#23! The end is here!!

Congratulations!! You have reached the 23rd thing!! Amazing! Please give yourself a pat on the back completing the program. Your reward for completing this journey before the deadline is a useful and handy flash drive! But before sending you off into the world, I ask for one last discovery post.

I ask that for your last and final exercise for this program, reflect on your learning journey and post a few thoughts. Here are some questions to prompt you if you’re drawing a blank …

• What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
• How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
• Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
• What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?And last but not least…
• If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?

I want to thank you each and every one of you for going on this journey with me. I have learned so much from each of you, and have been impressed with your thoughts, insights, and accomplishments. I hope that this isn’t the end of our learning journey, but rather the start of something amazing, collaborative and fun!

#22 Get a Second Life!

Computer and video games have always been popular among teenagers. Role playing games can be an especially effective learning tool regarding community, relationships, and decision making. Second Life is a very popular online game rendered in 3-D, imagined and created by the residents.

Second Life was developed by Linden Research, and in echoing the “real world” or “first life”, you are able to own land, trade goods and services, engage in commerce, participate in education activities, and much more.

Residents of Second Life are represented through avatars, or a users representation of themselves. Avatars can be human in appearance, can be of either sex, and have a variety of humanoid forms. Communication in Second Life is through a chat or instant messaging. Second Life also has a growing economy, where residents can exchange currency for the Linden dollar, the currency of Second Life. Some entrepreneurs are doing a brisk business in Second Life, creating stores, designing buildings, and offering services and making real money in doing so.

Public and academic libraries are building libraries in Second Life. The Info Island Community is

Discovery Resources

Second Life: Take a look through the website, look at the exchange data, and learn more about the pricing for this community
Introduction to Second Life: a short YouTube video
Libraries in Second Life
What is the fuss on Second Life?
Teen Second Life: PLCMC (the same one that created Learning 2.0)

Discovery Exercise

1. Take a look at the Discovey Resources. If you are feeling adventurous, sign up for an account with Second Life and explore the islands. (Make sure your computer can handle the software requirements.)
2. Write a blog post about your findings and thoughts on Second Life. Is there a role for Second Life in libraries?

#21 Social Networking

Social networking sites have exploded all over the internet in the last few years. The first big site to gain attention was MySpace, which revolutionized the ways people in online environments form and maintain relationships. Facebook is another of the most popular social networking sites and gained a lot of popularity when they opened their network up to everyone. Originally, this site was developed for college and high school students. Since opening up the site to everyone in Sept 2006 the number of users has grown. Facebook as a social networking tool helps facilitate the sharing of information through a users real world social network. While MySpace allowed people to cultivate a personality, Facebook is about the relationships one has in real life and outside the digital realm. Facebook has over 54 million registered users and active users double every six months.

Facebook introduced some innovated concepts in the past year, opening up their code to developers to create applications. (Think how Microsoft Word is an application that runs on a Windows operating system or platform. Facebook is the platform.)

Wary that social networking might not be for you? Consider joining LinkedIn, a social networking site for professionals. Think of this site as a way of networking with business contacts, colleagues and former clients.

Discovery Resources:

Facebook Site Tour: Learn about the site, how to set up a profile and security features
12 Ways to use Facebook Professionally
About LinkedIn

Discovery Exercise:

1. Register for an account at FaceBook or LinkedIn.
2. Create a profile and search for friends, family members or colleagues. Take a look at the privacy settings. Find
3. Blog about your findings. What applications do you like? How do you think you can use these tools?

#20 Discovering Web 2.0 tools

The end is in site! The end is in site!

Throughout the course of this Learning 2.0 program, we have explored a small sampling of these new internet technologies and websites that are empowering users with the ability to create and share content. Estimates place the number of Web 2.0 tools somewhere between 300 and 500, with only a handful emerging as market dominators. Time will tell which of these new collaborative, social networking and information tools will remains on top, come and go, one thing that is for sure, these tools are here to stay.

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to select any site from this of Web 2.0 nominees and winners explore it. With so many to choose from, it might be handy to first select a category that interests you, or jump right to the list of the winners. Be careful to select a tool that is Free and that doesn’t require a plug-in or download. The majority of these are free, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Select any tool/site from the list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees or winners.
2. Explore the site you selected.
3. Create a post about your discover. What did you like or dislike about the tool? What were the site’s useful features? Could you see any applications for its use in a library setting?

