School starts this week

School starts this week in Bonifay. School buses are back on the roads and classes are back in session. August is going past quickly. It will soon be Labor Day weekend. We have had severe thunderstorms the last two weekends in a row. Lots of rain fell, accompanied by a lot of lightning and thunder. We saw some hail and high winds too. We have not had any hurricanes in this part of Florida so far this year, but we have seen trees blown over, broken off, and branches down, along with some damaged roofs. At least the drought from earlier this summer is over and the grass is growing great. I'm looking forward to when it cools down more outside. The high 90's are just too hot outside for me. The days are getting noticably shorter and it will be getting cooler.

Busy Weekend

We went on a field trip with the Dothan Gem and Mineral Society to a river near Andalusia Alabama to look for sharks teeth. Everyone in the group found a lot of sharks teeth there. Some people found allegator teeth too. Then we went to the Lacy Black Rushing Museum in Andalusia. They have an amazing collection of rocks and minerals and fossils. It was a fun day spent with friends even though it was a very hot day.

August is getting off to a good start

I was able to participate in a class on Windows server 2003 at PLAN on the first day of August. The class was very good, interesting and informative. The labs were good hands-on practice. I think John Miller did a good job on the class. Thanks John and PLAN for continuing to help us learn more and be more capable at our work.

I've reached the 23rd thing - Reflect on the learning journey

Exercise #23 completing this learning journey. Reflecting on some new doors opened and planning to revisit several of the places this learning journey has taken me. I have attempted to answer the questions you pose for the finale of this opportunity.

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
My favorite discoveries were the websites that work with pictures. They were a lot of fun to work/play with. All of the exercises gave me things to think about. This was a worthwhile learning journey for me.

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
The primary affect on my lifelong learning goals is the encouragement to learn that this program and the people involved supplied. Thanks for the opportunity and encouragement.

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
There were not any unexpected outcomes from this program for me. There were a lot of take-a-ways. I won't take time to list all of them here. I do want to say that all of the assistance that Alicia and Carol gave so willingly is greatly appreciated. I have a lot of respect for you and your knowledge and skills and patience.

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
I think the website layout looks beautiful, the program is challenging and fun. There isn't anything I can think of to improve in this program. You did a great job!

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? Yes! I would enjoy another discovery opportunity like this. Thanks PLAN for helping us learn new things and making it so much fun. I am looking forward to more learning journeys.

Exercise #22, eBooks. I went to Net Library and read about them and about OCLC. Then I went to the Project Gutenberg site and looked at a lot of ebooks. I found a copy of Roget's Thesaurus to download free. It did not take very long to download the thesaurus as an MS Word document and it was easy to do the ebook download to my computer.

Navigating New Technologies continued

Exercise #21 Podcasts. I had to download the Quick Time player to get any podcasts. That took a little while. I like the looks of the hompage at each of the three podcast sites listed. It was easy to find interesting material to listen to. Educational podcasts are readily available at all three sites as well. I found interesting information about libraries. A person can try to learn another language through podcasts. There are technology information podcasts out there too. It seems like there are informative podcasts on almost any subject a person may be interested in learning. If I could have a wish, with the podcast listing, I wish they would all list the length of time involved. Podcasts are great with high speed internet access. Podcasts with dial-up internet access... requires more patience than I have.

Exercise #20 in Navigating New Technologies. The YouTube exercise.
I have never tried YouTube before this. I looked at it on a computer with high speed internet access and I have to say it was fun and very entertaining. Then I looked it up on my computer at home with dial-up internet access. That was NOT fun. It took what seemed like forever to load the home page and it did not get any better from there on. This is why I never bothered with YouTube before. If you don't have high speed internet it just isn't fun to wait to load the site and wait to load any video and wait and wait and wait and wait... you get the picture.

Still Learning...

Exercise #19 I checked out a couple of the web 2.0 awards winners.
In the travel catagory I chose to try the first place winner, Farecast and the second place winner, Kayak. Both sites were useful in locating flights to and from a destination at a chosen date and time. Both sites were really easy to use. The Farecast site was faster than Kayak on getting results back to me. I really like the user interface in Farecast. It is very user friendly. I will be using it more in the future when I am making travel plans.
I like this exercise.... since I need to complete the 23 things exercises right away I will have to move on, but I want to come back to this one to play some more another day. I wish I had more time.

In an effort to leave the zoho writer I clicked on save once more and this time it gave me the chance to give the document a name and save it. Maybe tomorrow I will try to retrieve it and see if that is possible. I am out of time to work on it any more today.

Exercise #18 in Navigating New Technologies.
Ok, I tried the zoho writer. When I tried to copy and paste the info from Library Thing that is in my blog it looked like it worked. The zoho writer document had the books titles and authors and even the graphics from the books covers. It looked pretty good and was simple to do. Then I tried to save the zoho writer document. It did not give me a chance to give the document a name and did not show me a path to where it saved. So I have no idea if I could find that document or edit it again later. Then I tried to publish the document to my blog. A window opened asking for a username and password. I don't know what happened to it after that. No more info was given and I didn't see the document show up in my blog. Did anyone else have success publishing a zoho writer document to their blog. If so, what did you do to get it to work for you? What do I need to do differently?

