My Sci Fi Character profile!

Blue 2.0 Social Networking Part 3: Yet another social network site!

For the third activity in this module, I set up an account at "Second Life Librarians at 'Ning'. I was invited to join this network, and it was quite easy (probably because I've already joined SL, Facebook and Myspace.) I set up a bare bones profile, and added a picture to it. It seems pretty similar to Facebook, only with less options. I also posted a few comments on a couple of the pages of fellow Blue 2.0 participants.

Check out my "Second Life Librarians profile here:

http://sllibrarians.ning.com/profile/BenitaClarke

Blue 2.0 Social Networking Part 2: MySpace

I set up a Myspace profile for the first time, but I probably won't use it very much again after this activity. To me, Facebook serves all my social networking needs. Even with my minimal level of Facebook involvement, it takes time to keep up with everything. I don't think I have time to really get into Myspace. I did find a few friends, and signed up for the UK Libraries group. I haven't had responses to my friendship requests yet, so the jury is still out on my impressions of Myspace. Check out my profile on Myspace here.

Blue 2.0 Social Networking Part 1: Facebook

I already had a Facebook account that I hadn't used it a lot lately so this activity was a fun way to get back into the swing of things. I joined the "Blue 2.0 Libraries" group, updated my profile by using the "status" function for the first time, added some new friends from Blue 2.0 and Second Life, tried out some of the quizzes like "Just For Fun!", "Smack talked" someone, "poked somebody" and tried out a few of the other widgets. It was a lot of fun to start using Facebook again.
Check out my Facebook Profile here.

Fabala24's Blue 2.0 podcast: Photo and Podcasting, Part 3: Photos and Flickr

So far, I've reviewed a YouTube video and posted my very first podcast. I was already familiar with YouTube, so that part was easy. Learning how to use Audacity to record my podcast was a bit challenging, but fun.

I wasn't that enthused about setting up a Flickr account because I already have Photobucket and Shutterfly accounts. Happily, I didn't have to sign up for any additional accounts because it turns out that Flickr is part of Yahoo, and I have a Yahoo account. The set up was easy--you can establish your Flickr presence with minimal information, which I appreciate. It is very easy to upload pictures. One disadvantage is the 5mb size limit for files, but that is very minor. You can make your photos available for the general public, or limit who can view them. You can organize them into 'sets' that include only specific photos.

Flickr can be useful for the libraries too. When we have library events, photos can be posted from the events to Flickr so that anybody can access them from anywhere. If photos are posted to Sharepoint, on the other hand, you have to be logged in to the library server server to view them.

I took some photos during our snowy weekend a couple of weeks ago. You can view these photos, and a few others here.

Fabala24's Blue 2.0 podcast: Photo and Podcasting, Part 2: My first podcast

To celebrate the second season of Showtime's "The Tudors", I recorded a podcast about some novels from that era.

Recording the podcast was the easy part because I recorded it with Audacity, my trusty laptop, and a handy dandy microphone I got on sale at Radio Shack.

Posting it to the blog was tricky, though. I exported the Audacity project as an .mp3 file, but discovered that you can't save .mp3's to this blog. I worked around this restriction by inserting a picture and saving it as a video since this blog accepts files in several video formats. So here goes....

Blue 2.0: Photo and Podcasting Part 1: Review of "Rosetta Stone @ Your Library" YouTube Video

I like libraries and I like teaching a foreign language, so this video from Jefferson Co, Alabama combines both interests. I like librarians with a sense of humor. It gives you situations where you can use Rosetta Stone software to learn a foreign language. The best part is that it is available for people to check out from the library. I thought it was amusing, and hope you enjoy it too.

Blue 2.0 Fun Week, Part 4: Second Life

The "play week" module for Blue 2.0 certainly has been fun. I've 'blinged' my blog, embedded a YouTube video in one of my posts, experimented with some online image generators and gotten involved with Second Life.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Second Life. It is a lot of fun once you get into it and learn your way around, but the interface isn't the most intuitive, especially for the newbie. I signed up for my account, picked a name, and ended up on the orientation island. A very nice avatar with gorgeous hair, a beautiful floaty dress, and sparkly shoes gave me folders with clothes, hints for newbies, and some other free stuff. She was nice and engaging. I got a little confused and accidentally teleported of orientation island before viewing the videos, etc. for newbies--oh well! I later found out that once you're off the newbie island, you can't return.

