Reflections

Well...

Good for KCLS. This was fine. My satisfaction is primarily due to :

- renewed sense of currency with technology and lingo to better understand the public

- fun interaction with fellow staffers at learning new things together. As a team building event - this was great.

- new knowledge of what skills are needed for us to become an educational starting point for these tools for the public - a role I think is a good one. We'd have to fully invest ourselves as an educational institution to do that successfully and i'd embrace it.

For next time, I'd suggest:

-Pairs or learning teams be offered or suggested. This would further bond fellow staff members.

-Themes be offered and learning objectives be framed so that sites, activities, efforts be directed toward something from the start. It is not too much to learn a new tool and try to create something useful- in fact that creates greater purpose and caring. For example- hooking teens, supporting Talk Time volunteers, helping parents - any of those domains would have focussed the activities and lead to something potentially useful.

-A logical extension of this activity would be encouragment to offer classes to the public re; some of our favorite new tools. What KCLS book group, for example, wouldn't like to know more about LibraryThing or using a Wiki for planning next quarters readings. Teaching is learning cemented.

I hope that all scale learning will continue. I'd suggest we all learn a new language, have an online book club, and create local promotional materials. Each cluster could maintain a carbon load log.

ttfn, thanks.

Turducken

Video Sharing

A culinary triumph. For ease, just buy duck and chicken meat. Yummers.

You Tube

Well...

I find You tube a wonderful mirror of society. The downside is it remains a playground of vanity. The upside is that it leads to some creativity, displays the breadth of people, capitalizes on the immediacy of the visual. In short order I could find Monty Python, a live birth of humans or animals, building a canoe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MstyFwhLy4

I didn't encounter sites that were trying to fool me or sell me anything; in that way it may be a more sincere and honest place on the web and it gives me hope.

Docs, Labs and Awards

Well....

Google docs are great. Still necessitates all the knowledge and passwords and intelligence of a popular computer user..and .. a great tool. I worry about too much reliance on such a distant cache of my stuff; the need for backing up remains greater than ever. These simple and basic ideas remain too distant for many public library users whose lenses I am adopting to try these tools. Also public library access is always going to be risky- crashes, kicked plugs, no toner - so we can only try to make it all work the best as possible. As stated before this is a great opportunity for educating our public on google apps.

Google lab is better than the Batcave and Q's place- found all doughnut shops in my zip code, tracked a yellow cab along I-90 and tried the 800 # to get connected to a voicemail for free. Google remains the premier portal for info finding. It is a triumph of mission control to not have pretty women and pop ups allover the site.

The Awards site made me sad that my friends video startup was not included but now I have a dynomite list of recommendations for future endeavors. The wetpaint wiki didn't seem so great. Got to go back to see if any travel/reservation tools are listed.