zoeysmum

Week 2 - Picapp

2010-09-24T01:56:00.000-07:00

Well this looks like quite an interesting site, you could spend ages searching for pictures that you liked for different things. Personally I like the animal pics best. I found one I liked to use for my blog.
This could be a good site to recommend to the customers but I am not sure what they would use them for, but if kids are doing homework or projects the images might be really useful.
Well I have just spent ages trying to get the photo to load, i copy and pasted the embedded code but it just kept telliing me that it was an invalid code. I will try again but I might give up if it doesn't work

Web 2.0 round 2. week one Box.net

2010-09-15T01:56:00.000-07:00

Well here we go again.
I am off to a slow start this time round, not sure why but making a start now.
I have had a look at Box.net and watched the tutorial video. I haven't made an account yet but will do that in the next day or so. We seem to be making a lot of accounts during the process of web 2ing. What will happen to all these accounts, i wonder? Will they just stay out there in cyber space? Do we have to retrace our steps and delete all the accounts we no longer require? I think that's what I will be doing.
Well, I gave it a go but I prefer to save anything I need on either google.docs or email it to myself. I wasn't keen on Box.net Oh well, on to week 2 .............

The final summing up

2010-05-21T01:48:00.000-07:00

Now that I have completed the six tasks I can comment on the whole experience. I have to say that this time round I found it much more pleasant and enjoyable than I did that last time we launched into web 2. I am not sure if the tasks were simpler, or the explanations were better than last time or whether I am a bit more confident with computers now, but whatever the reason, it seemed much more straight forward and logical this time.
I would also like to thank Catatonia for all your helpful comments and I will follow up with some. I am especially grateful for the link on week six.
It has been a journey of growth, and I know there is still a lot to learn but each time I learn something new it adds to the knowledge I have already gained. At this rate I should be a genius by the time I retire, well maybe not, there will always be more out there to baffle me. Just as I think I am gaining ground there are more things invented or thought up to keep me on my toes. But I am keen to keep learning and keep on keeping on.
I would like to finish this session of web 2.0 with one of my favourite sayings, by Émile Coué de Châtaigneraie -
Every day in every way I am getting better and better.

Week six Facebook

2010-05-15T00:38:00.000-07:00

So here I am at week 6 and Facebook. I have had a Facebook page since we last did Web 2 training. I set up my page at that time, but didn't use it for quite a while. Once I got the hang of it and started adding friends, I began looking at people's profiles, photos, sending messages and writing on people's walls! I was hooked for a while, but I wasn't interested in playing Farmville or the other games on there. Anyway, finding myself getting bored with it, I decided it was time to cancel my Facebook page. It was then I found out you can deactivate your account but not delete it! Unless someone can tell me how to delete an account?
A couple of weeks later Web 2.0 came along and guess what? Week 6 was about Facebook. I was able to log back into my Facebook page and reactivate the account and add my name to the Manukau Libraries page.
I added my recent book to the discussion board, as required. I have only reactivated my Facebook page temporarily while we are doing Web 2.0.
However, it is a good way to keep in contact with people or to find old aquaintances and it is quite easy to use. Once you browse through it and find out about all the applications it can be fun for a while, but I probably won't be keeping my page going after this has finished. Lots of people using the Learn-net have Facebook pages and they seem to be able to use it quite easily.

Week five MP3 and music downloads

2010-05-10T01:12:00.000-07:00

Ok well this one had me a bit confused. This discovery exercise was one I thought I would really enjoy, but I didn't really. I looked at some of the sites briefly but couldn't make head nor tail of them. So I made a log in for one of the sites that I thought looked quite user friendly. But alas, it was not to be. I am still a newby to these sites and the songs that were coming up were completely foreign to me. So I tried to do a search and look for ABBA (everyone knows ABBA) so that should be an easy search, right? Wrong! I couldn't find any ABBA songs. I couldn't find anything I knew, so I decided that was BORING and gave it a miss. At the moment I am not likely to want to download any music anyway and if customers want to download music from the internet then maybe we will have to work through it together. There is still such a lot to learn, but I am getting there slowly. I might have another try again with another of the recommended sites. Maybe the songs I like are too old now, I was a teen in the 70's when the music was great! Most of my favourite songs and artists are from that era.
Anyway moving right along with Web2.0 ........

