Last lesson -- Mashup Editors -- YAH !!!

I just had an excellent idea about future learning 2.0 lessons. The creators of all these lessons should get an award by not writing blogs on their own entries. How's that?
Mashup editors still sound unfamiliar to me. I understand Yahoo Pipes more than the other editors. The only mashup I ever created is to link Flickr with Google maps. I still have trouble getting three web 2.0 applications link together and make sense.
When I created the lesson I created one mashup combining Flickr and Google Map together: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=4D_lktpi3BGdRIZjy6ky6g. But when I looked at it right now I have no idea what it shows on the map. It is about cute tiger moth caterpillar :(

Mashups

Now I need to write a blog on my own lesson. Hopefully my lesson won't confuse you too much :P It was created before and during the "famous" GSO week when I was almost toasted:( Anyway, I love mashups esp. those that associated to make fantastic photos. I still remember that when I took Photoshop workshop in graduate school, I thought Photoshop is amazing. But now I think many photo mashups are amazing. It takes much less of your time but provides you with great final products. Plus, you don't need to learn any photo editing software. Mashups would be great tool for library marketing. I love Maprr, dumpr.net, and Badge a lot. I posted an image that I got from Dumpr.net. Simply click the image and it will take you to Dumpr.net

Podcasts

Among the three posted Podcast directories, I like Podcast.net most. It listed all the categories on their homepage which is easy for me to browse and choose the category that interests me. I love video podcasts since I am a visual person and I learn best when I see something visually (it must have been due to watching so much TV as a kid.) Podcast Gallery provides some good podcasting software which is kinda handy. I don't like Yahoo podcasts unless I have a specific audio that I want to search for.

YouTube

I love YouTube since I can find lots of clips on cartoon animations for my daughter and Chinese MTV for myself. Also sometimes I search YouTube for teaching purposes. It is cute to start a library instruction with a nice piece of video. It doesn't need to be related to the class content. It could just give students five minutes to relax and enjoy a melody and be away from their busy college life. The followings are the top two videos that Zhuzhu loves most

Beyond the sea

You are beautiful

Processing Words on the Web

Okay, I will keep this blog entry straight this time:

• How does the application you chose compare to word processing software you're familiar with?

I chose Google Docs to create a couple of online presentations. I love the templates and the easy access to my presentation. It is interesting to think about some of the free web applications. Especially those that were created by big companies. Do they want us to be addicted to their products and then they suddenly begin to charge you for small fees? I wish they only want to get their profit from the ads but not their users.

• What features did you like/dislike the most?

I like the easy share features. This is a great product for group projects and team work among libraires in different countries. I am concerned about their server maintenance and privacy. I haven't looked into their policy part.

• Can you think of any ways the application you chose would be useful to you or to EKU students?

For students who already have gmail accounts, this would be a great tool to share teaching materials. Also it won't take anybody's own web space.

Get your hands dirty in the wiki sandbox

The beauty of Wiki is its editable. Everyone can contribute and build this online community. This would be a great tool for faculty learning community. Librarians could create a learning community and invite faculty and students to participate.

I once suggested my husband use blog for the Astrobiology group he organized. Unfortunately, he complained that it requires sign-in and creation of new account. Faculty won't do that. Now I have a better tool to recommend to his group -- Wiki! That way they could post videos of their regular discussion online, extend their discussion to outside group meetings (adding entries to their wiki), and send their wiki to people in the world who might have a insight on Astrobiology (Google can do that I believe). You know what, actually I am kinda interested in creating one for them. Oh well, I need to learn more about wiki before making any promises :)

Free web applications

Among the many free web applications, I think Google Docs would be really useful for both students and educators. I am just concerned who has the rights to have access to the uploaded files that stay in Google Docs' server. I guess I just need to read their policy stuff. Also I like Google geography stuff. I believe I am the only one on earth who gets lost all the time. (some off topic words: I still remember that when I was in D.C. for ALA annual, I literally passed by my hotel four times. One time I was lucky since the door man who worked in the hotel saw me in the street (he was pulling out his car from a meter) and finally showed me the direction and it was around 10pm. Oh well, come back to the free applications. I don't like MS but I really enjoy the Windows Live. I posted my blogs, photo albums, etc. all in one place. Also you don't need to pay to have album sets.

