Week 8, Thing 19: Web 2.0 Awards

I explored Minti which serves as an online community where parents all over the world share and post advice about parenting and childcare. I especially like the format where you can easily search for the kind of advice that you want. You can rate the advice that you read. You can also post your own advice. In my case, I searched for "potty training" advice since we've had the potty training palooza at my house lately with my two toddlers.

Overall, I liked the site. You can get a free family blog there, which I may try. It seems to be an interesting way to connect with and even make friends with other parents worldwide. It's also a nice way to find advice from experienced parents. It's fascinating to read parenting blogs and advice from so many different perspectives.

Week 8, Thing 18: Online ProductivityTools

I explored the Zoho Writer online word processor. I am impressed with the online productivity tools and features! I created my document entitled "Spring of the Cats" with a fun story about my family of cat visitors. Then I inserted photos from my photobucket account. I was surprised about how quickly it pasted the photos into my document. Next I tried the publishing feature that let me post it directly to my blog! It was all very easy and fast.

I think that online productivity tools are wonderful. You can just save your documents into your online account and then access them from any computer with internet service! You don't have to worry about what programs are available on the computer since the word processor feature is part of the web site.

Spring of the Cats

Spring of the Cats

 

    We live out on the edge of a farm near a barn, so we do not get too surprised when a stray cat shows up on our doorstep. This first happened six years ago when a skinny orange striped cat whom we named Tansy made her appearance. One year later, our very funny Abner came meowing. Several years went by before a CATastrophic event ocurred during the Spring of 2007.

 

 

    The "Spring of the Cats" started very innocently when a small black cat with white spots followed my husband and kids home from a walk. We felt sorry for him because he was missing an eye, so we immediately decided to keep him. We had noticed another black and white cat that looked like our neighbor's cat following at a distance. The following day, the second cat planted himself on our doorstep and we noticed a third solid black cat lurking in the bushes watching us. On the third day, a fourth black and white cat appeared! Then a fifth gray cat came calling!

 

 

    By this time I felt overwhelmed with the crowd of kitties who were pleading for food and attention. We were also apalled because we mistakenly thought that two of the cats belonged to our neighbors who were away on vacation. They actually own a black and white plus a gray cat, so we thought that they had left their two cats to fend for themselves! We were wrong. The neighbors' cats and our two house cats were gleefully peeking out of windows watching the kitty saga that was unfolding outside.

 

 

    The cats appeared to be siblings and they were at least six months old. I was worried that we would have a further complicated case of multiplying cats, so I rounded up three of them to be spayed and neutered at the travelling low cost vet. We thought that it was best to take care of that potential problem while we decided what to do. I then began calling no-kill animal shelters and the humane society to see if someone would take them because it was very difficult for us to provide shelter and food for so many cats.

 

    Keep in mind that someone had loved these cats. They were all extremely friendly and loving. Two of them loved to ride in the bottom of our kids' jogging stroller when we went out on long walks! They were obviously used to children. We assume that a family had owned the cats, but had to move or for some reason couldn't continue to take care of them. Instead of taking them to the Humane Society, they abandoned them at the barn near our house in the middle of the night. I suppose they thought that the cats would have a better chance as barn kitties rather than being euthanized at the Humane Society. Since they were loving cats who wanted to be with people, they went searching and found us!

 

    All of the shelters that I called were overcrowded and overflowing with cats, so we began asking aquaintances and friends to adopt a cat. One of our coworkers kindly adopted two! We were very thrilled that two of them would have a good home and could be together there. We continued to try to find homes for the remaining three cats, but could find no takers. Needless to say, we have fallen in love with each one. They are all very friendly and love children. We are planning on keeping them as outdoor cats, but will have to think about how we will shelter them during the Winter. Meanwhile, we have noticed another stray cat hanging around. Here we go again!

Week 7, Thing 17: Add an Entry to the Sandbox Wiki

I got to practice using a Wiki by editing the "favorite blogs" page and adding a link to my blog. The only thing that scared me a little is that I accidentally deleted another person's blog link, but I hadn't saved the changes. All was OK once I hit the cancel button! But I see how easy it could be to accidentally delete someone's post! Yikes! The new thing that I learned was how to post to the wiki and link the post to my blog.

