Bonus Round: My 11 Random Things

1. I've lived in 5 States (Minnesota, Wisconsin, California, Maryland, Ohio). I get extremely confused when people ask me where I am from. Do you mean where I was I born? Do you mean where does my family live? Do you mean where have I lived the longest? Do you mean where did I live last?
   
2. I can't stand orange squishy vegetables (sweet potatoes, squash, yams, pumpkin). Don't ever try to convince me differently because I will argue with you for hours.
   
3. I should be able to speak and understand Spanish much better than I actually can. I spent one month in Barcelona, Spain attempting to learn Spanish. A few years later I lived in Antigua, Guatemala for 3 months attempting to learn Spanish again. They called me Miguelito.
   
4. My Grandfather died on September 11, 2001. Everyone immediately assumes he died during the attacks but instead it was from complications of heart surgery. My grandmother died a year and one day later (for some morbid reason she wanted to pass on the same day as my Grandfather but she lived about an hour too long). Needless to say, I can be quite a moody person mid-September.
5. CML is the first place where I have worked for more than two and a half years.
   
6. My favorite car was my 1987 Red Toyota pickup. I would still be driving it today if the rust hadn't taken it over.
7. The only states I have never been to are Oklahoma, Alaska, Vermont, Rhode Island. Kansas is questionable---I've been to Kansas City, Missouri but I'm not sure if I ever crossed the border into the Kansas side of the city.
8. I was a paperboy for the Waukesha Freeman. My toes still have the residual frostbite effects, my leg has the dog bite scar, and I still despise Saturday mornings.
9. I was a radio DJ during college for KUMM. I am not making the call letters up, and yes there were plenty of offensive slogans to go along with the call letters.
10. When my wife and I decided we wanted to leave Maryland we made a list of states where we would absolutely refuse to live. Near the top of that list was OHIO. Does that mean we should reconsider living in Oklahoma, Nebraska, Alabama, and Mississippi as well?
11. My family had a beagle when I was growing up. I named him Opus (from the comic strip) when my family wouldn't let me name him Mr. T (even though his fur was marked with a white T shape).

Thing 23 - The End Of The Beginning or Where's My Laptop?

Intro to Web 2.0 has come to an end. Here is an answer to some Learn & Play questions that were posted:

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? I've become a Twitter addict and I'm starting to catalog my books at home with Library Thing. In the long run learning more about wikis will probably benefit me the most.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? Most of these "things" were only an introduction to the tool. I know I am going to be putting in more time learning about wikis so we can develop one for the STEM project.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? I'm jealous of the writing ability of a lot of CML staff. I need to start working on improving my writing ability and fluency again. The writing that this project was very different than most writing that we typically do at CML---for Learn & Play it was much more thoughtful writing compared to our typical emails. Maybe it should have been called Learn & Play & Think.

It has opened up communications with people outside of our branch and even outside of the public services department. That has to be a good thing.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? Maybe it would help if there were fewer tasks over a shorter time period. I know some colleagues stopped participating when they got to the point where they thought they couldn't finish. Some of the benefits of the program are lost if fewer staff participate.

There should be some sort of encouragement for people to continue their Web 2.0 discoveries to maximize what has been started.

There should be some effort to apply some of these tools to actual CML issues----both to make the learning more complete and to get the full benefit out of the time that each of us spent.

And, last but not least… If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?
Most definitely.

THE END...........or is it the beginning?

Thing #22 - Digital Media - MOLDI - Why are checked out titles unavailable?

The idea of checked out digital titles being unavailable seems absolutely ridiculous. Just because I downloaded Audio Book A---doesn't mean the file is unavailable---it just means the organization refusing to share it again. What if the entire web worked the way MOLDI did? Only one person could look at the news on CNN at a time? Silly right? If a digital library is going to be done right, every title should always be available. I understand payments to publishers will have to be reworked, but shouldn't we be able to provide much better customer service with a digital collection?



Even though most of these Web 2.0 tools are great additions they all seem to be far from perfect. My biggest complaint tends to be the search features (and I know others have made the complaint also)---but the Browse Teens link is absolutely worthless--it leads to minimal titles and very few of which are actually teen titles (because the teen titles are actually found under Children's).



