Summary: ACL Learning 2.0 Journey

Finally, I am finishing my journey of ACL Learning2.0, the new MP3 is just “right around the corner” (just kidding, learning new things is much more important than a MP3). Anyway, I am still exciting to expect the MP3 coming.

To be honest,It has been really a long journey for me. it’s a huge challenge in my life. The programme is much much harder than my predicting, and I’ve spent plenty of time and energy to finish it. Sometimes I’ve been sticking with my laptop for all night, which rarely happened before.

While I was quite enjoyed the learning process. From it, I’ve learned so many new things. I assumed that I wouldn’t know them without this programme. It gave me the chance to challenge myself and catch up with the latest web technologies; in particular, we really need to know this stuff not only to serve customers but to face the challenge from Library2.0 or even 3.0. Society is changing, so are libraries… we also need to change. Thanks for the programme, it gave us opportunity to recognize the reality and forecast the future. I hope I have chances to apply these knowledge and practice the skills later on. There are still so many “Things” to know and learn.

I appreciate the hard work and excellent comments done by the ACL Learning admin team. Thank you very much. Hope see you again!

Netlibrary and Audiobooks

I visited the Newlibrary site and set up an account. Currently, there are 773 eContent collection. (But when I clicked the subtitle with ‘Publicly Accessible eBoods’, I found out 3,456 results, I was totally confused with these two different collections).

I randomly chose one children’s book, which titled “The Get Soon Well Book” and then I opened it. I was amazed to the beautiful pictures on the screen. They are very clear and colourful. It looked like a picture book. When I clicked the button of ‘next’, I was feeling that I was turning over the real book pages. Real cool, eBooks!

Another interesting thing I’ve noticed was that we can select the interface language. I ‘ve tried Chinese and then it worked out. The words on all the buttons changed into Chinese, which is fantastic. It’s such a friendly-use web and I love it so much. As for me, it seems a book treasure ant I’d like to read them later on.

Podcast

I’ve never known the term “Podcast” before I started this learning programme. When I read the information about Podcast, I was astonished to find out that “Podcast” was the Word of the Year 2005. The editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have selected ‘podcast’ as one of the Word of 2005. It’s defined as ‘a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the internet for downloading to a personal audio player’. Now we can hear ‘Podcast’ everywhere, thousands of podcasts are available at the iTunes Music Store and iPodder etc.

I’ve explored a few podcast directory and finding tools, like Podcast.net, Podcastalley.com and Yahoo.podcasts. They seemed out of date and my workmates suggested me to search for the library podcast, which named as “Denver Public Library Podcast”. It’s good and we can download many useful stuff, like songs. For the news podcast, CNN podcast is very cool and I like it.

YouTube

The first time I heard the word ‘YouTube”, I was reading the free newspaper “Aucklander”. There was an article talking about some bad things happened with YouTube. Quite a few students used their real names, addresses and phone numbers in YouTube, and then troubles came in. Their families have got too many threaten phone calls and letters etc. From then on, I knew that there is a web named YouTube, but I was quite scared to use it as the influence caused by the report. Sounds funny? But this is true. Some people are easily influenced by the environment where they are living, including me.

When I am getting to know more about YouTube, I realized that I misunderstood the web; while it’s a very great site with tons of cool videos, they have been continually added more and more. I’ve watched some of them and I really need more free time to watch these video. From my experience, I conclude that we should not fear to try new stuff as long as we do things in right way.
For practicing, I put a video bar showing video “ Funny Family Guy” and "Happy Thanksgiving" from YouTube.

Discovering Web2.0 tools

There are about 300-500 web2.0 tools available online. Amazing! Exploring the web2.0 Awards, I selected the link to the 'short list' for just the winners. Over there, I noticed that a few familiar name of Web site, which we've explored in the past. eg. Technorati, Bloglines, LibraryThing etc. I chose a few new sites to have a look.
1. Ma.gnolia http://ma.gnolia.com/
It's got a sign with a beautiful flower and a word 'Magnolia'. I like the design and it's colour. Also, there are quick links with several little windows, and we can open them by clicking on. There windows keep on changing after each clicking and give people more choices. How clever it is!

2. Lulu http://www.lulu.com/
I like the interface in Lulu's home page. But look around, it just like an online shop. People can sell, buy and even publish their books online by uploading the files. Everything is so easy just clicking the mouse. Continually explored the secxtion of "sell" and " buy", the only thing we need to do is following the simple instructions, step by step.................

3. Judy's Book http://www.judysbook.com/
I typed my city's name in the searching box, but it respond like this " Sorry, we did not understand your location...". So I supposed that it's may only for people who live in the USA. If this is true, then there will be no point for us to use!

Week 8 Online Productivity tools: Zoho Writer

I created an account in Zoho Writer. This is the first time I use it and I've never heard about it before. I think I really need to have more chances to know more new knowledge online.

When I logged in the web of Zoho, initially, I supposed that it just a kind of Microsoft Office Word. But when I looked around those features and I was surprised with its special functions. eg. with Zoho Writer, we can have our documents done online or even offline. We also have access to them from any computer. So we don't need to email the uncompleted work back-and-forth. It's such a cool new stuff. I think it's very useful , in particular for people who are studying while working, they can continue their documents at any convenient place and time.

But it's a bit disappointing, because it's very slow when I tried to add pictures or colour to it. It seems not easy to edit my document, compare with Microsoft Word document. Other than that, it's quite a useful tool!http://writer.zoho.com/index.do?docId=Week-8-Zoho-Writer

Playing around with PBwiki

I signed up in My PBwiki. I created an account simply by typing in my email address and password. That’s all! It’s so easy, I love this. Then I’ve successfully logged in My PBwiki. But I’ ve got problems with the next step: add my blot to the Favorite Blogs. I spent about 1 hour to get this task done and I’ve tried several times. Password? Edit Page? etc. I have been a bit confused about the instruction for a while. Finally, I did it in right way and my blog name appeared on the page of “Favourite blogs”. However, I don’t get the point for doing this. Why doing this? please find my blog in the Favorite Blogs page: (http://acllearn.pbwiki.com/Favourite+blogs)