Saturday, October 27, 2007

Task 23 - The Finish Line

Wow - and what a journey it has been. I can say without a doubt that I have been challenged over the past weeks. My favourite Tasks were Library Thing, Youtube, image generators, del.icio.us and podcasts. The most difficult task for me was RSS feeds.

A working knowledge of Library Thing will definitely come in handy as Kingston Libraries is using it in conjunction with our Library Catalogue. It will be a another resource for readers advising. The best thing about it was that it was so easy to use and I think it will become popular with the general library public.

Youtube and video downloads was just plain fun. It was great to be able to locate videos that had been sent to me via email; and also its great that videos exist of some of the old favourites (like Charlie Brown).

Thanks for a great time -

Barb

Task 22 - eAudiobooks

This post is from the perspective of a Youth Services Librarian - my favourite type of books are picture books. eAudiobooks are not suitable for this format, as the illustrations are what make the books.

Also, when looking that the suggested websites, the emphasis is on U.S. literature and awards and much of the eAudiobooks are "Classics". I feel that these sites fail to cater to the specific group of youth who like reading non-fiction for pleasure -there are no dinosaur, shark or insect titles; and the Children Books Awards Highlighted are the Caldecott and Newberry Awards (U.S.) There were no titles by A. Griffiths or D. Pilkey listed.

This having been said - I do see the advantage of eAudiobooks for the Adult population. I listen to a large volume of Audio Books and I could see myself downloading eAudiobooks for my own personal use. With the availability of eAudiobooks, comes the responsibility of educating the aging population in the use of the "new technology". We still have some patrons that have been unable to make the jump from Audio Books in tape format to Audio Books in Cd format.

Just One More Book

When I was searching for podcasts, I found this marvelous site called Just One More Book, which is listed in my previous post concerning podcasts.


The website does podcasts of author interviews, books and has a list of authors on the right hand side of the page, and is a tremendous resource for reading advisory for children. In addition to this, I found a link to Robert's Snow: for Cancer's Cure (see below). How great would it be to have a Christmas ornament illustrated by Graeme Base!

"It’s not too late to start saving up for your very own Robert’s Snow Snowflake.

Perhaps you’ll choose A Bundle of Love by Graeme Base. Bidding on Graeme Base’s snowflake, “A Bundle of Love”, takes place November 26-30, 2007.

Robert’s Snow: for Cancer’s Cure is a unique fundraiser for cancer research. Between November 19th and December 7th, 2007, you have the chance to bid on 200 wooden snowflakes, hand painted by prominent children’s illustrators, through a series of three online auctions.



Robert’s Snow: for Cancer’s Cure is a unique fundraiser for cancer research. Between November 19th and December 7th, 2007, you have the chance to bid on 200 wooden snowflakes, hand painted by prominent children’s illustrators, through a series of three online auctions."

Podcasts - Task 21

Monday, October 22, 2007

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Task 18 - Zoho Writer; Task 19 - Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

Zoho Writer: - I enjoyed playing with this site - what I tried to do was to use a template for Recipes and then add my own recipe for Gingerbread Houses. I found it difficult to get the page to down load the way I wanted it to, and probably should have just created my own word document from scratch. It took about 6 tries with font size, justification, etc to finally get it to load properly on the page. I still have double spacing between the instructions which I tried changing multiple times.

Web 2.0 tools - I had good fun with this - I updated my Library Thing with tags and had a play - felt this was a good site to become comfortable with as our library is using it with our catalogue. I also has a go at downloading Flickr pictures.

I video sites and found YouTube to be the easiest to find specific types of videos; and the music sites have their limits due to copyright restrictions.

Another photo from Flickr



Someone's been eating my House!

Gingerbread House Photo from Flickr

Friday, October 19, 2007

Gingerbread Dough - Zoho Writer



Creating Recipe


Name of the Dish: Gingerbread House Dough

Type: Dessert

Serves: Unlimited

Ingredients

    1 cup Melted solid Crisco (copha)

    1 cup Granulated sugar

    1 cup Light Karo Syrup

    2 Large eggs, room temp.

    1 tsp Salt

    1 tsp Baking soda

    1 tsp Ginger

    2 tsp Cinnamon

    1 tsp Cloves

    1 tsp Nutmeg

    5 1/2 cup to 5 3/4 cup Flour or-more to very stiff


Directions


Method : To Mix GB Dough:  Pour

melted Crisco into mixer bowl.  Let

cool slightly; add sugar and Karo,

 blending well.  Add eggs, mising

all until smooth and creamy.  Add

salt, baking soda and spices into

mixture and begin to add flour, just

 a little at a time.  Knead the flour in

when dough becomes too stiff for mixer. 