Search Tool

It is really cool to create my own search rolls since I am an online shopper (my daughter hates in-store shopping with me so I have to find ways to shop). As I mentioned earlier we love food, travel, and kids. Now I can create some search rolls in these categories and then do federated search. Not sure if libraries can use this to create search rolls of subject-specific databases and then come up with our own federated search tool. I guess the proxy authentication may get in the way. Wait, let me try it ... oh well, too good to be true :( But it doesn't hurt to try. BTW, the link to my Rolly searchroll is http://rollyo.com/nextgenlib/rollyme/

Gettin' wiki with it!

This time I approached to my lesson a little bit different. I watched the "plain English" video first -- What an amazing video! It helps me understand Wiki visually.

I like the Library Success wiki which covers a whole lot of information related to my job. The BizWiki is more friendly looking. It is nice to see a librarian's picture and know when he is online for questions. It shows that he is very approachable and wanted to help.

Do My Own Library Thing -- Experimenting first

Long time no see my web 2.0 blog. I finally got some time to continue exploring the fun web 2.0 world. I love the Library Thing so much. The search tool is very easy to use and it searches in my favorite online "bookstore" -- Amazon.com. I also like the tag tool. It is really easy to create and edit tags and tag clouds in here. I felt that it is really helpful that I completed the tagging lesson before the Library Thing and now I have a clearer idea about tagging and tag clouds. I love books about travel, food, fashion, and parenting. It is engrossing to read other people's comments on books that I have selected. I also like the group feature they have. I just need to take more time to play with the Library Thing and recommend this tool to my non-librarian friends.BTW, the URL to My LibraryThing catalog is http://www.librarything.com/catalog/nextgenlib

Several things I found from the Library Thing related to life and work. For example, the tags that user created would help other people find books on the same subject. Review and comments posted by users would help people select books. In addition, Groups is a nice space for readers share experience, books, and more.

Tagging

I searched W.B.Yeats and found 1,820,000 hits in google but 265 entries in eQuest. When I searched W B Yeats as a subject in eQuest I got 173 hits. Tagging in web and cataloging to me are just indexing methods. In web, the indexed page number just got replaced to urls. I remember when I took a metadata class in library school, we need to write a paper on the topic. I had no idea about metadata. Even if the professor said to me in Chinese I would have had no clue, much less in English. I still remember I was looking for Chinese translations for the term at that time and the only definition I remembered about metadata is that it is data about data -- huh??? After I actually worked in a library and became a friend of a metadata librarian, I graduatelly understood what metadata is. I think those tags for any search engines are just components of metadata. I am now off topic. Anyway, I like shopping and analogies. So tagging is like labels in department stores of each product and metadata is like the signages of different units in the store. For example if I want to buy a petite top. I need to look for the following tags. Macys --> Petite Dimension --> Tops section(oh well, no tag for that but when you see the clothes you would know). Tags are not like subject headings. They are just keywords. Being a keyword has its pros and cons. On the one hand you can find so many hits that has the tag you are looking for , on the other hand, the results may overwhelm you before you find your own tagged item. But people can just add more tags to their searched tags to narrow down the result. Now I got to a point about not sure what I have just said in here -- my two cents:P

RSS and information overloading

RSS is a great tool to get updated information. I have created both bloglines and google RSS account but I like google more. From a usability perspective, it is intuitively designed and since I have been using google for many years so the look is familiar. RSS enables people to select different news categories that interest them and get updated information on issues they are concerned.

A picture paints a thousand words!

Flickr is such a neat place to share pictures with friends and look at tons of amazing pictures. I also love many applications that could use for Flickr images. I wanted to try every single one of those. My daughter, Zhuzhu, loves "photography" -- oh well, she just likes to play with my digital camera and watch her videos and pictures. But I will introduce flickr to her and let her choose an application that she likes to customize her pictures (what a democratic mom :P ). I will join some groups on Flickr and make more friends. I also wanted to create a group. All in all, I am sooooooo impressed by other people's pictures.

