Beginning Knitting

Central Library recently hosted a 2 part beginning knitting class. It's part of a year long crafts series that is solely for adults. The teacher for this class was Linda, the owner of Rumpelstiltskin, a wonderful yarn store right here in downtown Sacramento. The fourteen ladies (and one gentleman) who attended were very enthusiastic and ranged in ability from total beginner to former knitters who needed a review. The two meetings of the class were each 1 1/2 hours long and so enjoyable that no one wanted to leave. Everyone had fun, learned how to knit and purl and improved on what they knew about knitting when they first entered the room.

Our next class, crocheting, will be November 14th & 21st.

Zoho Success

A couple of days ago a woman using our Public Access computers wanted to type something, save it to the computer, then send it somewhere else. Since that can't be done on our system, we needed another "place" to put it.

Flash, it came to me: Zoho!

And Gues What? It worked. How cool is that?

The 27th Thing

The "27th Thing" asked that we blog our experiences and feelings about technology. First of all, even though I was very dubious when I started, I'm very happy I participated. What a great way to learn about the uses of the many tools we explored.

For example: Zoho will enable us to share work over the Internet. I'll be able to create something at work and finish it at home on a rather old and cranky computer.

I'm a podcast lover. Wouldn't it be cool if we recorded Steve Lopez' program and podcast it? And YouTube. Everytime I look for something on YouTube, I find it. It's good for recreation, publicity (and I'm thinking of a children's program here)and can illuminate and bring to life what might otherwise seem boring. A video stream is easily worth a tousand words.

As a library user, I would love to be on a Twitter list for program announcements or for a reminder of the preschool story time that I normally attend or a class I signed up for. How great would that be?

I'm not into Technorati, but Yelp is another great site that I like and use. There are reviews of SPL there. It's a good place to get unedited feedback for the library to tap into. Yelp also looks to be very useful for finding businesses on a local basis. I checked the ratings for several in Woodland where I live and they seemed spot on.

That's enough for now. I think I'll keep this thing going. Maybe it will lead me to more discoveries.

Blogging Zoho

Right now I'm using Zoho writer to do my blog entry. This seems like a really good idea. Create a document or presentation and save within the site. Seems like this would be ideal for collaboration or travel. Functionally it seems like a pretty normal word processor and looks a whole lot like the current Word that we use here at SPL. I also noticed that it posts to a blog. I'm going to try that in a minute.

OK, it's been more than a minute and it's not published yet. Hmmmmm.....

Oh! There it is!

I think Zoho would be very useful for "transporting" docs between home and work. Unfortunately, my home computer no longer understands the young whippersnapper sitting on my desk in the library. I want to create documents in both places and edit them elsewhere. It's not possible for me to do that right now unless I save stuff in either .txt or .rtf formats.

I found this on facebook - I think it's stunning!

Mango!! Rhymes with Tango!

Mango looks really good. It's got repetition, which I need, clear pronunciation, great explanations - everything one needs to learn a language. The only other thing required is the discipline to use it regularly. I would like to see the number of languages available increase, but I imagine that is a function of time (and other things, like money). I'm going to try to work on my Spanish which is in the "poquito" range and needs to improve.

Twitter et al.

One of the things on the 27 things list is to tweet something. OK, I signed up for Twitter so I can get my kids' tweets, but I'm not really interested in sending any. I sent a tweet, but I'd rather receive them than send another. I can really see some really cool uses for twitter though, especially here in the library. What a great way to let subscribers know about an event they might be interested in. e.g.: painting class at fair oaks lib. scheduled for nov. 11. sign up now. (Not a real class!!!)

I like the logo though, since I've always been partial to turquoise.

Thingfo still isn't available, so I couldn't try it out. The website is clean though and looks user-friendly. Hopefully. The Civil Librarian blog is using it and I like the fact that all the apps are right there. That's a time saver.

I want to add a widget to my blog, but I don't know how to put it where I want it. Guess it's playtime!

...and then Marge the Trainer (Yea Marge) walks by. In 2 minutes she shows me how to post the widget where I want it. Terrific! She credits Ray for showing her what the trick is. Isn't cooperation the greatest, beats trying to figure it out alone.

By the way, thanks for extending the 27 Things deadline. The extension gives those of us who need more time a good excuse to continue playing.

Awards & Things 2.0

I checked out a couple of the award winning web apps and picked the category of sports. (If you know me, you know why.) The app I took a look at was Team Snap which would be useful to a team manager, of, say, a baseball team or a yodeling clowns league. That was one of their examples of uses. The program allows the user to track schedules, rosters, scores and stats among other things. To get full availability one had to subscribe, but it seemed very reasonably priced. I've spent time as a gymnastics team manager and a den mother, so this was an attractive app.

YouTube first attracted me because I am a horse lover. I had heard of the performance in this video and wanted to check it out. You have to listen as well as watch - the mare is amazing. Enjoy!

Tweeting

I've never used Twitter and this site offers instructions. I think it might be useful for 27 things.
http://mashable.com/2009/07/20/twitter-new-users/
Actually I have no real desire to tweet, I can't see anyone being interested in my daily activities; as for profound thoughts - nada!