Week Four GoodReads

2010-05-04T01:57:00.000-07:00

I found this a rather interesting site. I signed in and added some of the books I have read over the last couple of years. It is a good way to keep track of what you have been reading. I didn't write a review on any of them though. I think the site is quite good and it will take me a bit of time to work my way around it. It is quite a good one to recommend to customers, but whether I will or not remains to be seen. As I become more familiar with the site I am more likely to recommend it.
One of my all time favourite sites for looking for books is the one recommended at best sellers training called Whichbook.net I think it's great!

My friend Indy

2010-04-30T02:26:00.000-07:00

Zoey says, "It is annoying when my friends want to play with my toys. I don't know how Indy thinks she is going to pick up a tennis ball! She doesn't chase it very well either. She is not as fast as a labrador retriever!"

Week three - Twitter

2010-04-29T01:02:00.000-07:00

Still trying to figure Twitter out. I set up an account and had a look. I am now following Manukau Libraries on twitter. I have posted two little tweets, but nothing of any importance. Just practising really. I don't think Twitter is for me though. I can't see how I would use this in my job, besides being able to blog about it. Although, after saying that, I would recommend anyone who is interested in Twitter, to follow the Manukau Libraries' tweets. It's a good way to keep up to date with what is happening in the libraries. As for celebrity gossip, I hear all the gossip I need to hear on the radio. The announcers often mention interesting tweets that they have read, so it saves me having to read them for myself.
I am not able to search for other people yet, since I am not sure who has a Twitter account but I am sure most of my work mates will probably have an account on Twitter by now or very soon. I can't think of any celebrities to search for either. I haven't noticed any customers using Twitter or maybe they just haven't needed any help with it.
But there was a customer today, who was trying to convert a file on the Learn-net, so I was able to christen Zamzar on the Learn-net, Yay for Zamzar!!!!

Week two

2010-04-23T01:30:00.000-07:00

Well, what can I say about Zamzar? But it is great. I actually used it today for real! I had a pdf file emailed to me and it was a form I had to fill in. At first I printed the form out then I wrote on it in pen but it looked scruffy, and then guess what? Lesson two, Zamzar! So like most things on the net, it takes me a bit longer than others to figure out what I am doing, but i did it! (with a little help from my friends.) I wanted to convert the form to a docs document that I could type into, so I had to send it to an email address. Ok so first attempt I put in my work email and ooops! tried to download it and found it was blocked. (I probably did something wrong there too when trying to open it). Second attempt sent it to my gmail address and managed to download it ok. After that I completed the form and emailed it back to the sender and lesson two, done!
I will use this again, as long as I remember it. I will try to remember it, as I think it is great, and best of all, it is free!
I am sure the customers will find it very useful, we often get customers asking about converting files and things like that. As long as they have an email address they can send it to.

Week one April 2010

2010-04-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

Well I finally made it back on to my blog. What a time I have had!!
This has been a learning experience all on it's own. What have I learnt? Well firstly, if you have a blog and then change email addresses, and delete your email address, you cannot access your blog. Luckily after a few frustrating hours of trying to log in and then reset my password, I managed to access a recovery password that luckily reactivated the email address, and, guess what? Here I am, logged back in and ready to go!
What do I want to learn from this blog? I am not sure yet, but lesson one went well, I made it back.
After doing the Web 2 the first time around and not really being sure of what i was doing, I feel I have learnt quite a lot. And since then, what with helping customers and exploring the net even more I think this will be a handy tool in my job. I am looking forward to the discovery exercises each week.