Don't hurry this step!  Continue adding

 as much flour as the dough will absorb.

To Roll Out Dough:  Refrigerate dough

before using.Cut pieces of the dough

to roll out.  Roll between two pieces of

waxed paper.  The dough should be a

pproximately 1/4 inch thick.  Cut the

gingerbread house pieces out and place

on foil.  Leave about 1 inch between pieces. 

Slide the foil onto cardboard and put in oven. 

Remove the cardboard before shutting the

oven door.Bake house pieces at 375 degrees F

(180 degrees C) for 5-8 minutes, or until the

edges are light brown.  Silde the cardboard under

the foil to remove the pieces from the oven. 

Cool on a flat surface and remove from

foil once cooled.


 

 

Discovery Tasks 16/17 - Wikis

Really enjoyed this module - and I can see many useful ways to use Wikis. On the other hand, I'm a bit hesitant to give an overall acceptance for the technology. I would love to use the technology in creating reader's advisories for children and young adults, where the kids can add to the wiki. My hesitation is in the area of reference or the gathering of information - too many children already see Wikipedia as a primary reference source (some teachers do too).

I hope we can use this technology on our Library webpage at some later date.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Task 14 - Technorati Widget

This shows what users are searching for at the moment


View technorati.com

Technorati Top Tags
Technorati Top Tags


Technorati Top Searches
Technorati Top Searches

Task 13 - Tagging, Folksonomies and Social Bookmarking

Here are my favourites on Del.icio.us

http://del.icio.us/puppets222


Saturday, September 29, 2007

Library Thing





Some of the Books I've been reading lately.

Barb

Task 10 - Image Generators


gif animation

Here's the link:
http://www.fodey.com/generators/animated/talking_owl.asp

Hope we WIN - GO STORM

Discovery Task 9

I have successfully fed a few interesting feeds into my bloglines. Technorati and Topix.net were my favourite new feeds because they both were easy to locate specific information - Entertainment, Sport, etc. Also, Technorati has 100 favourite blogs which is fun to look at. I was also able to add Choice Magazine from Kingston's database subscriptions and a journal called Marine Biology to my bloglines.

When I looked at my favourite site (Amazon.com) I was unable to see a RSS feed on the site. I then looked at Kathy Reichs site and found that she subscribes to a RSS called Newsgator - a free service. My question is, must I subscribe to Newsgator to receive the RSS feeds, or may I use Bloglines?

I also found the ALIA has a RSS feed to it's website!

Barb

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Bloglines - Discovery Task 8

I've tried my hand at bloglines - quotes are my first choice, animals second, and news last. Have a look at:

http://www.bloglines.com/public/puppets222

I hope this is right, as my browser view for Bloglines is different from the screen dump in the lesson plan. (the share feature and public bloglines)

Barb

Monday, September 24, 2007

Discovery Exercise #7

Back in the olden days, I took a computer course in University called "Fortran Programming". Our first "home computer" was an Ohio Scientific which was traded in for a Commodore 64. Next came a lap top NEC 8201 which was traded in for our first IBM compatible. Email was unheard of in those days, and our camera (a Nikon) is now considered a classic. Music was still on vinyl (collectable these days) and our first mobile was literally the size of a brick! - we really have come a long way.

Discovery Exercise #6

This morning I had a looked at FD Toys and found a game called Guess the Title
A fun, multi-player photo guessing game. Quick wits and fast fingers are the keys to this game. Some of the pictures are easy, but boy, some of them are difficult. You can play against yourself or play against other players.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Storm's Friend


This is Storm's best friend - her name is Raven

The Other Storm


This is the other Melbourne Storm

Friday, September 14, 2007

Melbourne Storm

Storm vs Rabbito's - "Go Storm"!

Welcome

Hi Everyone:

This is my first try at blogging. It's not too difficult - but I hope to be more creative in the future after I (get my wings).