post blue2.0

so I graduated Blue 2.0 and wondered what would become of my blog. Just leave it as the assignment and forget it or make it into something that is me. do I have anything to say? stories to tell? would anyone read it? would I want anyone to read it?

so it's yet to be determined....

possible attempt....

do you ever have days where nothing seems real....not even yourself? maybe real is like normal and no definitive definition exists. we allow society to define our "norms" but society is corrupt. Does that mean our norms are corrupt?

this is where my head is today. not a place you want to be, but if you've been there and want to hang with me, i could use the company. ;)

Podcasting and reaching the end of Blue 2.0

I DID IT!!!! I finished my podcast and my Blue 2.0 assignments are complete! Thanks to Debbie for letting me use Reference's equipment and her insightful "words" and to Peter for helping me get the thing posted! And if you are curious about the bizarreness of the whole thing. I was given a list of words to insert in the podcast. I could probably have been more creative had I not been terrified of the podcast itself!

Blue 2.0 has been fun! I've learned a lot--which if I don't continue to use, I will surely forget. I have ideas to try out using different technologies we have learned. It's been a good experience and I'm glad I stuck with it to the end.

thanks, all!

Possible uses for Blue 2.0

Yesterday I met with Jennifer and Cheri who so graciously agreed to help me resurrect the KLA Support Staff Roundtable. I gave them a brief history of my involvement and experiences and after a few sidetrack discussions (rants) of the librarians/MLIS/paraprofessionals paradigm,we brainstormed and came up with the two basic issues to be solved first--what do we want the support staff roundtable to be and how to we convince others to come on board.

One of the difficulties with meeting with our colleagues across the state is the actual meeting itself--travel, money to travel with gas prices so high, convincing supervisors that this is a good thing and then just getting away from the library itself--especially in small libraries--all play a bit part in what is to happen with the roundtable. It also plays into how we get the word out.

To get my often bizarre scenarios out of the way, I told them about a dream I recently had where I won this big shiny white Harley. I said we could all get Harley's and ride around the state spreading the news and making connections. After agreeing that would be awesome, we got serious.

And here is where our new Blue 2.0 technology comes into play. We were all very excited at the possibility of having meetings via SL, although we realized that it may be hard to get fellow staffers on board. And while teleconferencing had been mentioned in the past, this one may also be difficult in smaller libraries. BUT we could definitely use blogging! It's free, easy and should be accessible to everyone. Podcasting is another option that would allow us to maybe have meeting and record them and then podcast it to the group. We were all truly excited at all the possibilities!

Getting back to Second Life, I think it would be cool if KLA had a presence there--which would also give our round table a presence.

So, you see, the Blue 2.0 experience has opened a lot of avenues of exploration. It has definitely been worth the effort.

I am going to attempt a podcast tomorrow. We'll see how that goes ;)

ciao!

Social Networking

The last two weeks assignment for Blue 2.0 is an introduction to Social Networks like facebook and myspace. My experiences:

Facebook: I have had a facebook account for a while. I think one of my students encouraged me to get an account and showed me a little about how it works. It's kind of fun to use. I like looking up friends and other people I know and checking out their profiles, etc. It's a good way to share information and photos with people that you don't see or talk to very often.

I do admit that I often forget about facebook until I get "poked" or have something thrown at me or any of the many other things available for people to "do" to you. And with Blue 2.0, I have a lot of new friends!

Some of the things are fun to do, but just like I don't like e-mails that tell you to send this message to 8 other people and see what happens, I don't like having to send something to a certain number of people before I can find out the earth shattering results of the quiz that will tell me what kind of kisser I am (or something like that).

I can see library uses for facebook--using groups as well as invites, posting on people's walls, etc. It's another way for us to connect and share.

http://here is a link to my facebook

Myspace: I think I had an account on myspace because someone had invited me. I found it the first time I tried after reading the assignment, but then when I tried again to pull it up, I could not find it again for the life of me. I had created an account with a bare shell of a profile. But since I can't find it using any of my e-mails, I created a new account with a little bit more in my profile. I may expand later, although I prefer facebook and don't see a reason to have both.

http://here is a link to my myspace

Classmates.com I have had this account for awhile as well. I get e-mails telling me when others in my time at Bryan Station have joined. So I go check it out. I like to see pictures and check out what my formere classmates look like now. I got some invites for a couple of gatherings--which I didn't attend. I e-mailed someone I hadn't seen in years and caught up with him. I have not chosen to update to the gold account so that I can see profiles, etc. If certain names which bring very fond "blasts from the past," I may upgrade, but otherwise I can do without the knowledge. :)

Ning Since none of these were new to me, I checked out the ning.com suggestion and ended up creating a page (again, just a shell at this time) with the Second Life Librarians (I know I'm not a librarian!). So that was fun. I haven't at this time created my own network. Perhaps that will come in time...after I take all the quizzes on facebook. hahahaha

http://here is a link to my ning Second Life Librarians page

P.S. I have been using my avatar's photo on these things because I REALLY hate photos of myself. I prefer to be behind the camera. So you will see Mal when you check out my pages. :)

P.P.S. The most frustrating thing for this post has been the links!

sharing photos

Activity 1 for weeks 9 & 10 requires us to create and share photos. The suggested image hosting site is Flickr. However since I already have a Picassa account with lots of photos stored, I thought I would try that first. I also use Picassa to edit photos--mostly cropping, removing red-eye, ocassionally changing from color to black and white or sepia--nothing fancy. I tried putting together an assortment of those photos to share but became sooooo frustrated that I gave up.
So I did go to Flickr and set up yet another account. I feel like I've opened so many accounts during our Blue experience that my head just might explode!
I actually found Flickr easy to use and pulled a few random photos--work folk, family, etc. to share with anyone who reads this....is there anybody out there? (echo echo echo)
One might note that my favorite subject is Nate. I just can't haelp myself. ;)

http://here is a link to my photos

or if that doesn't work try this url: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25053576@N08/

let me know what you think

YouTube review

Week Nine and Ten: Photo and Podcasting

So in keeping with the backwardness of my nature, I begin with Activity 3: YouTube. The assignment is to view library vids on YouTube, pick your favorite and write a review. Working in a library, it is natural for friends and co-workers to pass along library-related YouTubes that strike their fancy, that show our library or that are good, well-made vids on our "profession." And we even watched some at the last Blue 2.0 party! So I have seen many.
But for the assignment, I went to YouTube and typed in library as instructed and looked at several--some funny, some really stupid or boring and some that portrayed good uses of promoting libraries or instructing users. But I just kept thinking of this one I had seen quite a while back. It's my (so far) all time favorite. So I turned to my e-mail and found it (yea!) in a message from Benita Clarke.

The video is simply title, "Librarian." One can even sing along, "I want to be a librarian..." As merely a staff person, (the inner circle know that I am not a "real" librarian) I can envision myself in my new role. However, to the unknowing patron....I already am a librarian.

This video is just too much fun. It uses a little dark humor, music and maybe some secret wishes of what you might want to do to those patrons who just won't follow "protocol." So watch and enjoy!

nate

This is a photo Nate took--being silly in the car. It wasn't a good picture to begin with, but for some reason I didn't delete it. So I thought I would play around with the image using some of the tools suggested in our Play Week. This is using LunaPic http://www79.lunapic.com/editor/?action=load and I think I did the heat and mosiac functions. So it was fun and I would like to play around with more of these images.

As for possible library uses, we could greatly distort(make it hideous and scary)a photo of Jennifer and put it on the overdue/fine notices. This would "encourage" folks to bring back books or pay fines...or else they deal with JENNIFER!