Thing 16 - Student 2.0 Tools

I have never even heard of these assignment calculators before! What a great way to expose kids to the art of creating an outline and following steps to complete a project. With that said, procrastination habits start early (trust me, I know) so the sooner teachers and librarians expose students to these calculators the better. I think by college it's probably too late (for some). Great idea, though! It might be something we could put on a "student" page on our intranet. I'll have to bookmark these in Delicious -- oh the interconnectivity of it all!

Thing 15 - Online Games and Libraries

Yikes. I don't get it. I'm uncool - is it uncool to say uncool? I haven't even wrapped my head around using Wii as exercise. As a person in my mid-thirties, it troubles me to say that I'm too old for this stuff. If a teen goes through all the work of accessing a library in Second Life, why can't they just access a physical library (or the library's Internet site) directly? I don't get it. It makes me sad that I don't get it, but it's like they say-- 30 is the new 60. Wait, that's not right either.

Check out this site!

Thing 14 - LibraryThing

I love LibraryThing. We have even considered getting rid of our catalog and just using LT (for books, anyway). It took me a while to figure out how to post it onto my blog, but I finally did it!

Thing 13 - Online Productivity Tools

I have used iGoogle before and think it can be quite useful, although there is something strangely comforting about "Classic Google". I have added widgets to my iGoogle, so I feel comfortable with that. The other sites on this Thing were new to me and fun to explore. I signed up with Remember the Milk. Adding it to iGoogle made it more useful. I think the Zoho projects and Basecamp look like great ways for a group to work on a project. Better than a wiki? Basecamp seemed a bit expensive to me, though.

Thing 12 - Do you Digg?

I digged (dugg?) my first story. It was about a woman in Wisconsin arrested for overdue library books. Apparently, I wasn't the first to digg it. I spent a lot of time reading stories on all of the sites while trying to figure out why people use them. On one hand it was nice to read some stories that don't make the CNN or NPR website, but on the other hand, who has time to read it all? Unlike most of the Things, I really had to stretch my imagination to make a connection with library services. Maybe I'll get more ideas from reading other 23Things blogs.

Thing 11 - Delicious

Delicious seems useful for libraries. I can see our library creating a Delicious account for Web 2.0 or healthcare news. I really need to use it more on a personal level so I can organize all of my bookmarks! I also organized the posts on this blog using labels. Most of my entries just have the label, 23 Things, but when this program is over who knows what I'll blog about?!

Thing 10 - Wikis

Ahhh. Finally a thing I feel somewhat comfortable with. We have used a few wikis in the library and I even showed another department how to use them! I added a page to the 23 things on a stick wiki titled, "Favorite Seinfeld Moments". Add your favorite Seinfeld moment, show or line to the wiki! Is there any question that was the best TV show ever??

I would recommend the Common Craft videos for any "Web 2.0" questions. They are so easy to understand. What a simple and brilliant idea.

We will be utilizing wikis more in the future. They are a great communication tool and potentially could eliminate meetings (or at least most meetings). PBwiki offers some good free webinars, too.

Thing 9 - Online Collaboration Tools

I wasn't able to edit the Declaration of Independence (probably a good thing), but I did try Zoho for the first time. I created a document that can be shared among the librarians here as we try to outline a project we are working on. I think Zoho is more user-friendly than Google Docs! It also seems to be focused on sharing and collaboration a bit more.

I have used Google Docs for a short presentation. I created the pseudo PowerPoint and it looked pretty good. It seems that there are advantages and disadvantages to each, but after comparing them in this Thing, I will definitely keep using Zoho.

Thing 8

It looks like I took a month off! I guess time is getting away from me. I have been avoiding Thing 8 until I download some pictures onto my computer. More to come on this thing, but I'll keep moving so I don't get behind....