There is SO much to explore in Web 2.0, so just start with one!

#19 Web-based Applications: Go beyond the desktop!

The availability and use of online productivity web-based applications (think word processing and spreadsheets) has exploded over the past few years and with great reasons! These powerful application provide users with the ability to create and share documents over the internet without installed desktop applications. Some experts have speculated that this emerging trend may mean the death of Microsoft Office and other software-based productivity tools, while some think these tools have their place, just not in the office.

One of the benefits to web-based applications is that they eliminate the need to worry about different software versions or file types as you email documents or move them from computer to computer. Another bonus is that collaboration features are built in, making it easy for multiple users to edit the same file (with versioning) and provide users the ability to easily save and convert documents as multiples file types. You can even use many of these tools such as Zoho Writer and Google Docs to author and publish posts to your blog. It’s this type of integration with other web 2.0 tools that also makes web-based apps so appealing.

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to take a look at the web-based word processing tool, Google Docs, create a simple document, and then write about your discoveries in your blog.

Discovery Resources:

A short list of web-based productivity applications.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Create a free account for yourself in Google Documents. (If you are using Blogger, you should be able to login with the same username and password as your Blogger blog.)
2. Explore the site and create a few test documents. Try the spreadsheet capabilities or the presentation software.
3. Create a blog post about your discoveries.

Optional: If you’re up for the challenge, try using Google Doc’s “publish” options to post to your blog.

* Note: You can also explore Zoho Writer by creating a free account.

#18 Exploring the depths of the blogsphere with Technorati

You’ve been blogging for about 6 weeks now, exploring the blogs of the other participants and perhaps outside the Ferguson community. And as the blogs seems endless, perhaps you have wondered, just how big is the blogsphere? Is there an end? According to Technorati, the leading authority and search tool for blogs, 1.4 blogs are created every second, and they are currently tracking over 70 million blogs!

These numbers are truly astounding, but you have already seem for yourselves just how easy blogging can be. Many industries are taking advantage of the publishing tools to communicate their messages and ideas, including libraries!

So how do you get your blog listed as part of the blogosphere and tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search? Since you are using Blogger, the most popular blogging too, changes are your blog is already being captured by Technorati. But you want more? To have your blog listed on Technorati and take advantage of the watchlist and other features, you will need to claim you blog yourself. As for tagging posts with Technorati tags, piece of cake! All you need to do is add a little bit of HTML code to the bottom of your post (see my example below) and Technorati will pick up these tags when it spiders (or web crawls) your site.

There are a lot of new features that have been added to Technorati this past summer, including new ways to search for blogs. You can search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like photography or libraries).

Discovery Resources:
Technorati Tour – videocast of new features & new look
Technorati Discover & Popular features

Discovery Exercises:

1. Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for “Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different?
2. Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?
3. Create a blog post about your discoveries on this site.
   
   OPTIONAL: If you’re up for a challenge, learn how to tag your posts by with Technorati tags so they can join tag searches. Create a post about something. It can be anything you want and add the HTML code to the bottom to tag it as “fergusonlibrary”. You may also want to consider claiming your blog and creating a watchlist.NOTE: When adding HTML code, you’ll want to make sure you’re in Blogger’s Edit HTML window.

There’s a lot to explore.

Technorati: newcanaanlibrary

#17 Folksomonies, tagging and social bookmarking in Del.icio.us

Tagging is an informal and open method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content. Library subject heading follow a strict set of guidelines for their use. Tagging is unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want and in ways that are meaningful to them (and possibly others).

Flickr and LibraryThing are two of the many sites that allow users to take advantage of tagging. This week, in addition to exploring Technorati tagging, we want to also explore the popular social bookmarking site called delicious (which is found at http://delicious.com).

Delicious is a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize our bookmarks.

As a web 2.0 tool, many users find the value of delicious in the social network aspect, which allows you to see how others have tagged similar links and discover other websites that may be of interest to you. You can think of it as peering into another user’s filing cabinet or bookmarks, but with this tool each user’s filing cabinet helps build an expansive network of knowledge.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at delicious and learn about this popular bookmarking tool.

