Thing #23 - Wrapping Up

Before I wrap up, I want to give a big THANKS to the Ocean County Library Web Things Committee for making this challenge possible and spending what I know must have been many hours of preparation and hours and hours of reviewing our blogs.
KUDOS TO ALL OF YOU!!!

In my first blog I mentioned that lacking confidence in myself as an effective learner was going to be most challenging for me. Well, here I am - at the finish line. I did it!!!! I am proud of myself for what I have learned and accomplished. When I first started blogging, I was intimidated by other bloggers and thought that my writing skills where not as good as theirs. After a number of people told me that my blogs were just fine, I started believing in myself and yes, I have more confidence. I "got by with a little help from my friends". Thank you to those friends; you know who you are.

As far as what Web 2.0 Thing that I liked the best, that's a hard one. I enjoyed a number of them....YouTube, LibraryThing, Google Docs, Wikis and Finding and Listening to Podcasts to name a few. I did not particularly like NetLibrary. I shared Del.icio.us and Wikis with friends and family members. My daughter and son-in-law are teachers and I thought that those web applications would be useful to them in their careers. As it turned out, my son-in-law has already used wikis. I explained Google Docs to my husband and our friend because I thought that it may be useful to them in a business venture of theirs.

I think that our branches that hold computer classes should start thinking about teaching Web 2.0 technologies to our customers. I am sure that many of them have heard the terminologies but have no idea what they are - wikis and podcasts for example. After checking out the Birmingham Public Library's wiki, I noticed that they do a "Tech Tuesday". We should consider something along that line.

Welllllll, you asked that we make our last blog a good one. I hope that this entry has met that challenge. I have such mixed feelings at the moment. I am so excited to have completed the challenge but at the same time I am sad that this is my last official blog for the challenge. My congratulations to all of you that have finished. I bid you adieu.

The End
Actually, Just the Beginning of Life Long Learning

Thing #22 - ListenNJ

Did you hear it? I just made a deep sigh of relief. It feels like I have rounded third base and am just a step away from home plate - almost there!
I installed OverDrive Media Console on my laptop at home and performed the security update to Windows Media Player (with some help from my husband). Checking out a book on ListenNJ was pretty straight forward. I listened to a book that I checked out to make sure that everything was done correctly. Listening to audio books in my car is something that I enjoy and burning them to a CD is an option to consider.
On to Thing #23!!!

Thing #21 - Finding and Listening to Podcasts

I enjoyed finding and listening to podcasts. I was amazed that elementary school children were making their own podcasts in the classroom. Where have I been?
After browsing Podcast.com and Odeo.com, I chose a podcast from the Science section from Odeo.com and listened to a Nova podcast about "Finding Lost Memories". It was an interesting presentation from two researchers from MIT about new experiments that are exploring whether "lost" memories can be regained. Since this was such a technical podcast, I need to go back and listen to it a few more times to absorb the information that is being presented. Listen to the link below.

http://odeo.com/audio/18606393/view

Thing #20 - YouTube

My husband watches YouTube quite often and will call me over to the computer to "watch this". I never initiated a search. I was impressed with the history of YouTube and told a few of my coworkers to watch the video even if they never make it to Thing #20. The article was quite interesting. It's amazing how fast YouTube took off. I didn't realize how young this site is. I was impressed with the numbers. Google bought YouTube for billions!!
I look forward to going on vacation every year and therefore looked up travel videos. I came across a quick video of "Secret Seats on Airlines" by Peter Greenberg. I know that I will not remember the secret seats when I book my next vacation, but I will have this link posted to my blog and can always come back to this post and I'll have the link below. I think that I found a new pastime!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guvJHKZhUv8