THING 20. FACEBOOK

I can't believe I now have a Facebook account. I value my privacy. I don't want people finding me on the Internet. But it's there. I started with 2 friends. Now I have 8. I write on friends' walls and they write on mine. Facebook has altered my routine. After checking email, I check Facebook. I have to admit it's fun looking at my friends' Facebook pages. But I can see how frequently updating my site and checking others' can eat up the time.

This is the first Thing I've signed up for that has ads on my page. You can choose your friends but not the ads.

THING 19. PODCASTING

Before doing this Thing, I think I had listened to maybe 1 or 2 podcasts in my entire life. For this Thing, I started with local podcasts. I heard two from On the Road with MINITEX: one with Sue Colton from Hennepin County and one with Beth Kelly, former director of the Duluth Public Library. I also listened to some of MPR's podcasts.

I explored the podcast directories. I liked Podcast.com and the Educational Podcast Directory. Both had jillions of selections. On Podcast.com I heard a Bloomberg news segment from 10/13 with the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. From the Educational Podcast Directory I listened to a feature about eating an ounce of nuts a day. The link under Podcast.net is no longer active. Yahoo Podcasts offered few selections. I wasn't interested in any of them. You have to search to find anything beyond those.

I posted Policast with Mike Mulcahy from MPR to my Google Reader account. Then I found websites about how to post podcasts to Blogger. After a few tries, I was able to post Policast to my blog. Click on the Thing 19 title to listen.

THING 18. YOUTUBE

I first started looking at YouTube several months ago. I am amazed by the variety: political candidates, pitbulls on skateboards, lipstick on pitbulls, t'ai chi demos, ear candling demos, the Grand march of the librarians, the Betty Glover library workout tape, Nancy Pearl action figure videos, videos on how to embed a YouTube video in your blog. Now Tina Fey is on YouTube impersonating Sarah Palin.

The YouTube video I embedded is some lute music I have enjoyed hearing several times on MPR. A few weeks ago I was in a snit over something (the wasp nest? the water leaking from the laundry room ceiling? the plumbing bill for the leak under the kitchen sink that equaled the GNP of some third world countries? ) I left the house with my stress level approaching meltdown mode. When I got in the car to leave and turned the radio on, the Kapsberger playing. Immediately all the other stuff fell away. I later found the music on MRP's playlist, but couldn't get it to play. The CD is not on Barnes and Nobles' or Borders' websites. It's out of print. It wasn't on MNLink. Then I tried YouTube and found several videos.

THING 17. ELM TOOLS

First of all, I could not get any of the videos to play.

Create a Search Alert. I did a search in Ebsco Masterfile Premier, but when I tried to cut and paste to Google Reader, it didn't work. I didn't see anything that looked liked the code. At one point I got the ever popular "This page cannot be displayed" message. I tried again several times, with no luck. When I exited, I stumbled onto the Ebsco Q & A page. One of questions was how to create an Alert. I followed the steps. When I tried to cut and paste, I got the message "Oops an error has occured, try again in a few minutes." After trying countless times and wondering if there was something wrong with what I had done, I was finally able to post to Google Reader. I can see the search alert as a useful tool for anyone who wants to collect the most recent articles on a certain subject. It helps to have a lot of patience.

Ebsco page composer. I created an account in Academic Search Premier. I used "globalization" for a search term. I limited the search to full text articles from 2007-2008 and added the first 20 to the folder. For the background I chose the gray worlds that look embossed.

ProQuest web page. I created a web page on ProQuest with the research summary and then emailed it to myself. The whole process didn't take much time and worked easily.

NetLibrary. I did the search on "web site". This bring up 1,695 results. Am I supposed to scroll through all those? The book you are supposed to look for is in the catalog but not as an ebook. I used a different ebook, "Make your web site work for you" by Jeff Cannon. I created brief notes for two of the pages. This was simple to do.

I have used the ELM databases many times over the years and have shown patrons how to use them. I didn't know about the ELM productivity tools. Now thanks to the 23 Things, I can help patrons with the tools when the need arises.

THING 16. STUDENT 2.0 TOOLS

Where were these when I was in high school and college? On second thought, there is an overwhelming amount of information here. I'm impressed with how comprehensive the U of M Assignment Calculator is. Afer plugging in start and end dates, the Calculator displays 12 steps with dates for completing each stage of the process. I used the dates 9-23-2008--12-15-2008 and tried different subjects. Many, many links came up, including the U of M catalog, WorldCat and links to databases for the chosen subject area. There are links to creating your own database of citations with another link to generate citations in different styles. Strunk's Elements of Style is here and even a link to a discussion on procrastination. Step 12, the end date, is for putting the paper in final form. For the end date, I would choose a date a day or two before the paper is due.

I wonder how many students use the assignment calculator and how many just wing it.

Could I use this to help manage a project of my own? Maybe the rest of the 23 Things? I have 7 more to go. I'd have to tweak the dates. I don't know which Things will take more time. The assignment calculator is geared toward writing research papers. I think it might be less useful with other types of projects.

I looked through the teacher support materials for the Research Project Calculator. The tipsheet on improving a Google search could be helpful for others besides students.

I can see having both the U of M Assignment Calculator and the RPC as links on our online resources page.

THING 15. ONLINE GAMES

Aargh mateys! Today is September 19, Talk like a Pirate Day! For this Thing I played Puzzle Pirates. It took me four tries to get a name for my pirate that no one else had used. Who would have guessed there was already a pirate named Shirlee? I tried bilging and made 72 pieces of eight. Later when I posted a notice for a Pirate Party, I got a message saying I didn't have enough pieces of eight to throw a party. It didn't say how many you needed. I did pretty well with Learn to Carpent.

I see patrons playing games on the public internet terminals, but it is not something I would spend my free time on.

THING 14. LIBRARYTHING

More than halfway done! I signed up for LibraryThing and created an online catalog. My library now has a whopping 7 books. It was easy to add the books. I like the book cover icons. I chose a mix of books I've read and some I've requested.

I might use LibraryThing for request books. I don't see using it to catalog my personal collection of books. After 26 years of cataloging, I want to do something else with my free time.