(Delicious recently was known as del.icio.us, which is why you may see it on some of the older posts.)

Discovery Resources:

• Otter Group Del.icio.us tutorial (8 min video) - Highly recommended!!!
• Us.ef.ul: A beginners guide to Del.icio.us
• Several Habits of wildly successful Del.icio.us users

Discovery Exercise:

1. View this 8 minute tutorial on del.icio.us to get a good overview of the features.
2. Take a look around delicious using the New Canaan Library Learning 2.0 account that was created for this exercise. http://del.icio.us/NCL2 (NCL2/learning2009) (Click sign in in the upper right hand corner)
   
3. Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by many other users. Can you see the comments they added about this bookmark or the tags that they used to categorize this reference?
4. Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool.
   Can you see the potential for this tool for research assistance? Of just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed for anywhere?

OPTIONAL: If you’re up to the challenge, create a Delicious account for yourself and discover how this useful bookmarking tool can replace your traditional browser bookmark list. You might even want to explore Delicious’ latest addition, a network badge. (Psst! see it over there at the end of the navigation sidebar)

Note: If you do setup a Delicious account, here’s a quick word about the Delicious Buttons. On PCs that have the toolbars locked down, these will install as options in your browser bookmarks. Use the “Post to my Delicious” link to add the current webpage to your account (you may need to log in). Use the “My Delicious” link to view your online account.

#12 All a twitter about Twitter

What is Twitter? A tweet?

Twitter is a small social networking site that was started in March 2006 as a way for users to send out quick short messages on the internet and to their followers.

The premise is very simple. A user will send out a short tweet, of 140 characters max. However, like any social network, this won't work in a vacuum. So, user will locate people or news sources to follow. This means when you sign into your account you will see tweets of the people you are following. Tweet interesting and witty things, and you may find your followers growing. Same idea as followers, the people who are following you will see your tweets on their account?
Pretty simple right? All you need is an email address!

Discovery Resources:

• About Twitter
• Twitter in Plain English
  

Discovery Exercise:

1. Visit Twitter and set up an account.
   (If you don't want to set up and account, you may used an account I set up. I will send the login and password to you through email.
   
2. Tweet your first message, and look for some people to follow. You can import your contacts from Yahoo/Gmail/Hotmail.
   (You can follow me @mauradeedy)
3. Here is a list of libraries on Twitter
4. Write a blog post about your thoughts on Twitter. What were your impressions about the site? What do you think this tool could be used for?
   

#16 Let’s jump into a wiki!

“Sandbox” is the term that wikis often use to describe the area of the website that should be used for pure play. (That’s right… pure play!) For this discovery and exploration exercise, we’ve set a whole Learning 2.0 favorites wiki, that is nothing but pure play!!

For this discover, explore and play with wikis exercise, you are asked to add an entry to two to the PBwiki Learning 2.0 wiki. The theme of this wiki is simply Favorites: Favorite books, favorite vacation spots, favorite restaurants, favorite anything… all you need to do is play and add your thoughts. To mark your adventure on this site, add your blog to the Favorites Blog pages.

Discovery Resources:

• PBWiki Video Gallery - Short videos of PBwiki features
• PB Wiki Tips

Discovery Exercise:

1. Access the New Canaan Library wiki.
   Click on the Edit Page button.
2. Add your blog to the Favorite Blogs page. That’s how we’ll know that you’ve been there. It is very easy to do.
   Click on the “Edit Page” button, and you will see a text editor appear (which slightly resembles Blogger and Microsoft Word).
   Enter your blog name, highlight the text and press the Link button, and a edit box will appear. Under link type, choose URL if you are linking to a page outside the wiki.
3. OPTIONAL: Add a favorite or two to a few other pages (Favorite books, favorite vacation spot, etc). And, if you feel up to the challenge, you might even want to create a separate page for book review or short travel essay and link up to that.
4. Create a post in your blog about the experience.

* NOTE: The New Canaan Learning 2.0 wiki was created using the free version of PBWorks, a tool that lets you create webpages that anyone can edit.

#15 What exactly is a wiki….

Wiki! Wiki! Wiki! A fun simple word that is fun to say fast and over and over again.