The 23rd Thing

2009-02-16T17:19:00.000-08:00

Now I have completed my Web 2 learning it is time to reflect on what I have learnt.
Some of it is very useful for me and I am sure that I will be using some of it at a later date but some I found quite confusing. Not being a person who finds these technical things second nature, I needed help with a few of the steps along the way.
The RSS feeds, for example, was completely foreign and I didn't really understand it.
It was hard to get into some of the sites from our staff PC's which meant having to use the learn-net and to be honest, I find that if I am at a strange computer and not in my own surroundings, then it makes it even harder to concentrate and understand.
The social networking and You tube were the best part of the whole experience, but soon I suppose it will all be obsolete anyway. Then we will be on to Web 3!

EBooks

2009-02-12T15:00:00.000-08:00

E Books are ok but I wouldn't want to read a book online, I prefer to read a book that I can hold.

Podcasts

2009-02-12T14:08:00.000-08:00

I had a look at the site, podcast.com and found it quite interesting, I was watching the ABC news and found the quality very good. There was a news story about Barack Obama and the picture quality was great.
My preference though, it Youtube, but maybe if I had time to browse more, I might find more interesting things on podcast.com. This is probably not something I would look at normally but as it was part of our web 2 training I found it rather interesting.

Google Docs

2009-02-12T13:43:00.000-08:00

I have managed to successfully transport my instructions for the staff fax machine from google Docs to my blog.
It wasn't too hard but I needed a bit of advice from others. It doesn't come naturally to me like it does to some people, but once I am shown what to do, then it all makes sense.

Instructions for how to use staff Fac...

2008-12-04T18:35:00.001-08:00

Instructions for how to use staff Facsimile

Make sure the paper if face up in the tray

Press the green facsimile button

Press the little round button : on hook dial

dial 1 for outside line,

dial the number required

Press start

after transmission the fax will print a transmission slip

You Tube

2008-12-04T17:45:00.000-08:00

Well I had a look at You tube and found a video clip that used to be one of my favourites, it was the song Star Trekking Across the Universe. It is a fun song with lots of cute characters. An old favourite of mine.
This is the link for Star Trekking

http://www.youtube.com/v/AM_fpspCq2c&hl=en&fs=1">
http://www.youtube.com/v/AM_fpspCq2c&hl=en&fs=1"

Web 2.0 awards

2008-12-04T17:34:00.000-08:00

I have had a browse of the Web 2 Awards websites, I went into the category of fun stuff to see what was there and low and behold! I found the number one category was Cocktails. Just in time for the weekend, look at this web site for some tempting inspiration, http://www.cocktailbuilder.com/ White Russian sounds nice or what about a bit of Fuzzy navel? Yum

Google Docs

2008-10-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

I had a go on Zoho writer but I wasn't very keen on that one, it seemed to take forever to load and then I couldn't get in to it to write on the blank document page. However, google docs is much better and so I opened a document wrote some instructions for our staff fax machine and then saved it.

http://docs.google.com/Edit?docID=dc78239h_15zdj5dds

Week 8

2008-09-22T20:02:00.000-07:00

Discovering Web 2 learning.
This is a site I will investigate some more. My favourite sites are food sites http://ifoods.tv/web/

Week 7

2008-09-18T16:25:00.002-07:00

Social networking. This is one I found a bit easier than the others, social networking sites are more familiar to me than blogs. I have my own Bebo page which I have added to over the last two years, although not so much recently as my home computer has become too old to handle it. I found one advantage is when you or a family member are travelling overseas they can add photos or put highlights of their trip so friends and family can read what has been happening.
I have started a Face book account which I am dying to get started on but when they emailed the confirmation back to my ymail account and I clicked on it to confirm it, it was blocked by Manukau Gateway, that was frustrating!

week 6 Web 2

2008-09-18T16:25:00.001-07:00

I read the article about Moving away from Icebergs and found it quite interesting. The idea of having a "just in case" collection in case the borrowers might want to use it seems as though it is becoming outdated now with all the digital information available.
Circulation statistics are showing that customers are using the computers more for an information source rather than reading books for information. Rick Anderson says we need to shift direction to keep afloat. http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/2.htm

Delicious

2008-09-18T16:25:00.000-07:00

Well, that was interesting, I looked at some of the social bookmark sites and I have created a delicious account. I viewed the demo video on technorati which was interesting. I now know what they mean by tagging and how you can save a favourite blog.
The site I like best is librarything.

