Week three - Twitter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.