I can't believe I actually finished!!!

Seriously, I never though I'd actually finish. I did most of it on my long weekend working, many times between customers. But its done. Hurrah!

Here is what I've learned - I have learned that if you're really going to do this right, you need much more time. You could take a class on each topic. Like for instance - Zoho. I loved this - absolutely thought Zoho was the most brilliant thing I'd ever heard of - but I did not have hardly any time to really learn about it. I will try to go back and play around with it more and really learn enough so that I can feel comfortable offering it to customers, but right now I don't feel quite ready to do that.

There was just so much information packed all together- especially if you did it like I did - got way behind and then did like 4 weeks all at once when you finally finished all those "#%@*" performance management evaluations- that it will be hard to retain it all. I think it would be more effective to have an online training class about one or two specific things and you would set aside the actual training time so you don't feel rushed (as I always did).

It was very valuable information (and fun many times) but I definitely felt much more time was needed than one hour a week. But overall, I will come away knowing about Zoho and a whole lot more about photo manipulators and weird generators than I did before - and a lot of other stuff as well. It was worth it.

As far as life-long learning and how it has helped - It has made me more comfortable just playing around with all different types of technology - and has made me realize if I just click enough links I will eventually find the one that works to put the RSS feed into my blog. :-)

I'm glad I took the course, and yes, I would take others like it if they were offered in the future.

Overdrive

I have actually been using Overdrive for ages. Because I am in Popular at Main and we have the only 2 downloadable sites in the entire library system for Overdrive, I am very familiar with it. I've taken several training courses through Overdrive on troubleshooting for customers, etc. and I find it to be very very user-friendly. The one thing I don't like about Overdrive is they will not deal directly with customers, only with a library. So if a customer calls me with an issue, I then have to email Overdrive, get the answer, and email it back to the customer. I do not understand why they won't deal directly with customers. But whatever, its still great.

Books on the Nightstand - Podcasts

First - Podcast Alley - I found one about books that I liked the look of. http://feeds.feedburner.com/BOTNSPodcast is the link to this podcast. I don't really understand this one either. I couldn't get the thing I needed to download but then I wasn't sure if I even needed to and I hope just putting this link in is good enough.

Just in case it isn't, I went to Odeo and tried again. Here I found something that looked interesting to an armchair traveler - http://feeds.feedburner.com/AmateurTravelerPodcastItunesEnhanced - this time I was able to load it to my blog as an RSS feed - but could not attach it to this specific post. It is in my blog, however, the links don't seem to work. I am clearly not doing something right.

YouTube- Library Karaoke

I use Youtube all the time - I find it a very useful tool for .... what ? .... laughter I suppose. The video clip I used was actually taken at my house 2 years ago and has fellow librarians doing x-box karaoke. They had no idea of course, that their singing would end up on YouTube. I didn't either. That was the first time I even realized that you could just post little videos up for the entire world to see. Oh, we've come so far.
Here's the clip:

More digital photos

I actually chose Picasa from the list, which is a photo sharing, organizing, and manipulating site. The thing I like about Picasa is that you make it so that every picture you load to the computer goes directly to Picasa. I have a Flickr acct but I have to put everything first to my computer and then from there to Flickr. I don't know what the difference is, but every picture I load to my computer goes directly to Picasa, w/o any middle step. It displays photos so well - so much better than just the normal computer storage. Picasa has a lot of options for 'bettering' photos
like get rid of scratches, red-eye, cropping, etc. You can turn your photos into movies, collages, slideshows and other things. The photo sharing is so much easier and better than other accounts like Flickr, which you have to pay for beyond a certain number and the organization of the photos just can't be beat. In fact, I'm not sure why I even use Flickr when I consider Picasa so much better. I guess just b/c most people I know have Flickr and not Picasa.
So I guess my favorite part of this Web 2.0 thing was playing around with the pictures in different places. I did LOVE using all the photo generator stuff in Flickr so I guess that's better for that.

Zoho So Wonderful

Ok, I've finally discovered something that I will actually use and embrace and try to get customers to use. This is amazing. I had never heard that this even existed. If I understand correctly, there would be no use for floppy discs that the customers never have anyway. I just can't say enough about how thrilled I am to discover this and honestly I can't understand why anybody would ever do things the old way again. I am going to show all our customers working on resumes and everything else that this is the best way to go.

Sandbox Wiki

There is clearly something wrong with me. I am just not interested. I added my blog to the sandbox w/o many problems but I'm just not interested in reading everybody's else's favorites - or my own for that matter. I have come to the realization that all this stuff is too complicated for me. Is it really necessary to post your favorites everywhere? Does anybody really care?