Flickr

Well, I kind of enjoyed Flickr -- set up my own account and tried posting some photos. It might be a solution, especially if the S-Js get with the 21st century and finally set up a Facebook account (for which my sisters would be happy). I found it relatively easy to do basic things, although I do need to figure out how to rotate my pictures -- all the ones that I want to have vertical are horizontal... I think I am a little leary about just having my pictures of family out there on the open web -- I definitely would mark them private, for viewing only by family (or maybe some friends) -- but with a sister half way around the world, it's an easy way for her to see what's happening with the kids over here.

I did find that exploring Flickr was easy. There are some amazing photographers out there!

"The man who does not read good
books has no advantage over the
man who cannot read them."
- Mark Twain

elephant

elephant, a photo by Peter Metcalf on Flickr.

I had to search for elephants this morning. I had a huge conversation with my 9-year old son last night about elephants, why there is an elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka, about poachers, and why people kill elephants. He had question after question. He wanted to know how poachers were caught, especially when elephants are out in the wild. After much thought, he came up with a plan for catching poachers -- I only wish it would work! His plan was that a Poacher's Bar should be built; obviously, because it is a bar for poachers, all the poachers would choose to go there. Once all the poachers were sitting down, a huge net could be dropped over all of them and they would be caught in the net. Brilliant! If only we could trick them that way :-)

My thoughts on wikis

Well, I must admit I don't have a lot of experience working with wikis. I am on the CAPL executive and we did create a wiki using MediaWiki as a way of gathering together numerous articles that would be relevant to public libraries. It worked fine, but really was not the best product for what we needed. After a couple of years, we moved the site to WordPress, which does work better as a central information resource -- the site is Public Libraries Building Capacity and is at www.clatoolbox.ca/caplblog if you want to take a look.

As a tool for working collaboratively on a project or for bringing things together that you want to all access, I think that wikis can work well. I agree, though, with other comments people have made about knowing which tool to use for which job. When do you use a wiki? When do you use a blog? When do you use Google Docs? I'm still not sure about it. The 23 Things wiki child page on the benefits of using wikis is really like a blog, with comments and replies -- does a wiki make sense for that?

Lots of ramblings, not a lot of answers.

Podcasting

Podcasting is kind of like radio on the internet -- interesting. I don't know why I thought that it would include video too...do you think it's because of the YouTube thing, that we're just too used to having a visual to go along with words? Anyway, I thought that I would look at poetry to go along with the quotes that I like to include. I found an interesting site that does poetry translation, saying the poem translated into English and then in its original language. Anyway, I will try and embed the RSS feed into this blog but I'm not sure I know how to do it... Never hurts to try! And if not that, then the link to the site.

Poetry in Translation podcasts

"Victory belongs to the most persevering."
- Napoleon

The librarian song -- a YouTube special

When I searched for a YouTube video I rediscovered this song. I remember watching it a couple of years ago and I really enjoy it. I particularly love how words can take on meaning just by facial expression -- the words themselves are fine, but the innuendo from the singer makes it something quite else. Enjoy!

Prezi

Well, a couple of weeks late -- whoops! It's amazing how the days fill up. I enjoyed making my little prezi; it is easy and fun. I did find that I ended up writing less per 'slide' than I would have with a powerpoint -- and I think that's a good thing. And I was able to include a photo of the new addition to our family. Her name is Grapefruit and she came from the SPCA after being found abandoned in the hallway of an apartment building. She's pretty cute! Check it out
http://prezi.com/w1ikhbac1gic/guinea-pigs-the-pet-for-you/

"Success is not the key to happiness.
Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing,
you will be successful."
- Albert Schweitzer

Google Docs

Well, gotta say I'm not convinced about google docs. I found a couple of things frustrating, one was the fact that curser would show up before the letter that you had most recently typed rather than after --- that was confusing, I thought. The other thing I didn't like, and perhaps it's because I hadn't set it up properly, but the space in which I could type was only about four or five lines, then there was all this white space below. Did I do something wrong?

Anyway and irregardless, I think that tools like google docs are great, especially from a collaboration perspective. At the moment I am using dropbox, which is really a storage site, but also has the capability of sharing files or folders -- I'm definitely liking it and find it very useful.

"The first requisite of success is the
ability to apply your physical and
mental energies to one problem
without growing weary."
- Thomas Edison