Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Reflections for the Finale of My Tale

Overall this learning 2.0 experience has been a great exercise in exploring the web and other various technologies with focus and a wide degree of freedom. I've really enjoyed the chance to do this at a weekly pace and actually register myself for a blog, a MySpace page and various other accounts. There is nothing like signing up and using an account to get you revved up for other new possibilities. In fact, I surprised myself by finding out about great tools that I will continue to use, such as LibraryThing and Flickr mashups. My creative juices are newly flowing thanks to the KCLS27things. Thank you!

I also want to say a bit about the format and approach to learning that this experience has provided. Not only is it a fun way to approach learning about online tools but the very idea of focusing on a set number of things that you can come to at your own pace is quite intriguing. The program seemed to tailor itself to the needs of the various coworkers I have here at Bellevue. Some of us work less or more hours and managed to squeeze in the time we needed to use the tools and collaborate with each other for guidance. I'm definitely looking forward to more of this kind of online learning, especially within the ever-changing library system. I would recommend it to myself-of-months-ago as well as other employees.

For future explorations and "things," I'd love to learn more about creating videos and podcasts ourselves. I'd also like to offer online programs like this to our patrons to see if they'd be interested in learning such things in the same ways we did. Something tells me some of our older patrons would get a kick out of it as well as some good old fashioned learning.

Alas, I think my tale has come to an end...it is a far, far better 27 things I just did than I have ever done before...at least when it comes to the web.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Audio and Video

So I finally made my way over to YouTube and searched for marathon run to see what information I could find. It turns out that people have made a bunch of videos explaining their reasons for running, why they like certain courses and much more about running tips. Here's one about the Boston Marathon I found:



As far as libraries go, I think making library video and audio equipment more apparent to check out would help patrons in their creation of such videos and of course podcasts. Speaking of podcasts, I'm intrigued by the idea of the library offering podcasts concerning book reviews, speakers and non-copyrighted reads of storytimes for kids. I added a teen podcast to my bloglines account from Hennepin County Library system just because it offered patron book reviews by teens. Neat idea.

I checked out the overdrive catalog last and found that there were a lot of great e-books and e-videos out there. Can't wait to check it out on my mp3 player or my laptop.