Week 7 Facebook

And we come to the mother of them all... Facebook!
Imagine a world without it... its only been around for the last 5 years or so but where would we be without it now!
I like facebook for the simple reason that you can keep in touch easily with friends and family that may live away. I am a little over it though, and I wonder how many others will b over it soon too. Mayb in 10 years the numbers will have dropped?
It is worrying how school kids use it though. They arent aware (or dont see the threat) in the dangers related with social media including cyberstalking, cyberbullying, fraud, peer pressure, media pressure etc. Some of the littlies are just too young.
So all in all, Facebook has both pros and cons but one thing is for sure, it has been one of the biggest influences on social media and culture EVER!

LibraryThing

Library Thing
The best internet tool for book lovers alike. What a great way show off all your books, recommend books to others, find books and learn about books. And its all so easy! Its like having your shelf on display wherever you go.
It is great that you can find books and display them without any knowledge of MARC records. Just type the title and whola! Writing reviews is also a greta idea as is putting a wall of recommneded books on your library website. We do that at Spearwood and staff add the books they are currently reading to the wall. What a great amd easy way to share great books with library uses!

Week #6 - Tagging, Delicious and LibraryThing

OMG

Cant believe I added a widget to my blog. I thought it would be super super hard but it was easy! Wow I am surprised that I can do alot of this stuff, they sure are making it easier.

Tagging and Delicious
This has been the most useful week (I think). Tagging is taking referencing to a whole new level. It is such a great idea for people to 'tag' sites, even books. If someone is looking for information on a certain subject, and you dont know any great sites, you can use delicious to quickly locate appropriate information. I have found it more useful than google, and will have to learn to fully utilise its functions.
I remember when we had a prac student at spearwood library and she showed us how to use tags aswell (this was a few years ago). The idea of the words becoming larger the more a tag was used is also great. It looks cool and its so useful! The founder of delicious must be rich! The best ideas are always simple.

Week 5. Wikis!

Again, I never actually knew what wiki meant until now! And to be honest I never really thought much about it other than what on earth Wikipedia meant. I can see the pros and cons to wikis, but if used carefully I think the pros outweigh the cons.
 I think wikis would be a great way for people to share information in the library. For example the procedure manual idea is great. Possibly it can be used as a suggestion page the public can use to give information to the library. It could also be used for people to recommend books or other learning materials. For example someone might type in ‘INDIA’ and people could list the resources that they found helpful when looking for information about India. Just like a search catalogue but only listing books and authors recommended by the public?? 

By the way who thought up Wetpaint. A little random?

week 4. RSS Feeds

To be honest I had always wondered what that little orange icon was at the top of nearly every webpage! And now I know! I have learned something new.

I am a bit of a weird one when it comes to the net. All my friends can find hours of entertainment on the net and look up their favourite websites everyday. I, on the other hand, seem to be one of the few in my age bracket that actually find the internet (dare I admit it) boring! The only thing I use it for is internet banking, emails and occasionally facebook. I also use it to research products if I need to buy something and sometimes browse recipes. I don’t listen to music, download movies, read comics, read blogs or ‘surf’ the internet.  In saying this RSS feeds aren’t really useful for me but I can definitely see how they would be useful to people who visit the same 20 webpages everyday. It is a good idea. Just for the sake of this weeks exercise I subscribed to a few RSS feeds:

Avacodo.org.au

Powerhouse museum

White Ninja comics

SXF WOD

Unshelved

Learning 2.0 basics.

Week 3. Sharing Images.

My whole Blog is a collection of random information with no direct sequence or theme! So, now that I'm doing this at home and can spend some time thinking and writing I have decided to write a comment about each week so I have a logical sequence happening!

Sharing Images.

I think Flickr is a great idea and a useful way to find images from niches that don’t appear on Google Images.  It is also an easy way to check the licensing of the photos.  I terms of our library, I have seen flickr used to showcase the great activities, speakers, demonstrations and patrons at our library. The use of pictures makes our library more inviting, colourful, dynamic and fun!

Plus with the ease of digital cameras there is no longer an excuse to leave an event undocumented! I will be using Flickr more to access pictures and possibly might start adding some myself :)

and a little of track ...

Sorry to get of track on the whole Prometheus idea but Im going to talk a little bit about the whole web2 thing. SO far I have learnt about Flickr, RSS and Wikis and although I find it all very interesting and can see their utility, I personally prob won't use any of it.

It all has many many uses but maybe Im just too boring a person. I don't have any particular hobbies and I don't particularly care what other peoples hobbies are either! I sound like a grumpy old woman don't I! All well, everyone is different. I think it might not be that Im boring, but rather Im private. I dont feel a need to share my thoughts with everyone. I feel uncomfortable even posting this! (I have to for training purposes).

I like writing and cooking but once again, I like to write recipes out by hand and cook from an actual book, and I like to keep my writing personal.