Still Navigating New Technologies

I went back today to revisit the PLAN Sandbox Wiki and played in it just a little more. I ran out of time yesterday before I could add a couple of my favorites to the favorites lists.

Exercise #17 in Navigating New Technologies is an invitation to play in the PLAN sandbox wiki. This is some fun technology. I wish I had more time to play today.

Exercise #16 in Navigating New Technologies is about Wikis.
Almost everyone uses Wikipedia, don't they? Wikipedia has become well known and frequently used by myself and almost everyone I know. It has become common to quick look up some information in Wikipedia. It can be very useful. It is quick and easily accessible. With the cautionary note that it is also good to get information from other resources as well. To cross reference and cross check information is another way to get more information. So I think it is a good thing. I did read the Discovery Resources to learn more about wikis. I really like the SJCPL Subject Guides site and the Book Lovers Wiki too.

Exercise #15 in Navigating New Technologies invites us to learn more about Library 2.0
I read all of the articles in the Discovery Resources because I find this subject very interesting.
Everything around us is in a constant state of change, so it seems reasonable to me that libraries need to recognise that fact and work with it. The article titled "Away from icebergs" comes the closest to where we seem to be at this point in time in my opinion. We have some challenges ahead of us in all areas of life. We can face them (maybe even embrace them) and rise to the challenge or we can try to run from them. The choice is ours. The future is coming.

Exercise #14 in Navigating New Technologies is revisiting Technorati.
The big news at Technorati today is they turned 3 and have just released an updated version.
I tried the suggested keyword search on "Learning 2.0" and got the results "No results for Learning 2.0 from http://technorati.com/weblog/ ". (I was using the Search this Blog search bar in the Technorati Tour page on this one.)
So I tried again searching using the search bar on the home page, typing in Learning 2.0.
This time the results I got said - "25,224 blog posts about Learning 2.0 "
Wow, that's a lot of difference from one search bar to another in the same site.
I still like the look of the Technorati home page and I'm sure I will be checking it out more in the future.

Exercise #13 in navigating New Technologies involves learning about Del.icio.us and bookmarking. I created an account in Del.icio.us and added some bookmarks. One thing I wanted to do was to link to the PLAN bookmarks in my del.icio.us bookmarks. I think that del.icio.us is not really easy to use. It needs more clear instructions for someone like me to be able to use it the way I want to. Or else I will just stick with my Favorites in IE since that is what I am more used to using and it is more straight forward and easy to use.

Exercise #12 in Navigating New Technologies is to explore, create an account and create a search roll in Rollyo. I created an account and a searchroll. Now to figure out how to link it to my blog.... Ok, it linked into my blog. I am amazed at how long the link info was just to get the little search bar that shows up in my blog. Now if it will work for searching...

Exercise #11 of Navigating New Technologies is to learn about Library Thing.
Library Thing is easy to use and fun. I like it. They let you create an account without too much hassle. And with some assistance I was able to link to it in my blog. I will go back and do more in Library Thing as soon as I get a chance to.

Exercise #10 in Navigating New Technologies.
I tried to use The Generator Blog site. It sounded interesting.
But getting it to work to do what they say it will do was not easy for me at all.
I tried to get it to make a pencil scetch of a photo that I put in my flickr photos.
It finally did it but not easily.
I thought maybe if I tried a second time it might seem to get easier...
but I couldn't even get it to work for me again.
Oh well, maybe there is something better and easier out there in the internet world.

Next I tried image chef. It was a bit easier to work with.
Lets see if the image I created actually comes into this blog.



It worked ! I like image chef.
It is fun to play with and easy enough that I can get it to work.
I look forward to playing with this some more.

Technologies Day at PLAN today

Hooray, we get to have another day to try out more new things in technology.
I am going to start out today on step 9 of navigating new technologies.
The appearance of Feedster looks good and it is easy to use, I like it.
Topix is neat. I like being able to type in a city and state and get specific news that is from that area. I have family scattered all around the US, so this is a fun and easy way to get news for each of the towns where they live.
LIS ZEN looks like Google with a different logo. Since we are all used to using Google it is useful, but not so much fun as some of the other RSS feed tools.
Syndic8.com is initially overwhelming at first glance. There is so much information on the front page! This one will take more time to explore. I'll have to come back to it to learn more about it.
Technorati looks like an interesting site. I will play with it more another time.
One additional note about the RSS feeds.
I am glad to see the adoption of the standard feed icon.

