Another Avatar site

Found this one that a teacher recommended for students doing a project in which they were creating a visual for characters from a book that they were reading. Here is the one I created for myself. I thought it might be an interesting thing to try with older students.

It did give some options, but it felt somewhat more limited than Yahoo. But it did seem more appropriate for students. The link is http://illustmaker.abi-station.com/index_en.shtml

Thing 47 -- Survey Time

Well, I have to say I have enjoyed these classes. I haven't universally loved everything, but I have become much more fearless in trying things, both generally with technology and specifically with the Internet. And right now I have the pleasure of typing this entry on my own laptop that I just got today. I just spent far more time configuring everything than I would have thought possible. But part of that is that I now need to add my delicious bar, and all those other goodies (did I mention puzzle pirates?) that I have become accustomed to.

I am grateful to the powers that be for offering these programs on line. I came to being a librarian via the backdoor (I have a Ph.D. in English), and the work for these programs has made me much more confident in my ability to get the job done.

Thanks so much. Now it's time to play Puzzle Pirates and to watch the American Idol results show. Because sometimes I have to be shallow...

Thing 46 -- Web Junction

I signed up for WEb Junction during the last set of Things, but haven't had a chance to use it. I tried very hard to find someone I knew, either personally or in cyberspace, to "friend" at Web Junction, but none of them had created profiles or were doing it under a name I didn't know. So I did try to friend someone I didn't know. Since I would ignore such a "friending" I doubt it will be successful.

I do get the newsletters from WebJunction by email, but I don't really have the time to look at them regularly. Perhaps when I am done with my "things" I will be able to make the time.

I do like that I can take webinars and classes on line there. I hope to make that work.

Thing 45--Cloud Computing

I have already, on rare occasions, “remoted in” to my work computer from my home computer to grab a file I had there, or to use a program I don’t have on my home computer. But so much of what I now do on the computer IS web-based, that I rarely need to link to my own computer. I check email, read my feeds, etc., from whichever computer I have access to. I guess I already use the cloud more than I realized.

While I haven’t made regular use of GoogleDocs, my son in High School has. He was encouraged by his school librarian (YEA!) to use it. She allowed students who were printing from GoogleDocs to print for free. He was immediately sold. He also took a creative writing class last summer that used the program to share and read and comment on each other’s writing. So I recognize the potential, even if I personally am still a dinosaur.

My only concerns about the cloud revolve around security. I don’t mind having what I choose to be public be public—I just don’t want other things to become public without my permission. A concept that is harder and harder to control…

Thing 44--The Economy

I have grown fairly knowledgeable about financial matters, given that my spouse spent many years in the field. I love the Common Craft show explanations of things, and think that it would be a good video to show to students to encourage savings. I looked at several of the other banking sites, and they just aren’t particularly relevant to my life. We have no debt—no mortgage, no car payments, no credit card balances. We are not the people to whom these sites are geared.

I looked at the Gas Buddy site, and if I were still making my former daily commute of 75 miles, I would certainly use it. But again, I am 5 minutes by car, 15 minutes by bike, and 35 minutes by walking from my work. My husband works from a home office and telecommutes. We don’t need gas that often any more.

The Frugal Dad site had some good suggestions, but nothing that was surprising to me. Guess I am just inherently cheap—I mean FRUGAL.

I know people who have used Freecycle before and were very happy with the results. The site looks pretty easy to navigate.

I liked the Savvy shopper’s site. One of the listed sites—Please Dress Me--had some wonderful T-shirts with humor. Here’s an example:




I looked at RetailMeNot, but the manufacturer I looked at—Eddie Bauer—apparently asked to have their coupons removed from the site.

Finally, the site that I explored more deeply was the Minnesota Gardening one, although I ended up mostly at the iVillage Garden Web. There I was able to learn more about the herbs I had planted. I now know much about tarragon that I think I really cared about. But it was fun and I would certainly turn there if I have more questions about my herb garden.

