know that I am capable of learning this. My mother used to always say to me "If at first you don't succeed try, try again" I hated that! (but it is true). Perhaps I will learn enough to share some of what I have learned with others, if not I'm sure I will learn enough to have a little fun!