I clicked on a link to teleport to the Titanic thinking that I would end up on the ship and perhaps tour the rooms as they were back in 1912. I ended up on a piece of wood in the middle of the ocean with with other's encouraging me not to drown. Time to go elsewhere!

After teleporting to a couple of other places I found my way to UK. I found co-workers, people from other departments, and a lot of other interesting stuff. The first day I was there the Library and a couple of buildings from the School of Music were on the island. Now there are a lot more places to visit at UK Island, and it gets bigger every day!

My avatar is a work in progress. I got rid of the lame hair style that she came with on Rez Day and got free hair styles from Tami McCoy, Diversity Hair, and my favorite, Gurl 6! Having a bad hair day? It's easy to fix in SL. I was able to mix and match a few outfits to get her style similar to my own. I bought $5 worth of Lindens (SL money), and boy, do those Lindens go a long way!
Now I'm experimenting with different skins to get my avatar to match my real life complexion more closely. And who knows, I might splurge on a more realistic shape for her. But then again, maybe not. With demos you can try different things without committing those precious $Ls to them.

Back at UK Island, I attended meetings, toured the library, found peace at a gazebo, and hung out with friends. The meeting was really cool--a lot was accomplished, and we didn't have to leave our desks. Meetings this way are sort of like chat rooms, only more fun.

Is there a downside to Second Life? Well, there is an abundance of places to visit, and no real systematic way to find them, since the search engine of SL seems to work like Google. You can also end up in strange places without intending to. Sometimes the system freezes up and your avatar can act wonky. And any item, landmark or folder that you receive gets dumped into your inventory. You can easily accumulate hundreds of things and have trouble finding them until you figure out a way to organize them. You can also meet strange people and stalkers in SL, just like in real life. I haven't met any personally (knock on wood), but I know somebody who has.

Overall, though, Second Life is fun and you can learn a lot. I look forward to participating in the launch party for UK Island, and to seeing how the University plans to integrate Second Life into the other means it uses to reach out to the campus community.

Blue 2.0 Fun Week, Part 3: Online Image Generators

The online warning label generator http://www.warninglabelgenerator.com/ was fun. See above notice!

Blue 2.0 Fun Week, Part 2--More Advanced Blogging

Lately I've read a lot of Philippa Gregory novels about the Tudor era, and last season I really enjoyed the show "The Tudors" on Showtime. Showtime has provided viewers with tools to "bling" their blogs, so here goes!



Check out the countdown widget too.

Blue 2.0 Fun Week, Part 1--Advanced Blogging

I've really enjoyed myself this past week or so. I signed up for Second Life and have been traveling around the virtual world. But more on that later.

Another suggested activity for Fun Week is to try some advance blogging, so I decided to embed a video in this blog posting. I teach beginning and intermediate level Spanish classes (my other hat here at UK!), and this video got so many hits that the creator got to sing this song on Telemundo to Kim Kardashian. I found it hilarious, and hope you enjoy it too.

Here is "One Semester of Spanish Love Song" courtesy of YouTube:

Mission accomplished!

I created a document in Google Docs published it to my blog, and sent it to Sarah Glassmeyer for revision. She revised it, and I republished the post. It was really easy, and Google Docs replaced my original post with the revised one. The original date that I posted the Google Doc stayed the same as well. How easy and fun is that? I enjoyed the interactive assignment for this segment of Blue2.0

Using Del.icio.us and Google Documents

Creating my del.icio.us account was easy. All that experience we've setting up accounts for previous Blue2.0 modules helps!

One of my links hasn't been saved by other people yet, but I clicked on the 'saved by other people' link in some of my other bookmarks, and found some more interesting links. One link was for instructions on how to convert videos for your iPod in Portuguese.

Another interesting link I found was for commonly used formulas in Excel 2003. Hopefully the formulas in Excel 2007 won't be too different.

Adding the Connected Library del.icio.us account to my network was easy too.

Google Documents is easy to use as well. The interface is somewhere between Word and Wordpad.

*****

I'm glad that you didn't have any problems with this! -Sarah

Tagging and Folksonomies

--Create my del.icio.us account--check.
--Add 5 websites and assign them tags (including UKBlue2.0)--check.
--Look at list of bookmarks, look at "saved by other people" to find other interesting links--check.
--Add the Connected Library del.icio.us account to my network--check.
--Post link to my del.icio.us account in my blog--check.