However, what a great way to advertise things to a bunch of subscribers. Just think: New arrivals daily, check and request new titles from home, www.saclibrarycatalog.org I hope that's under 140 characters, I think it is.

For real, I'll try it later and report back.

The Exploration is almost over.

I was quite suprised to find out that I was very familiar with most of the last few things. I only subscribe to one podcast (it's hard to find the time to listen to more than 1), to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, my favorite NPR show. I love to watch things on YouTube. In fact when Jonathan Sanchez threw his no-hitter a few days ago, I checked out fan reactions in the park by watching several different videos on YouTube. Very cool! I've also downloaded and listened to an audiobook The Soloist. It was available and a very good listen. Best part of downloadables (and Playaways) is no changing CDs. I like that too. (a day later: I've downloaded a second book, this time from myLibrary.)

As for SPL's website, I'm one of the updaters (is that a word?). The ability of library staff to keep the information on the site current and correct is what makes it so useful to the public. I'm a green person, so I love the color scheme. It's very contemporary looking too.

Music & Movement

I haven't posted to or from YouTube yet, but this short clip was easy to insert. It was filmed yesterday in Kids' Place. The age range was 3 to 6 - the kids had so much fun. The mostly headless leader of the group is Jami, I think she had as much fun as the little ones.

Hopelessly Behind the Times

OK, it's been a solid month since I contributed anything to this exercise in learning while having fun. I've been doing a little bit of exploring on my own, but it hasn't amounted to much. Except for following others blogs, which has been an interesting and fun activity.

I have 2 goals for the next couple days. first contribute to the Sandbox. It's so cool! The second thing I want to do is post to Youtube and from Youtube. Wish me luck!

Rolling Rollyo

So the next step was rollyo and I used one of my favorite authors, Jonathan Stroud.

Isn't this a cute photo? He wrote The Bartimeus Trilogy, an amazing fantasy series. He's British and has been writing for awhile (about his entire life in his own words). I only used 4 links, just a quick sample, but came up with this.

Jonathan Stroud

I don't think I have a grasp of rollyo's usefulness yet, but I'm going to play with it more as I have time and see what all I can use it for.

Playing with five

I love photography, so I knew I would enjoy the image generators. This image was from the Warholizer. It requires a .jpg, and this image is what I found and used with the application. It's just OK; the image itself wasn't the best one to play with.

I thought Wordle was fun. I used a website: nextbook.org as a basis and made half a dozen "wordles." This is a shot of one of them

I need to catch up, so

I've decided to start over and review all the things.

7 ½ Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners

Habit 1: Begin with the end in mind
Habit 2: Accept responsibility for your own learning
Habit 3: View problems as challenges
Habit 4: Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
Habit 5: Create your own learning toolbox
Habit 6: Use technology to your advantage
Habit 7: Teach/mentor others
Habit 7 ½: Play

For me #1 is the easiest, #4 the hardest. Don't know if that's the way it is for most people, it is for me though. Play, though, that makes learning more fun, more interesting, more enticing.

Week 2 is the blog and I've done that.

Week 3 is Photo Week. I love photography, it's something I've done since I was about 8 or 9. It was fun posting the pictures of the Perry Library. It's such a cool place and I can share the pictures now. I already had a flickr account and added those photos to it.

more rehashing to follow...

librarything

I've used librarything in the past. This cover came from a book I added about 2 years ago when I listed a few. I only did a few because I don't have a book truck at home. It would make it soooo much easier.

geeksugar

On the list of 27 things, I found a reference to geeksugar (and 2 other sites). The name was interesting enough that I checked it out first. What a cool site! The entire "onsugar" family of sites looks like it's mostly for grrrls. Lots of fashion & beauty blogs and techie stuff too. You can start and maintain a blog and/or website too. Think savvysugar, petsugar, etc., etc.



In geeksugar itself, there's a list of tech stuff to consider when planning a wedding, a rundown of being a green techie and 10 reasons to subscribe to RSS feeds. ...and that's just for today.



For us grrrls, this is one to follow.

New Software Makes Its Debut

We recently rolled out new software to manage the public access computers. It's pretty slick. The computers are more available and easier to manage. ...at least staff thinks so. The public isn't so sure, since it's very different from our previous system. For one thing, it requires a PIN, which most of the computer users haven't needed until now.

For me, the big problem is how the public perceives computer availability. Previously, when all the computers were in use, the system read "booked." Now if there is a short time slot available between reservations the software will offer that to the user. Instead of getting no time, the user may get 15 or 20 minutes. I guess our users haven't yet figured this out.

iphones ....

This week the assignment was to write about matters technical. The trouble is the only thing I can think about for the moment is my son's new iphone. Frankly, I'm jealous.

Fully Engaged Customer Service

OK, so I was told to go to this workshop "Fully Engaged Customer Service." I wasn't too thrilled, after all I've done this kind of work since I was a kid.

However, after participating with my colleagues for the day, I've completely changed my mind. Best workshop I've been to. Period.

We were "fully engaged" all day - learning by doing. Interacting and learning to read and use body language, voice tone, all of that. It went fast.

Cheryl Gould was the facilitator for Infopeople; I would recommend her to anyone!