Item 23 -- The End

I probably enjoyed playing around in the photo and images sites the most, including the image generators, even though I was unable to copy an image to the blog from any site. I liked having the opportunity to sample a variety of the technology features that one hears being mentioned by colleagues but which do not really have a place in one's life, at least at the moment. I now have a very basic knowledge of some of them and might be able to assist patrons to some degree, but I wouldn't feel confident of helping with any advanced features of any of these technologies.

As for my lifelong learning goals, I like to stay aware of new technologies, especially ones that might be helpful for my job, but I tend to direct my "learning" toward things like The Great Courses by the Teaching Company. I want more out of life than spending it staring at a computer screen all day long. Too bad the library doesn't have any of these courses. They really are great.

There weren't any outcomes that surprised me. There were a few that frustrated me. For example, the "lesson" gives you certain information about a site, and then tells you to go that site and click on a certain feature. You click on the link, go to the site, and said feature is nowhere on the screen, or the screen doesn't resemble the screen in the tutorial at all. Another frustration was waiting for videos to load. On more than one occasion I took my break to let it finish loading.

One improvement I would suggest is making sure the websites attached to the links haven't been redesigned so that the directions are rendered inaccurate/useless. Also, not all staff computers had sound capability, which was necessary when watching the videos.

Item 22

OK, it's the luddite yet again. Has anyone ever considered that there is way too much "social networking" on computers and not enough face to face communication? I see the lack of in person communication skills on the Ref. desk. I couldn't open twitter to look at it, but I did look at the tumblr site. Reading those kinds of posts is to me like listening to sound bites in the news... very annoying little snippits that leave you waiting for the rest of the story, which may never come. I can see where these kinds of services could become addictive to some people who like to be always online texting, checking messages, etc. I've noticed that some of them tend to have short attention spans, and wonder if it's because they've learned to think in snippits.

This is not one of the new 2.0 features I'm likely to want to play with. Too time consuming and disruptive to keep track of, and too expensive if you're using a mobile phone, etc. for access. With apologies to Burt Bacharach and Hal David: Lord, we don't need another social networking site!

Item 21

I enjoyed checking out the various video sites. I didn't get into any that required you to set up an account, since I don't want any more sites to remember to delete an account on, but I had fun looking for a certain breed of dog and seeing what people had posted. YouTube had the most and the best for this particular breed, and they were easy to find. The science sites were interesting. JoVe would be especially good for upper level students and the academically minded viewer.

Item 20

Oh, dear. It's the Luddite again. I don't have an ipod or equivalent, or a high speed connection. Considering the downloading delays even with the high speed connection here at work for all the videos and audios we've been listening to for this program, listening to podcasts on my home pc would be a very time-consuming activity. I don't foresee them being much of a priority in my future, I'm afraid, but it's nice to know what's out there in case I ever want to get into it. There's a lot of interesting stuff.

Unless the library plans to seriously upgrade its bandwidth or whatever, I don't see users being very happy with trying to download large audio/video files here, either, although it may be a moot point since I don't think it's something they can do here anyway, unless the wi-fi connection allows it.

Item 19

Well, the music sites don't seem to have much of the music I like (most of which was written pre-20th century), so I'll just stick to my favorite old-fashioned radio station.

The archive is interesting. Its got a lot of the great old time radio shows I'd like to listen to someday. The Gutenberg audio book collection isn't much use to me at the moment because I don't own an ipod or the like to take it with me, and staying close enough to the computer to listen through its speaker isn't really an option. But it's nice to know it's there if I ever get one.

Unfortunately, a lot of this really needs a high-speed internet connection, which I for one may never have (Comcast is way too expensive and there will probably never be DSL in my neighborhood in my lifetime--the lines are too old). Downloading large files on a 28.8 to 31.2 dial-up is something I avoid unless absolutely necessary because it could mean staying up way into the wee hours to make sure it completes (my dial-up drops out periodically). I'm afraid a lot of folks who don't have a high speed connection are just going to be left out of a lot of this fancy stuff.

Item 18

Once again, my screen doesn't match what the directions say in the program. I didn't see a "quick tour" or a "try it out". After opening various options, I did finally find a tour, of sorts.

This is a really nice feature, great for collaborative work. I could see a lot of use for it, but I'd be really hesitant to put any documents, spreadsheets, etc. on it that contained any information that I didn't want seen by prying eyes. If I were absolutely sure no one could ever see it without my permission it would be a great way to save certain data without having to do periodic backups. But I think I'll stick to keeping most of my stuff on my own pc and backing it up until they come up with a way to guarantee privacy from hackers, data miners, etc.

Item 17

OK. Since I'm not a video game person (you could count the number of video games I've tried at least once and have fingers left over), I tried word shoot. Interesting... At least my typing skills are good enough to survive. but I did have some trouble getting the whole image on the screen at one time so I could see "attackers" while they were still at the edges.