Creating my del.icio.us account was easy. All that experience we've setting up accounts for previous Blue2.0 modules helps!

One of my links hasn't been saved by other people yet, but I clicked on the 'saved by other people' link in some of my other bookmarks, and found some more interesting links. One link was for instructions on how to convert videos for your iPod. It was in Portuguese, though, so I'll have to brush up!

I found another link for commonly used formulas in Excel 2003. Sigh! Our Excel 2003 is about to go away :(
Hopefully the formulas in Excel 2007 won't be too different.

Adding the Connected Library del.icio.us account to my network was easy too.

Here is the link to my del.icio.us account.

The UKY Wide World of Wikis....

Part 1: The Thrill of Victory

Wikis--whew! Who would have thought that 'wiki wiki' means something really fast in Hawaiian? (I like vocabulary and etymology!)

I looked at some of the articles that explained what they are and some of their uses. I've also looked at some of the wikis that are used by various libraries. Of the wikis I looked at, I liked librariansarah's wiki the best because that wiki looked more like a wiki that I would actually use, especially with my part time job.

I can see some uses for wikis...being able to post files and links is a nice feature, although many of those features are available in Blackboard. The nice thing about the wiki, though, is that it is open to everybody while Blackboard is restricted to people who are registered in the class. I'm not sure how I feel about wikis, since I'm new at this. Time will tell if wiki is a tool that I'll use consistently or not.

Part 2: The Agony of Defeat? (this was actually a sucessful venture, but the title sounds kind of catchy...)

I've finally set up a 'wiki', after a few false starts. I'm a UK Wellness Advocate and one way we contribute to the Health and Wellness program is by helping to publicize the offerings of the Wellness. I set up a wellness wiki to kill 2 birds with one stone! Here it is: http://ukwellness.pbwiki.com/

RSS Feeds--or, so far, so good

The "really simple syndication" was really simple to set up. I went to http://www.bloglines.com/ and set up my account. Of course, the first blog I subscribed to was http://connectedlibrary.blogspot.com/ I've always seen that little RSS icon in my Internet Explorer toolbar, and now I know what to do with it!

I'm a newbie to the whole blogging thing, but so far my favorite blogs are Blue 2.0, BoingBoing and the Classic Tales Podcast. There are a lot of other podcasts that I enjoy, but not all of them have RSS feeds.

What fun to learn about new (for me!) tecnologies to keep connected and up to date.

AIM Express--the adventures continue

Today I logged in to AIM Express, and one of my buddies was on line at the same time. I got to chat for the first time ever with this interface, and it works pretty well. I think I prefer my Yahoo account, though. I guess having the software installed on the computer you're chatting from works a little more smoothly. I think being able to chat in real time with coworkers or library persons is an alternative way to communicate because it would be a good way to reach out to people who embrace technology.....

Online chat adventures with AIM Express

It turns out I already had an AOL messaging account from several years ago that I hadn't used in a while. Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprising after all) when I went to AIM's home page, my ID was already up! At first I was unable to launch AIM Express until I turned off my pop up blocker. For some reason, adding the AIM Express to the list of allowed pop up sites in my blocker didn't work. I didn't find anyone online at the time, but I did get an invitation to be added to someone's list! I sent out some invites too, and now I have one friend that shows up on my AIM Express. The only thing I don't like is having to remember to turn my pop up blocker off and on. I usually use Yahoo chat, which seems to be simpler to use.

Chatting can be really useful at work, especially for quick questions, or simple issues where you want to clarify things in real time, but don't necessarily have time to schedule a meeting in person. I'll post again when I actually chat on AIM Express.

Hello Blue 2.0 participants!

Setting up this blog was easy--I logged in using my Gmail account. Who would have thought that my Gmail account would come in so handy?

Now the only issue is thinking of something to say. I went to Saturday's KY vs. Vanderbilt basketball game. Was it ever a nail biter with the double overtime! Why talk about UK's game? Well, we're participating in Blue 2.0, Kentucky is known as Big Blue, blue is my favorite color.....

Thus ends my first blog post ever. I'll have to think of something interesting to say for next time.