Well you guys, we did it. We got through our first semester, now we have three weeks of freedom! I hope you all did well, I think I did alright (except in some areas I do need to improve in, but who doesn’t?). I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday, I’m looking forward to seeing all of my class mates in the new year, bright eyed and bushy tailed! Don’t worry, you’ll still see blog posts!

Keep snackin on those gingerbread men!

So, I definitely signed up for Twitter.  I tried it once before but now that I have a reason to do so, I think I will keep up with it. I found it fairly easy to use, straight forward with what you need to do. My name on there is  the_one_kait if you’d like to follow me (don’t worry, it will be pretty epic). I think what I like the most about it was that it’s just straight to the point, no need for a profile or other information, just what you may be doing or thinking. It’s less of a hassle then, for example, Facebook. As for the application in libraries? It could be good and bad.  You would need someone to constantly keep up with it, so either a position would be made (waste of money) or someone is delegated to take care of it (possible waste of time). But on the good side, it would be a great way to promote the library to the younger patrons. One idea I thought of was promotions of books, getting the kids to come in and have a scavenger hunt with hints that are posted on Twitter, and the prize being say a book or maybe a tote bag/t shirt with a sweet design.

Personally, I’d love to have this in the library I may work in, more then likely public or school. Still, it is a gift and a burden at the same time.

Well, keep on pecking at that bird feed! (if you’re on twitter that is, get it? a bird joke. Ya, I know, LAME)

Well, the first thing I explored in Diigo was searching the tags for a cupcake recipe.  What I enjoyed most about it was that you could see how many people tagged the url. To me, being able to see how  many people tagged it, which translates to how popular it may be. I did the same search on Google, and much different sites came up, because in Diigo most of the urls tagged were blogs, where as on google they are professional sites, like Martha Stewart. One other helpful thing I enjoyed was that you could see the “hot tags”, or the tags most commonly used by the users.

Now, we were asked to use these social bookmarking sites, and I stuck with Diigo. One thing I didn’t enjoy was not being able to download the actual diigo toolbar, but they offered a bookmark toolbar add on called Diigolet. This works the same was the tool bar, just you need to click on it and it will stay up as a tool bar just as long as you stay on that one webpage. The only thing I am enjoying is being able to save notes on it, a plus for when reading articles and such that I need to study with. However, I’m finding it very difficult to create bookmarks. The only reason I will now stay with it IS just for the sticky notes and highlighting.

Keep Snackin, I know I’ll have my hot chocolate and gingerbread men!

I personally now love Google docs. I only played around with them for a little bit, but at the same time Jillian was editing it as well. I really liked this program because, unlike the wiki, it coudl handle more then one person editing the document at a time, and we didn’t have to worry about losing our information when locks were stolen and entries weren’t saved.

Another online application I checked out was Phixr. Personally, I’ve never understood how to edit photos and never really took the initiative to get any programs that can edit them. Well now I think I am addicted to it! It was so easy to play around with and it even had a little window that gave you what I would call is their version of the Microsoft Office “Live Preview”, and it helped alot!! Here’s the photo I had originally (1) and the one I edited using Phixr (2)

1

2

 

 

As most of you know, I missed nonprint today, and for a good reason. I CAN DRIVE!!! I’m finally independent, who knew? Lol so proud of myself though, I only lost twenty points (for some bad habit stuff) and passed parallel the first try!!!! Anyways, hope you guys had fun in class and I’ll see you all in class!

 

Hey, now we can snack in the car!

Podcasts, I’ve always wondered what it meant. I won’t lie, when I first heard that word the firs thought that I came up with was that it was only for iPods. The only reason why was because all of my own friends that had iPods knew all about it.

This is definitely my first experience dealing with podcasts, and really it’s not that bad. Confusing at first, yes, but other then that quite simple. I went through my iTunes and chose to subscribe to this podcast under Education all about Byzantine rulers. Ha, I know, I just love to learn and I’ll always be that way. I loved how iTunes podcasts selection was so varied and widespread. My only complaint about this system is when I first subscribed, I only had one cast to listen to. I did end up figuring out that you need to go back to that channel and hit the get episode, which is basically everything posted prior to subscribing.

