#23 (Week 9): Is this really the end? Or just the beginning ...

Wow! Congratulations!! You’ve reached the 23rd thing. Be sure to give yourself a pat on the back for completing the program. Before we can celebrate- I ask for one last discovery post.

For your last and final exercise for this program please reflect on your learning journey and post a few thoughts. Here are some questions to prompt you if you're drawing a blank ...

• What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
• How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
• Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
• What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

And last but not least…

• If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you be interested in participating?

I thank everyone for their commitment in following this through to the end. I know it has not been easy - but I do think we have all learned a lot from this. I hope you are now inspired to continue learning new technologies.

#22 (Week 9): eAudiobooks

A lot of us have checked out audiobooks before- they sure add a fun element to any car trip! Some of us have even tried OCPL's new playaways--- but I wonder, how many of us have tried to download an eAudiobook yet?

During this exercise, you will familiarize yourself with OCPL's eaudiobooks. This will be a valuable tool, as more of our patrons download more and more titles. Occasionally, a patron may ask you to help troubleshoot a problem. If you are familiar with the process, it will be much easier to be helpful!

Discovery Resources:

Quick start guide
FAQs
Help Basics

Discovery Exercise:

1. Read the quick start guide.
2. Download the OverDrive software.
3. Check out a book!

#21 (Week 9): Podcasts, Smodcasts!

The word podcast is used to refer to a non-musical audio or video broadcast that is distributed over the Internet. What differentiates a podcast from regular streaming audio or video is that the delivery method for podcasts is often done automatically through RSS.

In 2005, "podcast" was named the "word of the year" by New Oxford American Dictionary and with the growth of podcasting over the last 24 months, it's easy to see why.

Podcasts take many forms, from short 1-10 minutes commentaries (like the ones used in this Learning 2.0 program) to much longer in person interviews or panel group discussions. There’s a podcast out there for just about every interest area and the best part about this technology is that you don’t have to have an iPod or a MP3 player to access them. Since podcasts use the MP3 file format, a popular compressed format for audio files, you really just need a PC (or portal device) with headphones or a speaker.

iTunes, the free downloadable application created by Apple is the directory finding service most associated with podcasts, but if you don’t have iTunes installed there are still plenty of options.

For this discovery exercise participants are asked to take a look at some popular podcast directory tools. Do some exploring on your own and locate a podcast that is of interest to you. Once found, you can easily pull the RSS feed into your Bloglines account as well, so that when new casts become available you’ll be automatically notified of their existence.

Discovery Resources:

• To find out more about podcasts start with Yahoo: What is a podcast tutorial
• There are many, many podcast directories and finding tools out there. Here are just three of the more popular ones that, unlike iTunes, don't require a software download:
• Podcast.net
• Podcastalley.com
• Yahoo Podcasts
• What? You want to learn how to be a podcaster too? (Optional Resources for those who want to learn create podcasts)
• Yahoo: Publish a podcast
• Odeo’s Studio – online recording studio.
• Beginner's guide to Podcasts & Creating Podcasts
• How to podcast tutorial

Discovery Exercise:

1. Take a look at one or two of the podcast directories listed and see if you can find a podcast that interests you. See if you can find some interesting library related podcasts here like book review podcasts or library news.
2. Add the RSS feed for a podcast to your Bloglines account
3. Create a blog post about your discovery process. Did you find anything useful here?

Optional: If you're ambitious, why not try out the Audioblogger service and add an audio post about your experience to your blog.

#20 (Week 9): You too can YouTube

Within the past year online video hosting sites have exploded allowing users to easily to upload and share videos on the web. Among all the web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog serving up over 1 million video views a day and allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also embed clips into their own sites easily.

Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find everything from 1970s TV commercials and 60s music videos to library dominos and kids singing about bloopers here. Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore YouTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
2. Create a blog post about your experience. What did you like or dislike about the site and why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any features or componets of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites?

OPTIONAL: Try placing the video inside your blog using the copy and paste code for the for "Embeddable Player.” Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.

#19 (Week 8): Discovering Web 2.0 tools

Throughout the course of this Learning 2.0 program we’ve explored just a small sampling of these new internet technologies and websites that are empowering users with the ability to create and share content. But given time there are so many more we could explore. Current estimates place the number of web 2.0 tools at somewhere between 300 & 500 with only a handful emerging as market dominators. And although time will only tell which of these new collaborative, social networking and information tools will remain on top, onething is for sure, they're not going to go away (at least anytime soon).

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to select any site from this list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees and explore it. With so many to choose from, it might be handy to first select a category that interests you (like Books or Personal Organization) and then simply select a tool/site to explore. Be careful to select a tool that is Free and that doesn't require a plug-in or download. The majority of these free, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Select any site/tool from the list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees. (If you prefer to select from just the winners, here’s a link to the short list.)
2. Explore the site you selected.
3. Create a post about your discovery. What did you like or dislike about the tool? What were the site’s useful features? Could you see any applications for its use in a library setting?