Week 7, Thing 16: Learn About Wikis

I had an eureka moment while learning about wikis. I had previously thought that a blog might work for my ongoing list of favorite CTR web sites, but a wiki would work much better. I am wondering if some of the things like Rollyo and bloglines can be used in a wiki as well.

I especially liked the SJCPL Subject Guides wiki. What a great way for librarians to collaborate and add resources and web links. With a Wiki, I don't have to know html to easily edit and make changes! That is a real plus. I can see how this would work really well if I want to try using it for the favorites list... especially since it is an ongoing project. I think that it may actually be a more productive way to update and make changes to my list since the list is a collaborative collection of my coworkers' bookmarked web sites.

The Book Lovers Wiki is a cool way that a library has provided a forum for their library customers to review and discuss books! It's also an extension of their adults' Summer reading program. I have to admit that I didn't really understand the difference between a blog and a Wiki till now. :)

Week 6, Thing 15: Read a few perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0

I read Rick Anderson's "Away from Icebergs". It made me think about how the Internet has really become a virtual universe rather than simply a research tool. During college, we had just started to use the internet for research purposes.

Now we are talking about Library 2.0 and finding ways to bring our services to customers and into their preferred environment. It will be interesting to see a Library related MySpace page. That's the next thing that I'm going to look at. I read that OCLC has a MySpace page, so I'll explore that next.

Week 9, Thing 20: Discover YouTube

I jumped forward to explore the video hosting site "YouTube". It was fun to locate old TV commercials and TV show clips that I remember from my childhood. It's pretty user friendly and easy to find what you're looking for, but also easy to find what you're not looking for. There are some pretty bizarre things there! I was amazed at how easy it was to paste the video into the blog!

I can think of ways that this would be useful. If a customer is searching for a famous speech, chances are they might find it here! You might be studying a certain era like the 70s. You can watch videos of commercials and TV shows to see how people dressed or how they danced, etc. It's a wonderful resource in this respect!

Scary?

My daughter used to be scared of the Honkers on Sesame Street. I think this video is so cute.

My favorite Sesame Street Song

This is my favorite song from Sesame Street. I loved Ernie as a child and this song almost makes me cry whenever I hear it. I don't know why! :)

Telephone Reference Tikes

Week 6, Thing 14: Discover Technorati

I just read a post that I found through technorati describing it as the "google of blogs". It does seem to be the way to locate blogs on a particular topic. When I began searching on the term "Learning 2.0", a
23 things learner's blog came up near the top of the list!

It's interesting to see the many types of multimedias tagged in blogs. There are posts, videos and photos. I looked at the blog "Boing Boing: a directory of wonderful things" because I keep hearing about it in the news and on other blogs. Technorati.com rates it as the most popular blog in the world! One of the posts has a discussion of Sesame Street characters that adults were scared of as children. Each post includes a YouTube video clip of the character! I initially didn't have much interest in the ever so popular YouTube, but I'm looking forward to exploring it more. I think that I'll skip out on watching the girl spitting video or anything like that.

Week 6, Thing 13: Tagging and Discover Del.icio.us

I have been looking for a way to create a favorites list of links for CTR. I have a favorites list, but I wanted a way to save the list to all of our computers including the telecommuting ones. Wow! This looks like a good way to do it. I wonder if I can create an account for my department. That way we could access the bookmarks anywhere. I will explore that potential further. I think that this is a great research tool.

Week 5, Thing 12: Rollyo Search Tool

It took some exploring to figure out how to create my own Rollyo search tool. I really like the idea, though! I put together all the animal classification and information web sites so that it searches only those sites. This has an extraordinary potential of being extra useful for me.

I have a huge list of "favorites" that we use in CTR to answer questions. Wouldn't it be interesting if I could categorize them and put create search rolls for each category? Then I wouldn't have to go to each individual site. I will definitely explore this more!