First 5 blocks of my Harry Potter quilt!

Staying Current

I certainly learned a lot of Things - more than 23, I'm sure! I hope my head doesn't explode. Could be messy.

I do resolve to keep up with many of the Things. I will definitely go back to the Neflins23Things blog and dig deeper into a lot of the resources that I didn't have enough time for. I can't truthfully resolve to keep up with this blog. I would probably be the only one reading it! I hope that doesn't disqualify me for the prize!

I think that this project has been incredibly worthwhile. I now have more tools in my library toolbelt, and I'm more familiar with applications the patrons may be using. Thanks, Neflin and fellow Thingers! (Oops! - I decided to look that up. I didn't mean to call you that!)

Student 2.0 Tools

Wow - this really shows the value of open source code. The Assignment Calculator is pretty good, but the Research Project Calculator is a nice improvement on it. As i explored it, I kept thinking about what a good resource it would be for homeschoolers. The teacher guide has a bunch of great tip sheets and work sheets for teachers and homeschooling parents to give to their students. It's nice that the sheets are provided in both pdf (nice for printing) and doc (easy to make changes).

A couple of tip sheets caught my eye, though, but not necessarily for students. I think a lot of library patrons could make use of the "Improve your Google Search", the "10 Questions for Evaluating Web Sites" and the "Copyright and Fair Use" tip sheets.

Books 2.0

I have always been a fan of e-books. I had an ebookman until the battery died, and a Sony Clie until the battery died. For each device, by the time the battery died, the company stopped supporting it. But while I had them, I loved them! My Clie was small and light and held LOTS of books. I downloaded a bunch of free content and even read my subscription to Fantasy and Science Magazine on it. How convenient to be able to pull it out of my purse or pocket while waiting in line at the store! I would love another ebook reader if I could afford it.
BooksInMyPhone sounds great, but my phone is grounded right now. No more phone Internet until my credit card is paid off! I saw a Kindle a few months ago and thought it was way cool!

Readers Advisory - I looked at Reading Trails and wasn't that impressed - I think it will be better when more people participate - so I tried Booklamp. I just don't know how valuable it is to recommend books based on those criteria. And they haven't analyzed very many books yet.

Book Communities - I liked Overbooked. It's easy to navigate and has a lot of information!

Book Group Resources - I looked at Booksprouts and it sounds great. An online book group sounds like fun!

Audiobooks - I looked at Librivox. I think it's a nice idea to get volunteers to record public domain books, but I wonder what the quality is. I probably wouldn't try it because there are enough professionally recorded audiobooks for me to listen to, but it might be good for someone who listens to more books than I do.

Book Reviews - I looked at BookBrowse and I really liked it. It's a nice-looking site and it seems to have a lot of good content. The only hesitation I have is that they claim to feature "only the most interesting and well written books" and that seems a little elitist to me.

Book Rental - I looked at BooksFree. Seems like a great idea for people who can't get to the library. Looks just like Netflix and I LOVE Netflix.

I added WeRead to my Facebook profile. I was happy to find that one of my friends was already using WeRead also. The bad thing about WeRead was that it was almost impossible to use it at work. It took half an hour to do what I did at home in 2 minutes.

I'm so glad Neflin is leaving 23 Things up. There are so many resources that I want to spend more time exploring!

Other Social Networks

I was surprised to see I already belong to 3 of the social networks listed! My sister invited me to Flixter, but I wasn't too impressed. After I put in my favorite movies I had strange men from all over the country wanting to talk to me. Yuck! I joined Craftster a long time ago and I love it. And I joined Shelfari quite a while ago, too.

I looked at Gather and found a group to join, All Crafts, that seems really good. I love craft sites that have videos, photos and step-by-step instructions.

Well, after looking at the Wikipedia list of social network sites I realized I belong to even more social networking sites! My husband's long-lost niece in Scotland invited me to Bebo to see pics of her new house and husband. And I used Classmates.com to contact old classmates and to look at pictures that show how old everyone has gotten (except me). I didn't know I was so sociable!

Facebook and MySpace

I already had a MySpace page. I created it a couple of years ago so I could keep up with what my daughter was doing on it. I thought it was fun to decorate it. My profile is at http://www.myspace.com/summertent, but keep in mind I haven't done much with it. Feel welcome to be my friend!

I set up a Facebook page, too. See my Facebook badge on the right. I found a few friends and joined the Librarians and Facebook group and the They Might Be Giants Fan Club.

I actually like Facebook better because it is more predictable. You can show your personality more on MySpace, but Facebook seems to make it easier to find friends and to communicate with them. I think both have their place in the world. I guess it depends on your priorities. I like the teen pages that some libraries have done. I think it makes sense to do it on both MySpace and Facebook. From what I've observed it seems like more of the teens use MySpace, so if we were going to pick one, it should be that one.

Podcasts

I used Podcast.com to subscribe to a podcast, but I found it a little confusing. I subscribed to the Friday News Feedbag by Discovery News. I'm not sure what it means to be subscribed. I downloaded 2 podcasts to my computer, and I think I put them in my playlist. The only RSS feed I could find for my google reader was for the playlist, so I did that, and when I looked at my google reader, sure enough, there they were. But I thought the RSS feed was for notifying me of new podcasts, not letting me know what I already have. I feel stupid. Well, at least I know how to download and listen to them. Now I can listen to interesting stuff on my mp3 player while I walk the dogs!

Eek! I only have 3 days to do 6 more Things! Panic time. I know the 23Things blog is staying up, but I'm a very prize-motivated person!