Grandchildren

Precious in God's Sight

Thing 36: Comic Relief: Generate some fun

Even though I had fun viewing the generators, the ToonDo wasn't operating correctly and just stuck when attempting to create a Toon. The generators I especially liked were those that make life easier for college students including the Son of Citation Machine and EasyBib. I appreciated the tag cloud creator and posted two on my blog to see which one I like the best. I added the email icons to my signature line in Entourage. I added a ToonDoo to my blog, but got an error message; I'm not sure what was the problem.

Thing 35: Books 2.0

I love the fact that I have 15 digital books on my Palm that save my place so I can start where I left off. My IPod has digital books from Audible so that when I walk I can plug into books. My observation of people at work is that the book is alive and well; everyone reads on their breaks and lunches. The library was always the gathering place for people to gather and discuss ideas, and yes, books. I think digital media enhances our reading experience for the better. I had college students that were absolutely dumbfounded that they could tap into the digital books online to read or research. I love the fact that the digital book has full search ability by key word or phrase. Fantastic. I can hardly wait for the Kindle to be available in color! I've tapped into LibraryThing and Shelfari and linked them to my blog and FaceBook. I added WorldCat and shared all the neat features with my students. Sites where group discussions of books take place are similar to the discussions we have around the dinner table with our adult children. Fun!

Thing 34 Is This Our Competition--Online Answer Sites

The appeal of a Q/A site would be frustration in not being able to find the answer on the person's own IMHO. I personally don't think that the sites are our competition, but then I've only been involved in an academic library and reference questions that we get are primarily project/paper specific. I didn't participate in the Slam the Boards event, but perhaps will in the future.

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

Travel sites are always helpful in college settings with students traveling to and from home, trips for school credit, and vacations. The Lost Girls was fun to read with nuggets of helpful hints. Boo.com was well organized. My Life of Travel is a nice set-up for creating a travel blog. Fastfood Maps is a helpful tool especially for traveling young adults.

Thing 32: Maps and Mashups

I created a map of my walk to work beginning in June at BJU. What an excellent tool! When I have pictures, I plan to add photos to the walk. This can be useful in numerous ways on a university campus by creating maps of sports teams and their year of games and dates, or classes and tours abroad.

Thing 31 More Twitter

What fun! I added the Firefox add-ons Twitbin, Twitter Fox, and Power Twitter. Excellent! I had already linked Twitter to my blog, but now I have added Twitterfeed to link my blog to Twitter. I had already added Twitter to Facebook, but now I've also linked my update to Twitter. Fun stuff! I tried the TweetSnap, but prefer my Twitter Updates that I linked months ago; it is cleaner looking. I added BeTwittered to my homepage and love it! I could spend hours checking out all the possibilities. I added my name to the Twitter Directory under librarians.

I think I'm at the Conversing stage and enjoy the process and looking forward to expanding further. Twitter is another connection to other people and ideas. I receive my Tweets on my phone and love the fact that I can stay connected even at work where our personal use of the computers is restricted during working hours!

Thing 30: More ways to use RSS and Delicious

My RSS feeds appearing in Bloglines have kept me up-to-date on several areas of interest since early 2008. The articles I regularly get from Ebsco-Host are the result of several searches I set up to come to my feeder. I exported all of my feeds, transferred them to Google Reader, and linked them to my IGoogle home page. I also linked all of my delicious links to my IGoogle home page and put a badge on my blog inviting people to my bookmarks.

Thing 29 Google Tools

I set up Google alerts long ago to track certain topics important to me - excellent tool. My G-mail account has been tremendously helpful to me at various times. I synced my calendar to my cell phone a year ago and have been delighted with the service.

The 800-GOOG411 is awesome!! Will definitely use it :-).

Thing 28 Customized Home Pages

I've created both an IGoogle page and a My Yahoo. Each one has a variety of services. On My Yahoo I linked my Facebook account and I like the fact that I can send cell phone messages from Yahoo - helpful for contacting students. Both were easy to set up. I've added games, puzzles, clocks, counters, etc. Widgets and gadgets are fun to add.

Thing 27 Twitter

I created a Twitter account last summer when I started following a friend. I enjoy getting tweets on my phone keeping me linked to others wherever I am. I changed my Twitter background and have a number of people I follow. I have a link on my blog. Come follow me.

I look at Twitter as yet another tool to connect with friends. Students benefit from following a library twitter to keep them informed of services and research helps.

Thing 26 Join the Ning

I joined the Ning in the first round of 23 Things on a Stick. I've changed the look of my home page, brought it up-to-date, and added a fun video. A Ning can be used in the library to communicate with staff in a fun way. I joined knitting in the library and look forward to communicating with the group.

Thing 25 Blogger Toolkit

I had fun with this thing adding widgets or gadgets. I started this months ago and just came back to it deciding that I really want to finish this before moving to Greenville, SC. I added the search box, clock, Meebo, slide show, and several other widgets. I decided not to pursue the tag cloud since it looked cumbersome, but I may decide to go back to it at another time. I spent a couple of hours on this thing, but could have lost myself in all of the choices. Fortunately, I have a temp job that is keeping us afloat until we begin our new positions.