Summer vacation is over

Summer vacation was too short and went by too fast!
I had a geat time on my trip to California to see family and friends. The high school graduating class of 2007 was very large. And my niece was one of the seniors giving a speech during the graduation ceremony. She did an excellent job of it too. The graduation was held in Quakes Stadium, but they did not have any earthquakes while I was in California.
We did a few other things besides attending the graduation ceremony.
We went to Venice beach and walked and shopped and watched the people and the street performers, very interesting. I put my hands in the pacific ocean too. We went to the mountains where the temperature was perfect, the breeze was refreshing and the views were amazing.
We went for walks, enjoyed talks and more shopping. I got to see where my sister and nieces worked. We went to Hollywood and the Magic Castle and Las Vegas. I did not take near enough pictures, but I have many happy memories.
Now it is back to work, back to the routine.
Wouldn't it be fun to have quarterly vacations; fall vacation, winter vacation and spring vacation as well as summer vacation?!

June 1, 2007 continued

Exercise 8 Says to create a Bloglines account. I did that a few weeks ago and didn't even know that I was completing exercise 8 back then. I can see how I can use this technology. I think individuals in libraries can use this technology. But I'm not sure how the library as an entity can use the RSS technology. I think it is pretty neat that I can add the link to my Bloglines here in my blog. I'm giving it a try to see how it works.

Large Cattleya Orchids

Large Cattleya Orchids, originally uploaded by patkwilson.

Growing these beautiful orchids involves agricultural technology.
I'm not sure if that qualifies for something technology related as posted in exercise 7 of navigating new technologies. But it did not specify that the technology had to be related to computers or electronics. People learn more all the time about the changes that improve growing techniques of orchids as well as many other plants. People have been growing plants for thousands of years and still there is more to learn about it.

June 1, 2007

captionerflypuppy, originally uploaded by patkwilson.

To continue navigating new technologies for exercise 6, I tried out the additional tools/toys connected to Flickr. There are a lot of fun things to try. It was fun to add captions to a picture. I think it would be better if I could change the size of the caption balloons. But I couldn't figure out a way to do that.

June 1, 2007 continued

As I went through exercise 5 of the 23 things in navigating new technologies I saw a lot of interesting images/pictures in Flickr. I decided to open my own Flickr account and add a few of my pictures to try it out. Then I put three of my pictures from Flickr into my blog. This was pretty easy to do so I'm sure I will be doing it more in the future.

Calcite crystals in northwest Florida

nwflgems_calcitecrystals2, originally uploaded by patkwilson.

One more picture of a large group of calcite crystals. I wish I could have taken them home with me. At least I have the pictures of them to enjoy seeing them again whenever I want to.

Calcite crystals in northwest Florida

nwflgems_calcitecrystals1, originally uploaded by patkwilson.

This is another group of calcite crystals that we found on our rock hunting trip. They sparkled beautifully in the sunlight. There was no way we could take these crystals home with us so I took a picture of them.

Calcite crystals in northwest Florida

nwflgems_calcite, originally uploaded by patkwilson.

This is a large vein of calcite crystals that we found on a rock hunting trip in northwest Florida. It was much too big to bring home, so I just took a picture of it home with with me.

June 1, 2007

Today is a day at PLAN. I will be working on the navigating new technologies. I will keep adding to my blog as I go through the day and the activities. This is a great opportunity to learn about how some things work that I haven't had the chance to try before.
So far in the 23 things to try in navigating new technologies I have gone through the first four exercises. I have seen the tutorial about the 7 1/2 habits of lifelong learners. I didn't write notes as I went through it, but it is something that I believe is a good way to live. Life offers lessons for us to learn every day. Some lessons are more fun than others for sure. Just having the ability and opportunity to learn is great. I find that the subjects that interest me most all have in common the need to keep learning more as they continue to evolve and grow and even change.
I did create my blog, that's what we have here. It is still in the rough beginning stages. I am planning to improve it as I learn more about working with a blog. And I did email Alicia so she could list it in the 23 things participants. Also I have been in to look at Flickr. Next is to learn to use Flickr.
To be continued....

The month of May

The month of May has gone by so fast I cannot believe it.
Maybe because it has been very busy it just seems to go by fast.
Five days were spent in classes. Time well spent on interesting material to learn. Fun field trips with friends in the gem and mineral society, fun if you like looking for pretty rocks, was where some more of the time was spent. Silversmithing and beading and bicycling, caring for my horses, dogs, cats, birds, plants, and time spent with family and friends. Oh yes, and time spent at work. By the time I add in time spent grocery shopping, housework and travel time to do many of the things listed. I know I have forgotten to list something. Time to write in my blog has been very scarce. I wonder if next month will be better.

Next Class

I'm here at PLAN this morning for the Server 2003 class.
This is something I have been looking forward to.
There is a lot I need to learn about working with our server at the library.

My first blog post

This is my first try to set up and begin blogging.
It is part of the 23 things to do in navigating new technologies.
Thanks to the people at PLAN we are encouraged to reach out and try some new things.
Trying new things in technology sounds interesting to me as long as it doesn't get expensive.
Many of the new technology toys are just too expensive for my tiny budget.
Still I am interested in learning about new things.
Thank you PLAN for the encouragement.