#23 Made it!

Well this little Moomintroll is happy to sit back and contemplate for a while.
I can't honestly say it has all been "play" but I have enjoyed learning new things and looking at my fellow participants' blogs. And I do feel a sense of achievement in completing all the tasks.

I am certainly more comfortable around things like flickr, mash-ups, wikis, podcasts and the like. Some things I'll probably use, others I suspect will fall by the wayside because they just don't match my needs and time at the moment. I'm likely to be a continuing dabbler in bloglines, del.icio.us and (maybe) rollyo because they are quick and easy to use and present me with new and interesting discoveries.

Professionally, Learning 2.0 has brought me up to speed (well nearly) with things we librarians will need to know to be able to keep pace with our patrons' needs and interests. I don't have the technical knowledge or authority to make things happen but at least I now have some of the broad concepts and jargon required to converse with those who do have them.
A few practical observations:

• Time and access are issues. I completed most of this course at home in my own time using my own computer. My family got grumpy about it sometimes and so did I. It takes a lot of time (and concentration late at night) to learn and use new things.
• I think it would be preferable for a group of us to do it together at work at a set time each week (it would take much longer though).
• Having 2 or 3 distinct "things" to complete in a week got a bit daunting sometimes.
• I couldn't get several of the podcasts to work (my computer no doubt). And I had some other technical difficulties which added to the workload (I spent ages trying to get my whole heading picture back with no success).
• A number of my colleagues were fed up with having to blog about what they discovered and felt quite rightly that it went against the ethos of blogging. Is there some other way of showing that you are completing the course? (Being a goody-goody I ended up doing everything and dutifully blogging about it).
• Would it be possible to have a compulsory overview of the "things" and then a set of topics and tasks from which to choose to go into at more depth (then you're not spending time on things which don't really interest you)?
• Maybe people from each library service could nominate someone from their group for a prize: we might be more able to identify the heroes who have kept on going against the odds (for some people getting a blog going at all has been a huge achievement).

Finally, THANK YOU (and I mean this) to the organisers - a huge undertaking tackled with expertise, enthusiasm and good will.

#22 Audiobooks

I've always been a bit skeptical about the value of e-books - particularly e-fiction - because I just don't think reading a book from "cover to cover" on-line is the kind of experience most people would embrace.
However, e-audiobooks is another thing entirely and surely the best way to go for public libraries once MP3 technology (or whatever its future equivalent is) is universally embraced (in the car, on the phone, for housebound patrons etc.).
The idea of downloading an audiobook and having it automatically "return" itself at the right time is brilliant. I had a look at the Caboolture Shire Libraries http://library.caboolture.qld.gov.au/ which offer an excellent e-library service; not only audiobooks but music and DVDs too. I found this more enticing than the resources on the World E-Book Fair site but naturally things that a library would pay for are likely to be more recent and varied than the freebies.

#21 Podcasts

So somehow following a search thread from site to site I found Nancy Keane's kids and YA booktalk daily podcasts and added her site to my Bloglines account (yay I remebered the password!) http://www.nancykeane.com/booktalks/mp3. Nancy has a pleasant, civilised, enthusiastic American librarian's voice: she reminds me a bit of Helene Blowers (yes the big HB of Learning 2.0).
I'd like to be able to podcast our library storytimes sometime down the track (once again Council willing).

In my travels I found another blogging fan of Tove Jansson and a reference to her illustrations for the Finnish edition of the Hobbit which I must follow-up. And some more lovely, evocative moomin pictures. Here's one:

Where oh where has my Blog Header picture gone?

Or at least most of the picture? I like that picture and I want it back but I have no idea how to fix it. I had a look at the Help section but I just don't have the expertise to fiddle around with HTML. So I'll have to rely on magic, positive thinking or something.

#20 You Tube

In You Tube we find another example of technology that can be used for "niceness" or evil. There are some incredibly talented people out there and its a good thing if You Tube can give them a chance to share their work with the world. Council willing, it would be easy to include content made by our patrons on our website - the usual privacy/quality control issues would apply though.
In the post below this one I've included a clip that I came across while on the Oxam site. It was so easy to get the HTML and paste it into my blog. That makes it easy to get messages out to the world but so much to compete with.
Being a bit of an old fogey I get frustrated with the size and picture quality of videos on sites like You Tube: doesn't seem to worry the young 'uns though.I had a look at the clip of hand shadow puppetry accompanying Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World" that was shown recently on Spicks N Specks. Brilliant, but a little hard to see to its full effect on the tiny screen.
Here's a clip of Ross Noble doing what he does best that my kids showed me the other day.

Sing!

#19 Web 2.0 Tools

I had a look at Lulu http://www.lulu.com/. There's a lot of content that may be of limited interest except to the person who posted it. This site could be useful for using with specific groups e.g. Young adult book Group to publish/share original material cheaply. I quite liked browsing some of the calendars.
I also looked at yourminis http://www.yourminis.com/. I have long admired the LMS Go live widget on my colleague's blog. We could use widgets such as these on our website to promote events such as the Summer Reading Club or Children's Book Awards.
I decided to give "The Golden Compass" a free plug on my blog. It was extremely easy to add, although I have no idea whether the countdown is accurate for Australia (I suspect not, but I did see my first trailer on TV tonight so it must be getting close). I am very much hoping the film is not a dud!