In all seriousness …

I’ve had a lot of fun writing this blog from the perspective of my cute little turtle, but I’d like to take over the writing for this final post to say, in all seriousness, that Learn and Play has been a very positive experience for me. One of the top benefits of the program for me was learning about GoogleDocs. As a result of what I have learned, I use GoogleDocs -- along with two others in my group of researchers at Ohio State -- to post our fieldnotes, jottings, and reflections on GoogleDocs to make our research more collaborative and more systematic. It’s been working really well for us! Another great experience was learning about delicious.com. I use this bookmarking site all the time now, and it is such an improvement over the 1000 bookmarks on my laptop that I can never seem to remember when I’m away from home. I’ve bookmarked a variety of sites, such as cheap textbook sites, websites related to my research, and great resources for taking care of my turtle! Another thing I use all the time is pbwiki. I’ve actually decided to create a wiki to write one of my final papers for the quarter. I love being able to add different pages for quotations, brainstorming an outline, rough drafts of different sections – all with the understanding that this is just a wiki and therefore always in draft (not to mention always available now for my peers to comment on). It’s less daunting than an empty screen of Microsoft Word, and I love being able to move around the various pages. Finally, I must add that I absolutely adore Zoho, which I found during the week of the Web 2.0 awards searching. I’ve created an online to-do list, which is perfect for me! In the past, I’d make tons of lists but never be able to find them. Now it’s all there for me to see with one click of the button. Slowly but surely, I’m becoming more organized.

In short, Web 2.0 has so much to offer, which I had some minimal knowledge about in the past but had never really taken the time to explore. I feel that this program has given me a chance to really put some of these new practices to use, and I’m so glad that you’ve offered us this opportunity. I would love to participate in more Web 2.0 learning opportunities in the future! Please keep them coming!

Who's allowed in the sandbox?

The idea of the library using a wiki sounds good to me. But why not draw on the expertise of the patrons? Like in AV, you could start a wiki for favorite horror films. The staff could start it, but when a patron talks about one of his favorites, why not invite him to add an entry onto the wiki? You could create a "user-generated" list of patrons' favorites and use this as one of many resources to other people who like that genre. Probably a pie-in-the-sky idea, but turtles are dreamers, baby.

I'm Full! (Feed Me, Part 2)

As I've mentioned before, RSS feeds do not exactly whet this turtle's appetite in the way that shrimp, worms, fish, crickets, bananas, and grapes do. So why are you shoving more RSS stuff down my throat? I'm full!

Peace out.

[Rocky swims away. His faithful owner, merri30, takes over the typing.]

Although I do not really intend to use RSS feeds much in the future, my approach would be to click on the feed from websites I already visit often. For example, I often read the college sports page from espn, so I might find it useful to get RSS feeds on my yahoo homepage. But I didn't really find it useful to visit the technorati or topix.net pages. I suppose I'm content to visit and linger on the websites I enjoy.

MOLDI

Wow, I thought MOLDI would have a collection of lots of old and cruddy (well, moldy) ebooks, but, boy, was I wrong.... "Twilight" was there, "The Audacity of Hope" was there ... of course, I might be old and gray(-green) by the time I actually get through the wait list, but still.... Finally, I settled on one of Jonathon Kozol's latest books, "The Shame of the Nation." Gotta keep up on those education books to impress my loyal owner, merri30 ....

Podcasts

Did you know that turtles don't have ears?
So I have no use for podcasts whatever.
Peace out, fools.

[turns keyboard over to loving owner, merri30]
Wow, I can't believe Rocky is such a slacker, but, sure bud, I'll write this post for ya. Let's learn and play together!
I must say, I was initially a bit skeptical about this assignment. I did browse through the podcast directories given but, quite frankly, as a busy student who spends most of her free time studying and trying to nurse her sick turtle back to health, I'm really not interested in listening to people sound off on politics or sex or movies. Nothing in the "most popular" lists really appealed to me. I was somewhat drawn to music podcasts, but not overly enthusiastic.

Then I decided to go outside of these directories to Google. I'd recently read a fascinating book on the virtual world of "Second Life" and so I googled "Second Life" with "podcast." This took me to a really interesting recent podcast about the potential uses of Second Life by educators. I'm finding this really useful to my research.

Check it out:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/06/02/inside-the-lab-podcast-a-discussion-on-education-in-second-life/

So perhaps podcasts are more useful than I'd originally imagined!

I can watch this again and again ...

God bless youtube.
It wasn't enough to just watch the Buckeyes annihilate Michigan one time.
Not even close.
Best play of the game?
By far, Ray Small's punt return.
Thanks to youtube I can watch it again and again ...



If your patrons at the library have short attention spans like me or if they already know just what they're looking for, why go through an entire 2 hours of a game, video, etc.? With youtube you can get just the clip you need. And if you want to keep going, all you need to do is click on some of the related videos.... Easy as pie, even for this pea-sized brain!

O-H-I-O, baby!

Turtle@gmail.com

You might not think of turtles as the emailing type. I may have mentioned elsewhere that I'm not particularly social. However, this doesn't mean that I don't have an adoring group of devotees who find me cute, adorable, and extremely extremely emailable. Yes, my inbox gets stuffed! Thank goodness for gmail! I can "star" the emails from those adoring fans most worthy of my time. I can hit "search" to find emails most pertinent to my life -- for example, those that feature the word, "yummies," "treats," "worms," or "shrimp." And I've got enough room in my inbox to rest the last of my life -- at least 30 more years! Gmail ... be kind to your public and check it out!