I'm DONE! Thing 23

I join the ranks of final blogs and not a moment too soon! It's been a great experience. Frustrating at first, but once I got past Flickr, I gained a little speed, and now will experience the "what shall I do tonight?" feeling. I plan to adapt my blog and use it as a support for my library curriculum, and some of the widgets will help my organization (like Stikkit). The 23Things showed me a wide variety of Things that are useful and now it's time to pick and choose what to spend more time with. I am very excited to already be using Library Thing, shelfari, Del.icio.us, ELM +RSS, and Research Project Calculator.
If I could ask for more training, it would be on RSS feeds and how to "fine-tune" the multitudes of information out there.
While the whole virtual world seems vast, the 23 Things helped to simply and highlight some of the most important aspects. Thanks again for sending out the information about this.

Thing 22

Web 2.0 tools: I signed up for Tame the Web, and in the process saw a movie recently posted by some friends in the St. Kate's MLIS program called, "Dewey or Dewey Not?" I had to leave a comment. This is a great site, so of course, I also posted to my del.icio.us. I also linked the Webinar site from Minitex, as it is a goal of mine to become more proficient with Minnesota resources. The end is near...I'll finish tomorrow night.

Thing 21

Ning and Webjunction: I liked these social networks a little better than Facebook because they seemed more focused on a group or activities. I signed up for Ning, and got the Ning badge on my blog. After I went back a few hours later, I could not sign in-- I don't know why. I'll try to keep checking, or maybe use a different computer. I am trying to respond to some comments on 23things.ning, and I don't know why my earlier registration isn't working! This is great, though. I'll keep trying.
I also signed on with WebJunction. This seems like a good resource for my own professional development.

Thing 20

I was not really looking forward to Facebook.... my teens all have one and we have experienced the "dark side" of social networking. In an attempt to "be a good sport" about social networking, I did the Thing, and was surprised at how easy it is to connect to other people. I immediately had a list of friends for HS (OK just one from 1980) and college (many more).
I see this as being more social and less informational, therefore appealing to college or public libraries as a method of outreach. Our school district blocks myspace and facebook, and for now that is probably good. I will check back on my groups- I signed up for 3 groups and so far I'm keeping it professional. I did not contact friends-- but I hope to soon.
I was impressed with the Hennepin Co. Myspace and I think that lots of teens like this type of interactive library, and an easy way to talk about life, books and everything in-between.

Thing 19

I like podcasts, and especially it's cousin, Vodcast. The best vodcasts I've used in my library are from the Department of Education called, "Reading Rockets." These are author interviews lasting from 3 minutes to 12 minutes. They are great!
iTunes is my prefered podcast aggregator. I am now listening to St. Cloud's school library media podcasts. These are helpful! Hats off to the crew that produces these. Thanks!

Thing 18

I searched on YouTube for awhile. There's no way to get that time back. A person can get sucked in... and never come out. I don't think YouTube is well organized-- at least to use it in teaching. Although I did see some good humor. I've seen the UHF video of Conan the Librarian, but in no place was there any credit given to the orginal creator, Weird Al Yankovic. Copyright infringement seems common. In my searches for some educational type of videos, I saw some skin, so it's dangerous treading for school use.
I think this will start to change, though. Curriculums will eventually develop around online videos, and instructors will use it frequently-- I'm sure they do already. I did a couple things with Thing 18. I downloaded a CommonCraft video for my iPod (OK, that's 19) I also linked the video to my blog, and also linked to Google Video Sharing.
I have come to realize that Google IS BIG. I could dedicate another year of time to understanding how Google and it's various tools all work cohesively together.

Thing 17

I used Thing 17 in teaching 8th graders today!! We accessed an RSS feed linked from our school website to the EBSCO database. We were looking for Consumer Reports articles, and this was an easy way to help students get "into" the database. Students DID experience both ways to get to the data-- the RSS feed only worked on the Mac computers in our library. I don't know why.
I have not taken a webinar in a while, the last one applied only to public or colleges. I would be interested in more webinars dealing with K-8 education.
I appreciated learning more about the ELM tools and I look forward to using these more often.