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring toll that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open encyclopedia that anyone can update, is the largest and perhaps most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. With the benefits that wikis provide, the use and popularity of these tools are expanding.

Some of the benefits include:

• Anyone can add, edit or delete content. (Users can be registered, unregistered, unrestricted and restricted. Many layers to ensure the right people are editing the wiki.)
• Tracking tools within wikis allow users to easily keep up on what has been changed and by whom.
• Earlier versions of a page are archived, and can be restored if needed.
• Users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content. A simple syntax structure is used, (and very easy to learn!)

As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, libraries all over the country have begun to use them to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, conference wikis and best practice wikis.

Discovery Resources:
Use these resources to learn more about wikis.

• Wikis’: A beginner’s look - an excellent short slide presentation that offers a short introduction and examples
• What is a Wiki? - Library Success wiki presentation
• Using Wikis to Create Online Communities - a good overview of what a wiki is and how it can be used in libraries

Discovery Exercise:

1. For this discover exercise, you are asked to take a look at some library wikis and blog about your findings and thoughts. Here’s a handful of wikis to get you started:
   • SJCPL Subject Guides - a pathfinder wiki developed by the St. Joseph County Public Library system
   • Book Lovers Wiki - developed by the Princeton Public
   • 2008 Midwinter ALA Meeting Wiki
   • Library Success Wiki
   • The Bull Run Library wiki
   • Other library wiki examples
2. Create a blog post about your findings. What did you find interesting? What types of applications within libraries might work well with a wiki?

So, what’s in a wiki? Find out by exploring and discovering this knowledge management tool!!

#14 On Library 2.0 and Web 2.0

Library 2.0 is a term used to describe a new set of concepts for developing and delivering library services. The name is an extension of Web 2.0 and shares many of the same philosophies and concepts included including utilizing the user in both design and implementation of services, embracing constant change as a development cycle over the traditional notion of updates, and reworking library services to meet the users in their space, as opposed to ours (the library).

The term is not without controversy. Many argue that the notion of Library 2.0 is more than just at terms used to describe concepts that merely revolved around the use of technology; it is also a term that can be used to describe the physical and mindset changes that are occurring within libraries to make our spaces and services more user-centric and inviting. Others within the profession that libraries have always been 2.0: collaborative, customer friendly and welcoming. However, no matter what side of the debate you fall on, we all can agree that libraries of tomorrow, and those years down the road will look substantially different from libraries today.

Discovery Resources:

OCLC Next Space Newsletter: Web 2.0- Where will the next generation Web take libraries?

Five Perspectives:

• Away from Icebergs
• Into a new world of librarianship
• To more powerful ways to cooperate
• To better bibliographic services
• To a temporary place in time

Wikipedia - Library 2.0
Library 2.0 Discussions (list of great references from Wikipedia)
Discovery Resource:

1. Read two or three of the perspectives on Library 2.0 from the list above.
2. Create a blog post about your thoughts on any one of these perspectives. Library 2.0 is many things to many people. What does it mean to you? How do you think this might impact librarianship and the future of libraries?

#13 The Thing about LibraryThing

#13 The Thing about LibraryThing

Is your home library organized by subject or author? Do you enjoy reconnecting with books you forgot you owned? If so, LibraryThing just might be the tool for you! Developed for booklovers, this online application helps your create an online catalog of your own, and it connects you with others who have similar libraries and reading tastes. And the best part, it is so easy to add books: just enter the title (or ISBN). No MARC training needed! There are lots of ways to use LibraryThing as well. You can display your books on a virtual bookshelf, add a widget (see my blog) to display titles your library owns, or even install a LT search box on your blog.

So, let’s join the ranks and create your own library online. With over 280,000 registered users and 19 million books cataloged you are bound to discover something new. And by the way, LibraryThing also have a group forum for librarians.

(Fun Fact about LibraryThing: They have LibraryThing for Libraries! Danbury Public Library was the first library to use this application. Check out their catalog and try a search for Bridget Jones.)

Discovery Resources:

• About LibraryThing
• Library Thing tour
• LibraryThing blog (updates & news)

Discovery Exercise:

1. Take a look around LibraryThing and create an account.
2. Add at least 5 books to your library.
3. Blog about your findings and be sure to link to you LibraryThing catalog.