Completion # 20

Well, I finally got here. It was fun most of the time and work some of the time. My favorite things were - Pandora, Hulu, Fancast and Google docs.

I'm not sure how this has affected my lifelong learning goals. I learned some new things and was reminded of things I had learned in the past. It reminds you that there is always something new out there to learn about. I don't think there was really anything that surprised me. I have been able to pass on some of the things I've learned to our patrons.

The only thing I can think to do differently is to make it shorter. It seemed like it was taking forever to get through all 20 things. Also, doing at a different time of the year. In the spring, everyone is gearing up for summer reading and in the summer everyone is going on vacation. There was a lot of time when we seemed to be short staffed and didn't really have time to work on the 20.

I would definitely do another program like this. I enjoyed most of 20 things. There are several that I continue to use on a regular basis. I look forward to learning more "things".

Gaming # 19

Gaming is a lot of fun. I have been playing online games for a while. One of my favorites is Mah Jongg solitaire. You can find it here - http://www.by-art.com/mjong/mjong.php. I would rather play the real game. There used to be one online at Uproar.com but they took it off a while ago and I haven't been able to find another one. I also like some of the games at popcap.com. And I have played web sudoku. Another site I've played at is riddler.com. I try a lot of different games. If I like them, I put them in my favorites. Then when I want to do something that doesn't take a lot of time, I can go play.

Maps # 18

This one was fun because I like maps. I have a Washington state road map from before I-5 was built. It has proposed sections on it. While I was on Google Earth I found the Olympic stadium in Beijing. That was fun. I didn't have time to look at the pictures attached to the map but when I scrolled over them, some of them were of the construction phase. I will go there again when I have time to look at the pictures.

The one thing I was disappointed in was the quality of the map when I typed in my address. Even when I zoomed out, it was a blurry picture. The rest of the maps I looked at were very clear. This was a fun place to explore.

Avatars # 17

This was kind of fun. It was fun to choose what you want to look like. Mine is kind of boring, I didn't want to get too wild the first time out.

I had never heard of Second Life. I would like to take a little more time to look around there before I decide if I would like to live there or not. This is all pretty time consuming and trying to fit it in while also working is hard.

Online applications # 16

I had seen Google docs before, but hadn't ever used them. I liked Zoho also. I will probably use them both more in the future. I like the fact that they are accessible anywhere. Now that I have created a document at Google docs, I will try to use it at home. I think these are tools that will be very good to recommend to patrons, especially for those who are trying to create a word document. Most of the time the patron doesn't realize that they can't save their work to the computer and become very frustrated when they are running out of time. Now we have an option for them other than saving their information to a floppy disc.

Search Engines - # 15

I use Google a lot. I have heard of Dogpile but had never used it. I had not heard of Rollyo or Mamma. I will use them more often now that I know about them. I think they all worked about the same for the search I did. I don't really prefer any one over the others. They all came up with about the same results.

Podcasting - # 14

I didn't really like this one much. It wasn't very easy to do. I listened to Kankakee Public Library and Washington State University. I don't know if it would be very useful for Sno-Isle. I checked on a couple of the childrens books that are podcasts and they were pretty easy to get to, if you know what you are looking for to begin with. I think Overdrive is easier to use to listen to books. I hadn't really had any experience listening to podcasts before. We have a patron in Granite who was interning at a radio station in Seattle and had made a podcast. That was the first time I had listened to one. It was fun to listen to that one since we know the patron!

I will try it again sometime now that I know a little more how to find them.