Rubys23things's Blog

LIGHTS! ACTION! CAMERA!

The video below is my first stab at trying out my new camera. I decided to take a video of probably one of the smallest libraries in Kansas and is also a branch library of Lane County. This little library is located in the basement of the Healy United Methodist Church and is open eight hours a week. Yesterday they received new shelving in the children’s area and so I thought maybe this would be a place to start learning about how to use my camera.

Here also is a look at the Lane County Library early in the morning before we are open. The whole process of working with the camera wasn’t that hard but I think the more you use it the better you get so watch out world you might be in my next video.

Flip Video Camera

What a wonderful surprise to be a lucky winner of the pink Flip Video Camera. I can’t express how much I learned from 23things. Every week was a challenge but rewarding. I hope to continue using some of the skills that I learned but a big thanks to the creators of this project and to all the instructors that made each week possible. I also hope that it is something that is continued in the future.

Week 16: Wrap-Up Webinars & Final Posting

Thank you to the instructors and the time that they put into making this project so successful. This has been a very rewarding experience. Some weeks were harder than others and there were also some weeks that I had some experience of the tool that we were using. Some of the tools such as facebook, wordpress, twitter, rss feeds, delicious, instant messaging and shelfari are ones that I use daily. I hope in the future to get more exposure to some of the tools and to visit more of the participant’s sites. It was very helpful to partake in the wrap-up webinar. The comments were wonderful. I hope that this type of learning will be continued in the future.

Week 15-Wikis

Many feelings came to mind when I realized this was our last project for 23 Things Kansas. It was such a great relief to realize that I had accomplished each of the projects. I was familiar with Wikipedia but I never did know that you could do editing on this site. For my project I went to Lane County, Kansas site and added the address of the library. I just pretty well followed the directions. I was able to sign into the 23 Things Kansas Participants Wiki through my Facebook account and added a new page plus was able to edit the page and write about what I liked best about 23 Things Kansas. The last final step was to link my page. I can see that working with a Wiki would be great if you were collaborating with someone else on a project being able to edit and add would be so helpful I must say that Eric’s directions were easy to follow on Wiki’s.

Week 14-Library Thing, Etc.

I have been a member of Shelfari since September 09. I have not visited that site since I joined. But after getting a refresher course I have added books for this year that I have read or that I plan to read. I also wrote a review of a book I just finished. I accepted a friends request and sent an invitation to a friend. I like having the capability to build a virtual bookshelf. This will be handy when I talk about a book that I can’t remember the title I will be able to show a virtual copy of the book.

Week 12-Slide Sharing

Downtown Dighton, Kansas.

You may view my slide slow by clicking on Downtown Dighton, Ks. I have used animoto before and thought it was easy and fast to accomplish. The step by step directions are easy to follow. I am not able to embed this into the 23things free wordpress but I will try to embed them in my wordpress webpage. This was a fun session and I hope to do some more slide shows.

Week 11-Screencasting

For this week’s lesson on screencasting I decided to show how to renew books through iluminar interface. What a journey this was. I have never done any screencasting in my life and I am not for sure I will again but I do see where it could be very helpful. My speaking skills would win no oscar but I did figure out a few things I would do differently the next time. Writing everything down that you are going to say can cause a problem because when you miss a word you are lost and tongue-tied but I did better when I used an outline of sort. The other problem I encountered was I used  screencast-o-matic and I should have uploaded the screencast  to youtube and I didn’t.  Because I didn’t do it that way  I wasn’t able to embed into 23 things free word press so instead it is uplaoded to my KLOW page where it may be viewed.

http://lanecounty.mykansaslibrary.org/library/how-to-renew-a-book/

Week 10-Video on the Web

This was one area that I had very little knowledge of but I was able to set up an account with YouTube and found the video that I really love hearing and enjoy showing to the kids in the library. I was able to embed this video into my blog without to much trouble. Now I would like to do some of this on my library webpage.
Well, I tackled the task of putting the video on my library webpage and what a nightmare. After help from Charlene I was able to get it on. But I still don’t know how the video shortcode is inserted in your post so that it will automatically adapt to your theme’s content length and give you preferred dimensions. So I just changed the measurement manually on the post.

Week 9-Instant Messaging

Well I have used Windows Live Messenger (I knew it as MSN Messenger) for quite awhile. I use this mostly to talk to colleagues where I need an answer fast and recently I have used Facebook chat as my main way to communicate with other librarians and friends.

I already had a Meebo account so I just logged on and was able to add other accounts such as Facebook, Yahoo, and Windows Live.  Our library has a Meebo chat on our web page so if a patron has a question they can ask us and hopefully get a response from us shortly.

I did the “extra credit” IRC channel after typing a nickname I got right into the chatroom. I can see where this would be useful for a meeting when you have just certain people in one room at a time.

Week 8-Cloud Computing

 I was not familiar with this technology term.  The hardest thing was for me to come up with a document that I would like to share with two other people. I decided to write a usage policy for our Sony Reader.  This has been a project I needed to complete for a long time and I felt I needed advise from people with experience of having a policy. I decided to use Google Docs since I already have a Google account.

 I can see that this could be very helpful as you would have access to documents anytime and anywhere. No more excuses that you either forget to download the file on a USB or forgot to forward to another computer.   I can see that this would be so useful with other colleagues when you need another opinion.