I’m not sure what I would recommend to people about how to get through these financially challenging times. For me, the big issue is mostly common sense. Figure out the difference between NEED and WANT, and move forward from there.

Thing 43--Online TV and Video

I went to Hulu, which I had used before. I had used Hulu in the past to catch an episode of “Heroes” which I had missed. I also watched the first episode of “Time Tunnel” which had been one of my favorite shows as a child.

For this Thing, my husband and I walked down memory lane and watched the first episode of “St. Elsewhere.” We noticed that the older shows are more slowly paced, which gives time to develop characters and themes. We’re old enough to appreciate and prefer that approach. I found the selection of free movies at both sites to be very limited. I might be happy watching some older movies, but a lot of it was the dregs of filmdom.

While I appreciate the freedom to watch whatever I want whenever I want, I prefer the true communal comfort of watching on the TV in my living room. A computer screen is just not the same for me. However, I have noticed that my college-aged son sees no difference.

And more importantly, not everything is free. Many networks are limiting which shows you can catch on line and limiting how long they are available. The quality also differs—the shows on Hulu are not as crisp and clear as the ones I watch on TV or DVD.

So, like many things, I think that these sites provide options in addition to, but not instead of, TV and DVDs.

Thing 42--Music 2.0

I had begun to use the NPR site after the Morning program went off the air. But I found that for the most part, music served as a distraction to me as I was trying to work on the computer. For Thing 40, I signed up for both Pandora and Last.fm, and then the mashup. What I have found is that it is pretty good on gauging my taste in some ways, and not so much in others. (Irish jig music is not Renaissance dance music…just not the same.)

I don’t know if Internet radio will replace broadcast. Right now, I don’t have a computer in my dining room, but I do have a radio (and a turntable, actually). Until I get devices that are everywhere I am and linked to the Internet, it won’t serve as a replacement for me.

I’m choosing to add only the Pandora widget to my blog. The Lifestream/fm is listing my music played, so I don’t think I really need to duplicate the effort.

I didn’t find any difficulty adding things. I enjoyed playing with this, but without an internet-linked portable device, it isn’t a truly practical option for me.

Thing 41--Mashup Your Life

While I signed up for Lifestream.fm, I am not convinced that I am all that comfortable with the concept. I understand how some people might find it convenient, but I am just, well, old enough to feel like this is too much of an invasion into my privacy. I have moved over the course of doing these "things" to having a more open and public presence on the web, but I really am uncomfortable with just how much personal data can be out there for all to see. I also worry about the children growing up now, who have no sense of what to share and what not to share.



On a pragmatic front, I just read in the newspaper about an employer who was disturbed by inappropriate photos on an employee's Facebook page, beside her resume listing his company as her employer. He, somewhat understandably I thought, was concerned about how this juxtaposition might reflect on his business.



We need to be thoughtful and careful about just how we present ourselves on line. Sometimes less really is better.

Thing 40 – Mashup the Web

I found, when I looked at this list, that I had already played with a few of these sites. Here’s what I did:

I had somehow managed to miss Pandora and last.fm. So now I have signed up for each site and the mashup as well. I have found some new artists that I hadn’t heard of before. It is an easier site to enjoy than one that I had found before, called Live Plasma, which also makes music recommendations, but without the sound. Clearly this is much more fun. I’ve created two different “stations” and look forward to pleasant listening.

I had already begun to try Bkkeepr to keep track of what I read. I read voluminously, but often have only minimal retention of specifics. I am hoping that I can get a sense of what and how much I read this way. So far the biggest problem has been that I have already got a backlog of books I have finished and haven’t put into the list yet.

Wheel of Lunch is a hoot. The next time my family can’t make a decision, I think I will have to pull this one out. Lunchbox was also a nice option.

I had also already found the Walkable site. I found it interesting where they placed my house on the concept—75 out of 100—when I find it much more so. The distance the site considers walkable is under a half a mile, which is clearly shorter than people should be willing to walk. They also excluded sites that I would have included: for example, my local food coop isn’t listed as a grocery store. It is fun, though, if you are going to be visiting someplace else, because you could actually decide whether or not you would need to rent a car based on some of the information.

