23. Thoughts and Actions

Thanks to Sharkey and the Kumara street cartoon.



The online experience ACL Learning 2 has lead me round the world and back again! In the beginning I read the aim of the programme was to allow staff to explore technologies and learn new skills on the internet, to expand minds, empower individuals and enrich our community.
(Did you hear me sniff in derision!) I doubted my own ability to work through 2 or3 tasks, not even considering 23!

But the more exercises I did, the more I gained in confidence, and I began to have fun! First of all the Blog. I liked the Harbour Template and muted colours, then had to find an image which fitted in with rose and page. The idea of inserting pictures (thanks Flickr) might have occurred in the past , but lack of knowledge ensured I stuck to text. Then, there were the cartoons and the ability to add punchlines. Finding other authors' blogs (including two I'd been following with interest for a while) and the joy of a response from Susan Wittig Albert when I pulled her blog into my feeds. Bloglines has been great- I've 26 including RSS feeds and podcasts.... and usually check them daily. Youtube and Beebo etc... I knew vaguely what they were but had little thought to try to access them and use them for fun or education!
LibraryThing,wow! I spend far too much time at home checking , tagging, and reading other peoples' library notes and reviews. (The garden and lawns can wait!) Have my own library up over fifty books now but mainly put in ones I really like or wish to remember.

So thanks ACLLearning team especially Jayne and Jen, and to my friend Willow who encouraged me with advice and help. I'd like to thank Helen Blowers and the 43 Things you should do... (am seriously considering following that up!) and management who set this programme up and all! Next time you see a rainbow think of the giant learning curve we've been on- we've already found the pot (pod) of gold!

21...(Yay for broadband!)

Managed to get some time at work to explore podcasts, as explained in 22 I have dial up at home! I followed the instructions with care but the tutorial would not appear. Gave it up and tried exploring iTunes . I found some music I liked but was scared off by notions of my credit card being attacked if I entered the wrong info.Still it was fun to listen to Apres un Reve and Dolly's garden (would you guess Faure?) and the fractals which appeared as mini videos were dazzling. Decided to look at other sites and had better success on Yahoo's site. Spent some time there but kept being frustrated by my lack of knowledge- I needed the tutorial. Clicked it on again , waited and waited for it to open, then I had to attend elsewhere and on my return it was there -telling me all! Learnt a lesson from that, our equipment is limited by the island's uptake; it had been running at 31 which is even slower than my dialup at home.
Another day I tried Podcast Alley and think I will use the site again as thanks to Willow and the appearance of a search field I could experiment in other areas. I tried "arts" and was impressed with the quick selection and the fact that a click would summarise a site in a few words. Had a play and found all sorts of great possibilities! Put two onto my bloglines and think Time Traveler podcast could be of interest to library users who like short stories and science fiction (new story each week)and then went on to put "Writing" in the search field and found a University of Ohio podcast which discusses writing, so happily "rssed" it onto my bloglines!

The E library (Yes 22 )

Many times when I've been introducing folk to the library website after signing up, I've been surprised how few know of the ACL's investment in digital resources. Some have become regulars on international web journals and newspapers and several have passed pleased comments back on their experiences. But I have been guilty of totally ignoring the net library- mea culpa, I thought it was minimal and not interesting. Today my opinion did a 180 turn....
One of the first surprises was a toddler's delightful counting book- "20 Hungry Piggies". I had no idea little ones' books featured.The next one was a book on creative writing so made that one of my favourites so I can go back to it. (I discovered how easy it was to mark an item as a favourite!) I did try out the search facility after some more study, but rapidly found out I could access more non fiction than otherwise. It would be great if patrons asked for a Frommer's guide to Cuba to tell them thay can read it through librarynet.The number of "How to...," books stopped me in my research-now have a "Simple Bloggers guide" marked as a favourite also.
The login is simple enough with a library card. I have to compliment the webdesigners on the "user friendliness" of the site. The set up showing a search platform is familiar to library users, and the simplicity of scrolling to find books in alphabetical order, plus the click on cover to pop up the relevant book impressed. If I have one moan, it would be that at home I do not have broadband,(hence doing this before Task 21) so I found detailed colour pages of covers or illustrated books, eg. like the superb 20 Hungry Piggies, took a long time to load.

