Thing #23- Reflection

Altogether, I had fun doing these exercises. I knew a bit about most of them, but ended up learning more. I found interesting tools and resources that I may be able to incorporate into my work in Special Collections or recommend to students, and I feel a bit more involved now in the current age of library work and professional activity. I probably won't start spending all my time browsing blogs and loading photos on Flickr, but I was glad to have an opportunity to learn how they work, at least. And it's nice to have these tools all listed together on one site for easier reference!

Thanks again for our wonderful Learning 2.0 Team for developing this program and supporting our library staff! ^__^

Thing #22- Web 2.0 Awards

These sites were pretty interesting- I saw several that we'd used for this exercise, as well as others that sounded promising. I rather liked Pandora for Music- it's fun to discover new artists, and they made some good suggestions. The travel sites were kind of cool, too.

All these new ideas and sites are innovative and interesting, and I'd love to have more time to explore them all completely. However, there are only so many hours in a day and so much energy left after a hectic day in the library *sigh* But they're good to know about!

Thing #21- Audio eBooks

I'd never looked into audio books before- I tend to read faster than the recorder of the audio book and don't have the patience to sit through an audio recording. With text, I can usually read a book *and* listen to music- my busy schedule necessitates as much efficiency as I can manage. But I enjoyed browsing these sites, esp. the Project Gutenberg one. Lots of interesting links, esp. the Librivox one. I can see how people would enjoy listening to books rather than reading them, esp. if they do other things like driving and working out that don't allow as much time to read text books. I found several titles that I might listen to later, for more practice in foreign language comprehension and listening- it was nice to hear actual voices reading a text, with normal inflections and emphases. The recordings that come with textbooks aren't as authentic sometimes. The iPod and Apple computer thing wasn't a big deal- I normally just use Windows computers. This would be an interesting idea to incorporate into a visiting class or an academic curriculum, as an alternative to reading tons of textual material.