At Last the Finish Line

Finally I have completed my 23 Things! It has been a great journey and I am grateful the challenge kept me in the mix, even though there were times I felt time-constricted. Self-discipline is always the "rub" where my lifelong education is concerned. I will never be on the cutting edge of new technology nor a master of it, but a steady exposure each week to even one new skill is a good idea if I don't want to "rust" even in the midst of active reference desk duty! In other words, keeping up sometimes feels like falling behind less than yesterday. Below I describe my last tasks in this particular learning cycle.

Number 18. Online Productivity Tools
For some time I have been interested in finding a way to make daily work more organized via my computer. I had been considering my Google page as a potential work central station! and added a calendar, notebook, sticky-notes, and and a to-do list on that page, along with weather info and some other useful gadgets. In my toolbars I have oft-used tools at hand. When I learned that Google was promoting an online word processing application I was intrigued. I have created a test document in GoogleDocs and I selected the "publish" option so others can view it, which is done by making the link available as I have done here. There are other options: one is to allow others not only to view but to collaborate and actively edit the document; and there is the choice to keep it private by using neither the "share" nor the "publish" options.

Number 19. My Maps on Google Maps
I have used various online mapping for a long time. I like both MapQuest and MapBlast. They were my first experiences and I have a natural level of comfort with them. The "get directions" feature is helpful when planning trips, and for determining the mileage and travel time between locales.

Using Google Maps/My Maps I created a map for the San Luis Obispo City-County Library with a description and a photo which I took with my digital camera.

I struggled quite some time getting things correct in my Google map. What started out seemingly easy became difficult as I had problems moving with ease between maps and photos. Either my laptop is suffering from low processing capacity or I encountered sluggish Internet access -- or just a quirky Google application. Most of Google's applications are user-friendly, but I think Google Maps needs some additional work. I eventually got the photo loaded and displayed on the street map. But I would like to have shared the map in this post with the photo embedded. But when I attempted to use Google Map's embedding feature, a message popped up saying that it was not available for the map I had built.

Number 20. YouTube
Originally I considered YouTube an amateur talent showcase or a posting site for home video users, with a "MySpace" flavor. But during the last couple of months I've discovered that YouTube is a marvelous reservoir of information and instructional resources. I have used it to research candidates running for office and catch speeches and interviews I missed. Some of the instructional videos I've enjoyed include Chinese Ink Painting and an introduction to French.

Number 21. Podcasts
Locating podcasts is easy using directories such as Podcast Net and Podcast Directory that provide category collections, and Podcast Alley that features the most popular podcasts voted on by viewers. Apple, Yahoo, NPR, CNN and other media networks provide podcasts.
Podcasts are a growing technology used by most sites that want to dispense music and information, "including software, updates, pictures and videos," according to David Berlind of CDNetNews.

Information on creating podcasts is easily found too. PodCast411 includes tutorials and software information and a podcast search feature that provides a drop-down menu for category search. In addition it includes a forum.

Number 22. Sharing My Web 2.0 Learning
I showed one of my colleagues several of the 23 Things tasks. We looked at Rollyo and several online image generators and LibraryThing. Our experience with Rollyo was similar to my first experiences -- it was balky and slow and the results did not seem any more useful than if we had performed a Google search. Exploring image generators is always like stumbling into a playground. I gave my colleague a copy of my 23 Things list and she started exploring some of the tasks independently.

Number 23: Summary of my experience.
It has been a worthwhile journey to take the 23 Things challenge, and it definitely has been challenging in both skill and time. I often relied upon weekends and evenings since they were free of work demands and interruptions. But if I am going to keep current I'll need to find a way to explore new tools daily while on the job.

The things I found especially useful and fun include Del.icio.us, GoogleDocs, image generators, LibraryThing, and YouTube and blogging, although both of the latter were a part of my life prior to this project. On the other hand I had explored Del.icio.us before but never quite got the hang of it until taking an InfoPeople Web 2.0 class. Spending an afternoon away from work and focusing only on a few Web 2.0 tools gave me the opportunity to appreciate Del.icio.us. Now, Technorati? I need to re-visit Technorati to recall how it is used. I have yet to unravel the specific uses of the numerous tagging and tracking tools available and comparing their uses. And I still am puzzling over how I would want to use Twitter or bother recording my daily tasks their for others to see, versus keeping a daily notebook for example.

Browsing for some insight into the wisdom of others using online tools, I came across an article by Lorelle VanFossen that describes the judicious use of tagging, and the focus of the different tools. She writes: Digg specializes only in articles dealing with technological issues and products like hi-tech, blogging, Internet, web, computers, space, music, video, and cell. Technorati and Del.icio.us cover a wide spectrum, as does Spurl, Furl, Bloglines, and others, though the most popular topics tend to cover technology, current events, and politics. Slashdot has several categories of subjects, but they also tend to cover technology for the most part.

Another of the social bookmarks that has not gained as much popularity as some mentioned here is Connectedy. Some time back I selected it for building and sharing our central library's reference bookmarks with our other 15 branches. It has been useful, however one of the other tools may be better; and this is one of the challenges of Web 2.0 -- finding the most applicable tool.

I have noticed that many of the librarians who participated in the 23 Things have gone on to other challenges already... I'm not as speedy, but I'm on my way! I want to thank InfoPeople for offering Web 2.0 introductory classes, as well as incentives to keep me motivated and challenged.