Rollyo

2008-08-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

Well, my attempt at Rollyo seemed a bit confusing at first and it didn't seem as though it was working, but eventually it worked and it created, not one but three searchrolls, you can look at my Rollyo page on http://www.rollyo.com/zoeysmum/

Flickr

2008-08-07T14:20:00.000-07:00

I have set up a Flickr account and have added one photo so far. I have others to add and will do so as soon as I get the chance.
You can view my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/29104711@N06/

Wikis

2008-07-30T20:01:00.000-07:00

This week I have been looking at Wikis, a page I found interesting was the page about pets http://www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Pets
it had links to different books and magazines.
A wiki would be a good way for libraries to set up a readers forum or readers advisory page where people could add their favourite reads.
Everyone knows about wikipedia and there is a lot of information about everything on there. One of my favourite pages is the page that tells me what my little dog Toby (the Bichon Frise) is supposed to look like and all about his personality traits, the link for this page is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bichon_FrisÃ©

Bloglines

2008-07-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

One of my passions is collecting recipes or browsing recipes, I like to sort them out and put them in order in folders and I love recipe websites. Bloglines is one of the search engines I used to find some interesting recipe websites here is the link http://www.bloglines.com/search?q=recipes&ql=en&s=f&pop=l&news=m

Ideal Phone

2008-07-30T17:42:00.000-07:00

According to the generator blog site that tells me my ideal phone, it is a Sony PSP Phone (I have tried to paste the picture of it here but it didn't work, still working on that one,) and I have found out what cartoon character I am most like, apparently it is Skeletor from He Man. and my ideal food is Fried Chicken, yay the one thing I did agree with.

LibraryThing

2008-07-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

I have created a Library Thing account and you can view my favourite books on
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/zoeysmum (library)
Member sinceJul 21, 2008

Week 3 continued

2008-07-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

I have had a play with the search engine http://www.rollyo.com/index.html and have listed a couple of my favourite sites, ones like www.foodlovers.co.nz this is a great site. There are forums that you can visit to read other peoples questions and answers about food

Week 3

2008-07-14T16:32:00.000-07:00

Ok now I am getting a little bit confused. I had a play round with 'Liftmagic" and have emailed the image to myself. I am going to have to play around a bit more with this to see how I feel about it.

Week 2

2008-07-14T15:07:00.001-07:00

Dear blog Diary (again)
I am a bit behind with my learning because I had a day off work last week to enjoy my birthday.
I have opened the bloglines account and with a bit of help managed to add some favourite sites to my RSS link.

Week 1

2008-07-14T15:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog Diary, (I have always thought that was a good way to start,)
Now that I have set up my blog and starting to put things on to it, it is starting to look like a proper blog. I am learning to add things like the RSS, thoughts and photos. It is a lot of fun and if I could think of something inspirational, I would add it here.

All about Zoey

2008-06-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

Zoey is a large black, two and a half year old Labrador who has a lot of energy and keeps the whole family on their toes. Her favourite game is chasing a ball and bringing it back to whoever threw it so they will throw it again, and again, and again. Her best friend is a little white Bichon Frise named Toby. They live with three cats, Kimba, Kenny and Tigger, four budgies a turtle and some tropical fish.
Every morning Zoey and Toby take their mum for a walk to check out the neighbourhood and sniff the smells along the way. Occasionally one of them will find a chicken bone that someone has dropped and it is crunched up very quickly. They are not into sharing when it comes to chicken bones.
Sometimes at the weekends we jump in the car and go for a ride to the Botanic Gardens in Manurewa. There are lots of exciting smells there and other doggie friends to meet. Zoey loves to jump into the pond and have a refreshing swim and it is even better if a ball if thrown for her to swim out to and fetch. Toby watches from the muddy banks and cheers his friend on. Once he got so excited that he fell into the water, but his sense of hunour was lost at that point and he had to have a helping hand to pull him out. Now he is careful not to get too close to the edge!