I finally got time to read non-parenting books:P

Loving Each Other, written by Leo F. Buscaglia is a non-fiction book that I highly recommend for people to read. Especially for married couples. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0449901572/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-5291574-2897603#reader-link

Let's blog in Chinese then :)

I always wanted to generate a blog that only my Chinese friends (especially moms) can have access to. The reason behind it is that we are all far away from our motherland and it is extremely important that we keep in touch with each other and support each other. I am so lucky that nine Chinese friends I made when I was a graduate student at Indiana University Bloomington were pregnant in the same year including me. We reunioned Oct. 2005 and took a picture of all of us with our babies. This was the most wonderful experience I have ever had!!! That said--I wanted to create a blog only for us who could post Chinese kids recipes, share ideas, and schedule parties or trips. Another cool thing is that this blog can be all written in Chinese and we won't need to worry too much about privacy since google is not a smart search engin when use Chinese -- haha. Okie, I just need to find some time to do the blog.

All about Facebook -- Lesson #5

I felt I was lucky to have a facebook account. Despite other privacy concerns, I still love it and love to post pictures on facebook. Some of my previous colleagues and friends found me on Facebook. Among the three social networking tools I love facebook the most. I also love many applications that they provide. I hope they can have a feature that I could add music to my pictures so that I can knit music with images. Maybe it is already a feature but I didn't know.

What I learned from Lesson #4 Social Networking 101

Social networking is a powerful tool to connect people who may have never met in person, by phone or via email. I feel like it is easy to build a connection in social networking but the connection sometimes can be very fragile since it is all virtual. Many of my friends who have a Facebook account usually only add people they know as their friends. They trust their friends and thus allow their friends' friends to view their published stuff. Now it comes to snowball effect and the ball rolls bigger and bigger and the network is totally built up by trust. You cannot be too paranoid about how much privacy you release on Facebook since it may never under your control. To me, I believe there are much more good people than bad people on our planet so I have some privacy control on Facebook but leave the rest to the world with people who I trust.

Sometimes, I just feel like that I became more anxious than I was before (back to the time that I don't have internet). Nowadays, I constantly check my email, Facebook, MSN space, etc. to feel that I am connected. I guess this is just like the sayings -- "when you know more, you feel like there's much more you need to learn".

The simplest the best like 0 and 1. Mathematics is amazing!

I wanted all of my friends to know our cool learning 2.0 lessons

Today, after I read the "A Hipper Crowd of Shushers" I sent out our library's learning2.0 information to all of my friends and many of them are not librarians. Many of my friends are working for companies and they may never understand what I do for a living. I am sick of explaining to them but I still wanted to so I thought why not let them witness what librarians do nowadays. I also think that could learn some of the cool things in a nutshell within a short period of time. And hopefully, they will take their time to be away from their business world. I believe the power of networking and they may send out the link to more people.

My dream life :)

It is really hard to tell that I am an adventure (even myself :P) but when I have a chance to look back about the things I have done, I sure was an adventure. My dream life may come true one day if I am brave enough.

To be unrealistic, I like to live in as many places as I can throughout my life and maybe that's why I love to travel. (lucky me -- the only common interest between my husband and I is traveling :P at least we can have a consensus on this but billions of disagreement on millions of other things -- amazing! ) It is true that at some point people need to settle down but life is short and there are so many interesting places to live. Traveling is kinda different since it is kinda superficial to me. Jet lag, limited budget, and more which could add some negative factors to ones' trip. Also, many times when people travel, they just glance over places, eat good food, and visit interesting spots.

Ideally I want to live in a foreign place every three years that way I may taste a little bit deeper about a culture, a place as well as its history. I'd love to live in countries with long history. I feel like that when I visit a place with a long history it seems that I was riding on a time machine and time went backward ... but I am thousands of years younger than people who lived during that time period (haha).

Why there are so many realistic concerns that make me hesitated ??? Will I find a job that I like? Will my little sunshine get confused? Will she lose her friends? Will my parents think we are crazy? How can I ship our lovely king bed oversea? We are homesick and when will we feel like we want to go back home? but if we go back eventually, would we be happy? (STOP! are these called hypotheses? Yes, they are. Is it scary to think that every second I change my own history? but many daily routines may not affect the whole direction of my history. However, I also change my daughter and husband's history. Maybe history is not exactly the right word. oh well, my English is bad and my French is even worse. Let's just use history in here and people would understand. When I think about this, it scared me to death. The things that my husband and I do will totally change my daughter's life. She is too young to make her own judgement at this point. But why not take her to our adventure? I still don't know the answer yet but when I see my little sunshine smiles, I feel like that everything else is just everything else.