I've been using downloading books from MOLDI for quite a while ---I find lots of interesting titles but they seem to be more accidental findings than things I have found that I was looking for on purpose. These are some features I wish MOLDI had:

1. Some sort of notice of when new titles are available---Instead of having to search on a daily basis for things from the last 30 days.
2. That audio files were broken into chapters instead of longer chunks. I only have time to listen to a chapter or two at a time, and since the files aren't in audible format my MP3 player doesn't know to save my place (especially since I go back and forth between music and books constantly).
3. A more comprehensive collection. There is only one of John Green's books available (and its not his Printz winning book).
4. A wider music selection.

22 things down and 1 to go.....

Thing #21 - Podcasts --Any better podcast directories out there?

What a mess trying to find a podcast? Did anyone else find podfeed and podcastalley a mess to search through?

Podfeed was too gunked up with advertising all over the page to clearly be able to find what you needed, the search engine brought back too many unrelated results, and even when using the category search it seemed to lead me to too many podcasts that weren't related to the category.

Podcast Alley was slightly better---a little less (but still too much advertising), the search engine brought back more relevant results as long as I only searched for a single word, and the categories seemed to be set up better. Previously I had used Podcast Alley for my own searches and I usually stuck to just using their Top lists---that way I knew things were of slightly better quality. Another thing I have usually done is get my podcasts directly from web pages that I am already familiar with in other ways (I'm a big fan of the This American Life podcast since WCBE no longer carries the show locally).

I did see another Learn & Play participant recommend Podcast Pickle so I also played with some searches on that. I still wasn't crazy about its search capabilities---but I did end up finding a good children's book review podcast, Just One More Book.

I will have to continue searching for a better podcast directory, because I do like watching and listening to podcasts.

Silly Time Wasters - #36742 - The Warning Label Generator

From today's silly waste of time--- The Warning Label Generator.

Thing #20 - You Tube-- Please Do It With Me, Please Do It With Me, Please Do It With Me

I started out looking for some YouTube videos of teens and libraries. Unfortunately YouTube was in partial maintenance mode and not everything was loading properly. I do want to go back and take a look later because I found a couple of libraries that are sponsoring Teen Film Festivals.

Instead I accidentally stumbled upon this video of finger plays using American Sign Language (ASL) to promote Summer Reading Clubs:



Sometimes I struggle with finger plays...sure you can see diagrams in books of how to perform them---but a diagram never truly captures the rhythm and movement of a fingerplay. During Youth Services Orientation I got to observe lots of great fingerplay performers, but what if I could watch these CML "stars" on demand show their fingerplays (or some of Ann's great string stories)? It would be great for all of us out in branch-land (and beyond CML as well).

I bet CML staff could make more friendly videos than the example I embedded (perhaps fewer "Please Do It With Me" commands). Was anyone else afraid about what would happen if they didn't follow along as they watched the video? Was she a drill sergeant in a previous life?

I also liked the fact that the fingerplay used actual ASL signs, so that in addition to helping toddlers getting ready to read it can also help us reach out to one of our underserved populations. But it helped me learn some new signs so I can attempt to catch up with my 22 month old daughter who (like her mother) signs much more proficiently than I do.

Thing #19 - Exploring CML's Toolbox of Web 2.0 tools

I've had the CML tool bar for quite a while ---which I typically use for one of 3 reasons.

1. To get to the CML web page fast
2. To look at my account
3. To get to MOLDI (because there never seemed to be an easy way to the site)
   

I don't know if something changed recently, but the new items button seems to work much better than it did previously. I actually found new stuff that I wasn't aware of----new additions to the Rockabye Baby Lullaby series. I just reserved the recently ordered Pixies, Nirvana, Bob Marley and Led Zepplin CDs from the series---it is truly trippy stuff. I can't wait to hear the Pixies This Monkey's Gone to Heaven done on the glockenspiel. My wife and I always enjoyed it more than L did.

I'm not a big fan of the search box on the CML toolbar....way too many sponsored results before I get to what I am looking for. But I am glad to have the Firefox CML search tool. Why does that work much better than the one on the toolbar? Anyone?