Web 2.0 – with so much to explore, just start with ONE. :)

#18 (Week 8): Web-based Apps: They're not just for desktops

The availability and use of online productivity web-based applications (think word processing and spreadsheets) has exploded over the past two years and for good reasons! These powerful applications provide users with the ability to create and share documents over the internet without the need of installed desktop applications. Some experts speculate that this emerging trend may mean the death to Microsoft Office and other software-based productivity tools, while others think web-based applications have their place, but not in the office. But no matter which side of the office suite platform you side with, on this both sides seem to agree; web-based apps have their place.

One large benefit to web-based applications it that they eliminate the need to worry about different software versions or file types as you email documents or move from PC to PC. Another bonus is that they easy accommodate collaboration by allowing multiple users to edit the same file (with versioning) and provide users the ability to easily save and convert documents as multiple file types (including HTML and pdf). And, you can even use many of these tools, such as Zoho Writer and Google Docs* (formerly known as Writely) to author and publish posts to your blog. It’s this type of integration with other web 2.0 tools that also makes web-based apps so appealing.

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to take a look at a web-based word processing tool called Zoho Writer, create a simple document and then document your discoveries in your blog. If you're up to the challenge, you might even export your document as an HTML file or publish it through Zoho to your blog.

With Zoho and web-based applications, the possibilities are endless.

Discovery Resources:
A short list of web-based productivity applications

Discovery Exercise:

1. Create a free account for yourself in Zoho Writer.
2. Explore the site and create a few test documents of two.
3. Try out Zoho Writer’s features and create a blog post about your discoveries.

Optional: If you're up for the challenge, try using Zoho’s "publish" options to post to your blog.

* Note: You can also explore Google Docs (formerly known as Writely), Google's online word processer, as an option for this exercise. On Oct 11th, Google relaunched Writely (which it acquired in Spring 2006) as Google Docs.

** This is a great tool to educate our patrons about - especially since our new computers don't have floppy disk readers. This is a free alternative to storing info on usb/thumb drives. **

# 17 (Week 7): Add an entry to the San Clemente Learning 2.0 Sandbox Wiki

A sandbox is a term that wikis often use to describe the area of the website that should be used for pure play so for this discovery and exploration exercise, we’ve set up a whole San Clemente Learning that’s for nothing but play!

For this “explore-and-play-with-wikis” exercise, you are asked to add an entry or two to the PBwiki Learning 2.0 wiki. The theme of this wiki is simply “Favorites” : Favorite books, favorite vacation spots, favorite restaurants, favorite anything …all you need to do is play and add your thoughts. To mark your adventure on this site, you first need to add your blog to the Favorite Blogs page.

Discovery Resources:

• PB Wiki Tour - Find out how this collaborative tool can be used
• PBWiki Video Gallery - Short videos of PBwiki features
• PB Wiki Tips

Discovery Exercise:

1. Access the San Clemente Learning 2.0 Favorites wiki and create a login account for yourself. To edit the wiki, you’ll need to use the password sandbox.
2. Add your blog to the Favorite Blogs page. That's how we'll know that you've been there.

OPTIONAL: Add a favorite or two to a few other pages (Favorite books, favorite vacation spot, etc.). And, if you feel up to the challenge, you might even want to create a separate page for a book review or short travel essay and link to that.

3. Create a post in your blog about the experience. How might you use wikis in your work at the Library?

#16 (Week 7): So what’s in a wiki?

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. With the benefits that wikis provide the use and popularity of these tools is exploding.

Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
• Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.
• Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.
• And users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.

As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, libraries all over the country have begun to use them to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, ALA conference wikis and even library best practices wikis.

Discovery Resources:

Use these resources to learn more aboout wikis:

• Wiki, wiki, wiki - from PLCMC's Core Compentency blog
• Wiki’s: A Beginner’s Look – an excellent short slide presentation that offers a short introduction and examples.
• What is a Wiki? – Library Success wiki presentation
• Using Wikis to Create Online Communities – a good overview of what a wiki is and how it can be used in libraries

Discovery Exercise:

1. For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at some library wikis and blog about your finding. Here’s a few examples to get you started:

• SJCPL Subject Guides – a pathfinder wiki developed by the St. Joseph County Public Library system
• Book Lovers Wiki - developed by the Princeton Public Library
• Library Success: A best practices wiki
• ALA 2006 New Orleans wiki – an example of a wiki created to support a specific event
• The Bull Run Library wiki - a public library wiki and also a Learning 2.0 participant
• Other library wiki examples

2. Create a blog post about your findings. What did you find interesting? What types of applications within libraries might work well with a wiki?

So what's in a wiki? Find out by doing some exploring on your own.

#15 (Week 6): On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0 ...

Library 2.0 is term used to describe a new set of concepts for developing and delivering library services. The name, as you may guess, is an extension of Web2.0 and shares many of its same philosophies and concepts including harnessing the user in both design and implementation of services, embracing constant change as a development cycle over the traditional notion of upgrades, and reworking library services to meet the users in their space, as opposed to ours (libraries).