Thing 39--Digital Storytelling

I decided I wanted to do something a bit more archival, so I scanned some photographs of my great-grandparents and my grandmother. My relationship to family history has always resided in stories and photographs, since only one of my grandparents was alive when I was born, and he died when I was three months old. Here is a link to my Voice thread : My Grandmother Agnes. It should be the same as the screen above.

I found this relatively easy to use. I dealt with all my photos through a scanner and Microsoft photo editor before I uploaded them to Flickr.

I could imagine using this approach for student project of various sorts. It works enough like Powerpoint that it would probably be more intuitive for them than for me. I also think it would be a lovely way to create and share information for people to document their family histories.



I also tried to create a scrapbook on Smilebox. While I liked some of the features, I was frustrated that I was unable to change the shape of the photo slots on a premade page. It forced me to rearrange the photos differently than I wanted to. Still here is an example of one of the pages I made using the same photos as I uses for my voice thread set.

Thing 38--Screencasting

I used Screentoaster to create a video that explains to teachers at my school how to use the media wiki that I created for teachers and students. While it wasn't difficult to figure out, I had a number of problems with glitches and, ahem, user error. I think I have finally gotten the bugs worked out, and with any luck it will work. I lost 4 previous versions of the video, some of which were longer and much more substantial, so this represents a mere shadow of its former self. It did not succeed in its upload to YouTube, and unfortunately I have yet to figure out where in Screentoaster I can try to do so again. (If you already have this figured out, drop me a note.) Nothing, however, prepared me for the incredible amounts of time that it took to try to download a zipped version of this to my network, nor for how long it took to try (unsuccessfully) to upload it to YouTube. We're talking over an hour in each case for a video that is only 4 minutes long. Is there some obvious thing I am missing in this process to make it shorter?
Here is the link: Using the TTSP Media Wiki.

I obviously chose to create a screencast of something that I plan to use already, to test it to see if that works reasonably well with my peers. As I work fewer and fewer days due to budget cutbacks, I want to make sure that what I do create gets used. I suspect that this feature is one of the most useful ones for me, given that it will make it easier for me to provide instruction to people when I am not able to work with them one-on-one.

Thing 37--Photo Tales

British Columbia Vacation 2008,
originally uploaded by librarylady90.

Here is the mosaic version of some of the same photos that I used in the animoto video in the post below. While it isn't very difficult to do, I was disappointed at the limited music available to use for the video.

I can see ways that I could use this feature both for student projects and for promotional materials for my school and my library. One could also do an interesting video or poster montage of book covers to promote something Banned Books week.

I used Flickr mosaic and animoto.

Thing 37-Photo Tales

Thing 36--Comic Relief

I’ve tried or run into a number of these generators over the time since the original 23 things. I found that Wordle was actually an interesting way to give people a visual way to understand the school library curriculum. Here is the Wordle version of my 7th and 8th grade curriculum:

I find that people can then “see” which ideas are stressed, since the cloud automatically enlarges the words based on frequency.

I haven’t used the Read poster yet (lack of good photos) but plan to in the future. I played some with the BGPatterns and made a new background for my twitter page—check it out! The Tartan generator seems to have a virus attached—beware! I had already made an Obama me, as you can see.





Not surprisingly I have already found the documentation sites, given I am a school librarian. We teach the kids to use these in 5th and 6th grades, on the theory that they can then choose whichever format a teacher asks them to use.

I haven’t really used the comic generating sites before, but I think I could see a potential use for them as part of a class exercise. How about having a language arts class make a graphic version of a story for an assignment?

When I do find fun generators, I generally play with them and put an example in my blog.




Here is a library cartoon that I enjoyed:

by floridasue2 Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

And here is one I made:

by librarylady90 Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

I can't seem to get this to a readable size (at least at my bifocal stage of life), but if you click on the by-line under the cartoon, it'll take you to the site where it is larger and readable.