23 Summary

Well, I finally made it. When I began this course I was rather daunted by it. With Sam's help I perservered and discovered quite a few useful things. I now know what people are referring to when they talk about Flickr, RSS, Rollyo, LibraryThing, Tagging etc. I can see the use of wikis in a library and was interested in looking at the downloadable audio books on the World eBook Fair site. I hadn't even looked at YouTube before. Zoho is also handy to know about for the libraries without word processing on the internet computers. I am pleased that I kept going and completed the course, even though I probably won't use some of the things I learnt personally, at least I know what they are now.

22 Audiobooks

I now know how libraries can make use of downloadable audiobooks. A library can purchase audio files, so members can download them onto their Mp3 players. Once the loan period expires files are deleted from the player - no more overdues!
I looked at the WordEBook fair site and was impressed at the titles available, such as books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Hans Christian Anderson. You can even chose books read by a human voice, or by a computer generated voice. You are told how much space a book will use, are able to browse the collections avaible, or search by author. It is a user friendly site.

21 Podcasts

Podcasts are a non-musical audio or video broadcast, distributed over the internet. There are podcast directories set up to help find podcasts. The podcasts can be delivered automatically through RSS. I looked at podcast.net. It was easy to navigate around with a Top Ten tag section, and was divided into different categories eg, sport, arts. You could even download TV series. I had trouble with the RSS links, as they were working on the sites I chose.

20 YouTube

I just looked at this and realised how much time can be spent onit. It is a good way to upload and share videos on the web, but an awful lot of rubbish is there too.. I looked at Geriatric 1927, library dominoes and this one on a public library.

It was intersting to see another library, even if it was a brief glimpse of work there, and lots of people waving.

19 Discovering Web 2.0 tools

For this exercise I looked at the award winning site Lulu in the books category. I found this site easy to navigate and discovered how many options were available to help anyone wishing to do such things as publish a book, make a calendar or share music. Users have the option of using formatting tools to publish their own materials, they can sell through the site , get feedback from other budding authors , share ideas through the forum and join groups of like minded people to do these things and promote their work. It is amazing what there is available on the Web.

18 Online Productivity

I just had a look at Zoho Writer, an online productivity tool, used for word processing etc. By using such a tool it is easy to create and share documents over the internet without installing desktop applications. Zoho Writer was easy to use , the explanation given on it's use once I signed in, was easy to follow. It's advantages are that it can be accessed from anywhere, you can use it for collarorative editing of documents, can easily load existing documents and share documents with others.

17 Sandbox Wiki

This was easy to play with. However I needed help to link to my blog. It was interesting to read favorite books etc., but I can't see myself sitting in front of a computer going through so much information.

16 Wikis

Wikis is a collaborative space that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. In libraries I can see that they can be used to collaborate and share knowledge about subjects, book reviews information about the community etc. They are a great means of becoming the online hub of the community. By looking at varoius library wikis, I could see the advantages of input on subject guides, extra info in catalgues about material; and a great tool for staff to share info. re projects being worked on etc.

14 and 15 Technorati etc

I have just looked at Technorati, the leading search tool and authority for blogs. With over 50 million bloggers it is a good way of tracking all media, photos and videos, a means of searching, discovering and organising World Live Web. The discover section organises the blogosphere into easily recognised categories eg. news, tech, sports. If you are using Technorati it has usually already captured your blog, you can just claim your blog if you wish to.
When comparing Learning 2.0 Technorati had over 18,000 entries, there were 1377 tags and 661 in the blog directory. There was not as much information in the directory either.