Many have argued that the notion of Library 2.0 is more than just a term used to describe concepts that merely revolve around the use of technology; it also a term that can be used to describe both physical and mindset changes that are occurring within libraries to make our spaces and services more user-centric and inviting. Others within the profession have asserted that libraries have always been 2.0: collaborative, customer friendly and welcoming. But no matter which side of the debate proponents fall, both sides agree that libraries of tomorrow, even five or ten years from now, will look substantially different from libraries today.

Discovery Resources:
OCLC Next Space Newsletter – Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web it take libraries?

Five Perspectives:

• Away from Icebergs
• Into a new world of librarianship
• To more powerful ways to cooperate
• To better bibliographic services
• To a temporary place in time

Wikipedia – Library 2.0Library 2.0 Discussions (list of great references from Wikipedia)

Discovery Exercise:

1. Read two or three of the perspectives on Library 2.0 from the list above.
2. Create a blog post about your thoughts on any one of these? Library 2.0 - It's many things to many people. What does it mean to you?

#14 (Week 6): Explore Technorati and learn how tags work

So now that you’ve been blogging for awhile, you might be wondering just how big the blogosphere is. Well, according to Technorati, the leading search tool and authority for blogs, the number of blogs doubles just about every 6 months with over 51 million blogs currently being tracked by the site. If the blogging trend continues, it is estimated that Technorati will have tracked its 100 millionth blog in just 5 months.

Yes, these numbers are astounding, but as you’ve already seen for yourselves, blogging is so easy that these publishing tools are being taken advantage of by almost every industry, including libraries.

So how does a person get their blog listed as part of the blogosphere and how can you tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search? The answer to the first question is that your blog is probably already being captured by Technorati due to the fact that you're already using Blogger, the most popular blogging tool. But if you want to join the party and have your blog officially listed on Technorati and also take advantage of the watchlist and other features, you’ll need to claim your blog yourself. As for tagging posts with Technorati tags? This is easy, too. All you need to do is add a little bit of HTML code to the bottom of your post (see my example below) and Technorati will pick up these tags when it spiders (or web crawls) your site.

There are a lot of new features that have been added to Technorati this past summer, including new ways to search for blogs. You can search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like photography or libraries).

Discovery Resources:
Technorati Tour – videocast of new features & new lookTechnorati Discover & Popular features

Discovery Exercise:

1. Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for “Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different?
2. Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?
3. Create a blog post about your discoveries on this site.

OPTIONAL: If you're up for a challenge, learn how to tag your posts by with Technorati tags so they can join tag searches. Create a post about something. It can be anything you want and add the HTML code to the bottom to tag it as “PLCMCL2.” You may also want to consider claiming your blog and creating a watchlist.

NOTE: When adding HTML code, you'll want to make sure you're in Blogger's Edit HTML window.

#13 (Week 6): Learn about tagging and Del.icio.us

Tagging is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content (webpages, pictures & posts). Unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines (i.e.Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want.

In the past few weeks, we’ve already explored a few sites – Flicker and LibraryThing to name two --that allow users to take advantage of tagging and in week 3 many even used a common tag to create an association between photos that we individually uploaded. This week, in addition to exploring Technorati tagging, we want to also take at popular social bookmarking site called Del.icio.us (typed in as http://del.icio.us).

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize your bookmarks.

Many users find that the real power of Del.icio.us is in the social network aspect, which allows you to see how other users have tagged similar links and also discover other websites that may be of interest to you. You can think of it as peering into another users’ filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool each user's filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at Del.icio.us and learn about this popular bookmarking tool.

Discovery Resources:

• Otter Group Del.icio.us tutorial (12 min video) - Highly recommended!!!
• Us.ef.ul: A beginners guide to Del.icio.us
• Several Habits of wildly successful Del.icio.us users

Discovery Exercise:

1. View the 12 minute Del.icio.us tutorial to get a good overview of its features.
2. Take a look around Del.icio.us using the San Clemente account that was created for this exercise. Note: In this account you will find lots of resources that have been highlighted or used throughout the course of the Learning 2.0 program.
3. Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by a lot of other users. Can you see the comments they added about this bookmark or the tags that they used to categorize this reference?
4. Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool. Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere?

OPTIONAL: If you’re up to the challenge, create a Del.icio.us account for yourself and discover how this useful bookmarking tool can replace your traditional browser bookmark list. You might even want to explore Del.icio.us’ latest addition, a network badge. (Psst! see it over there at the end of the navigation sidebar)

Note: If you do setup a Del.icio.us account, here’s a quick word about the Del.icio.us Buttons. On PCs that have the toolbars locked down, these will install as options in your browser bookmarks. Use the “Post to my Del.icio.us” link to add the current webpage to your account (you may need to log in). Use the “My Del.icio.us” link to view your online account.