For podcasts and the use in libraries, I don’t know how we couldn’t use it! Imagine you are in a public library and you are searching for a new way to put information out there. Well podcasts would be perfect! Once a week, someone could have a write up with what had happened in the library, new releases, and maybe even some suggested readings. There could be an option to subscribe to reviews written by those in the library, or spotlights on different authors that may offer to read for the podcast. Besides, it would be easy to have something from an author, since podcasts are all online.

Here’s my youtube video, please don’t take offense to it, I just really enjoy spoofs on the iPhone apps.  I know that I chuckled when I first saw it!

Keep snacking and make it a pumpkin pie!

 

So it’s saturday and I’m just copying out some notes to study from and I come across this movie called Call To Arms. Last week I had read a little blurb on it in the Projector. Basically this director, Randy Frykas, Delved into the history of the Royal Albert. It goes into the history of the music that went on there and it got me thinking. Winnipeg is a great city, we should be on the map for our talents that the people who live here showcase. We have fantastic writers and artists, but most of all we have the best bands. Just think about it, we actually bore some of the best bands out there, and we are mainly a punk scene. Ever hear of Propagandhi?  You should have, the really are consider one of the best punk bunds that hit the scene. I jsut wanted to put this out there for my sake and yours, appreciate this city, ya i might look bad, but think of what has come through here in the places we consider “creepy” or “sketchy”. Thats all

Snack on that

yes just an fyi we do have a midterm monday, it is open book and that is for introduction to libraries. Sorry for any misunderstandings!

To me, wikis seem simple. I read the article by Laurel Clyde,  http://www.teacherlibrarian.com/tltoolkit/info_tech/info_tech_32_4.html, and it gave me a further understanding on how wikis work. In my perspective, I just seem them as group blog almost. I use the word blog in respects that it is written and published on the internet, and anyone can read it. Other then that there really isn’t that much left in common. Wikis are seen as sources to find information, as well as a way fto work in business and educational environments. I think wikis would be fantastic to use in schools, this way everyone can contribute to the creative process. Without wikis, in group settings, we tend to do things individually then come together and present our ideas at the end of our brainstorming period. With wikis, this can be done at any time! All you have to do is message a friend and let them know that you are done with your part of the brainstorming, and they can go ahead and add their own ideas, that way there are no overlaps.

For the wiki created for our class, I just contributed to the already existing pages. I wasn’t really having a creative moment, but hopefully I can think of something to out up as a page for everyone to read and maybe add on. I just stated that Carlos and Murphy’s is a fantastic restaurant (being one of the only authentic Mexican restaurant), adn another entry on the Apocalypse list for what we would need.

Anyways that’s all my thoughts are on wikis, hope you enjoyed.

Don’t forget, an apple a day keeps the doctor away!! KEEP SNACKING

If you had asked me before last week what an RSS Feed was, I would give you a blank stare. Now that I’ve had a walk through using the link given to us (http://www.palinet.org/rss/toti/tsstutorial.htm) it really does make  a lot  more sense what feeds do, what aggregators are, and how together these two wondrous things can really help us in the library. My experience was quite simple as soon as I did watch that little tutorial, as well as the walk through we had in class. To me these were so user friendly that I had no issues setting this up, of course a few times I had to double check what I did was right. As in the article posted by Stephen Cohen (http://www.llrx.com/node/143/print), I am what you called an NTL, Non-Techie Librarian. But these feeds and aggregators are almost too easy to use, I can see what they mean by how you can get addicted to them. Anyways, that’s all I can really comment about on feeds and readers, for my use I’m just using the Google Reader. I had attempted to use the Bloglines but it truly was a little confusing for me, especially when asked to copy a whole OPML file into it, because it didn’t really work. Well, Let me know if you have have any questions on what I thought, I promise there probably is more in my head, I just need some more coaxing

Keep on Snackin!