Earlier in the day I had made a few notes through reading Librarything and the paper about the Amazon Kindle so I checked further into that. The thought of being able to load a bestseller in a minute amazes me! The name comes from the wish to "ignite knowledge" which I thought appropriate. The facility to hold 200 digital books and to be able to use the kindle directly without a tether to a pc or wireless hook makes it a word version of an ipod.Unfortunately, there's a hefty price (NZ$528)plus a price for downloading each item from Amazon. It will be interesting to follow that technology. The fact that Dymocks Australia last week launched a website containing 120,000 ebooks could be relevant. I smiled when I saw someone from ACL 2.0 had added the kindle it to our site...my surprise blown!

Task 20 Youtube and Faure!

Faure is a personal favourite- and his requiem is beautiful. I was thrilled that after fooling around with "Winter ski" appalling vanity reports I switched at a colleague's (Willow) suggestion to music, and typed in Faure...with the glorious result embedded below!
Agata Mazurkiewicz conducts the Berne Chamber Orchestra playing Faure's Requiem Agnus Dei.


To my delight other column suggestions on YouTube revealed a Kings College Choir singing Faure"s Pie Jesus and his Agnus Dei. Interesting comparing the music!

Task 19 Pick a Winner! Discrevolt!

After looking through quite a few, the music sites interested me and I clicked on Pandora-but it is out of bounds to countries outside USA so I spent only 20secs there. Discrevolt seemed a likely name so I clicked on it and noticed its colourful first display, noted the easy, search buttons and the logical set up. As not the greatest techno on the block, I was impressed the screen divided into Artists, Fans, and Features. Clicking on search flicked up more possibilities- if you knew the artist's name you could enter that- but if you could only remember the artist's first initial(surname) or the initial of the group, entering it popped up all the artists and band groups with that first letter. I put in U and Discrevolt suggested Umbrella Tree at the top of a list of eight. Further click on their name and I had a short but relevant bio of the group The name of their first release - would you believe "What kind of books do you read?" and the title of the one currently being readied.
To sign up the form is user friendly but I clicked on the "agreement" and found an enormous sheet of legal terms and details which I stopped reading after four minutes. There is another one for Artists and it is clearly designed to protect the owners od Discrevolt from claims etc. As it seemed to be USA based I decided not to go ahead- however anyone can use the site to check up on country, rock, electronic, heavy metal etc. For library staff it would be good to be able to check on popular american groups and their past and current releases.

Task 17 Extra !extra! Finally the link!

Misunderstood directions so thanks for your comment.
Have put in link on requested spot!
(Put it down to pre holiday rush!)

Zoho writer and *******!!!!!

Just a brief comment on Zoho since I've at last succeeded in making my blog comment on my holidays -see earlier blog Rhodos and Reunions .
I had used a word programme in my old computer (pre windows vintage) so many of the commands were the same. My earlier programme was much more simple to operate but then I couldn't insert pictures, I couldn't do bullet points without great messing around with almost every line, and it didn't save automatically! In other words although I was ready to start quoting the double edged dictionary at Zoho writer for quite some time I persisted.
A major part of the problem was the programme appeared with the headings and language entirely in German. As I do not understand the language it was "a Puzzlement" as the king of Siam once said in "The King and I" Earlier at work I'd logged on to a free account with Zoho and it was all in English so I knew it had to be a fault in my home computer. Clearly I'd done something wrong somewhere!
With experimentation I found the language button, switched it to English and Stars and Sunshine, I could understand Zoho! I Played around because I wanted to see if I could insert pictures into text and then publish the lot to my blog. Now feel smugly self satisfied!