Fun 2.5

Watch These Videos: Number 1, Number 2, Number 3, and Number 4 - I first came across video Number 2 as I was researching this module. Then I found number 1, and liked it better. When I found numbers 3 and 4, it hit me...when was the last time you saw people from ALL OVER the world, creating videos of a theme song for a video game from a web site???

A little bird told me that it was time for something fun, I have to agree. Learn was created on three principles; Collaboration, Experimentation and FUN! So lets see what kind of fun things are out there....

Game Consoles - All three major game console manufactures have recently announced price reductions. MSNBC Article With OCLS offering games, this is a great opportunity to take advantage of great prices and a great selection. Nothing like saving some money and having fun!

Web Based Games
Launch Pad - this remindes me of the Rube Goldberg contest! If you like solving problems or puzzles, this is a great choice. Remember to TEST first, then experiment. Maybe you are more kinesthetic...Paper Critters combines basic drawing tools and a little bit of Paint to enable you to create your own critter. You supply the scissors.

Green Games - Here are three games that will teach you something about saving our planet while you are playing: World Without Oil, Sharkrunner, and Electrocity All three were nominees for a Webby award last year!

Facebook Games - If you have spent any time in Facebook, and have at least one friend, you have probably come across some of the many games that have been developed for the FB community. The popular game developers, Zynga, are behind such hits as Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Vampires. These games are highly addicting and should come with a warning label! Farmville was launched on June 19 of this year and currently has 11 MILLION people playing! That is the power of FB and social networking! Other popular FB games include Farkle and Soririty Life.

Arcade Style Games - Kongregate won a Webby last year for it's games. I mentioned Zynga above, here is an opportunity to test drive the games that are hot in FB without a FB account.

How about some new music "stuff"?
Remember the lesson we did about life long learning? Here is a new website for those that are musicians. Nowplayit- features instruction on how to play a song right from the people that wrote/performed the song. No more shifting through third party interepations of what someone thinks the song sounds like.

Do you know about the Live Music Archive? The LMA's motto is "Universal Access to Human Knowledge". How can you not love that? LMA offers an archive of DRM free concerts for a zillion artists and bands. I will admit that you won't find every band there, it isn't Amazon after all. But what you will find is streamable, downloadable, sharable and free. I think that is cool. Take a look and experiment - if you find something that is tempting but you aren't sure - use LivePlasma to research the group.

One of the other sites tied into the Live Music Archive is the Internet Wayback Machine. Do you remember what the Library's first website looked like? Here it is on June 12th 2002. Some of the images won't load because they probably weren't archived. (Sheri - was that Front Page?? ) Search for something from the "old days" The Wayback Machine

Got the Travel Bug??
September and October are excellent months to travel. As you know, the hurricane season is winding down and with the kids back in school, many beach resorts in the Caribbean are pretty empty. If you don't mind plenty of space, easily finding empty beach chairs at the pool and on the beach, tons of towels and almost individual attention at resturaunts, now is the time to go! Here are few websites to help you travel smarter, cheaper and better: Budget Travel - Check out what they have on the Rockhouse Hotel in Negril - click the link to the hotel's website and check it out - very nice! The Lonely Planet is much more of a travel guide than a travel/sales website. Boo sort of reminded me of Travelocity and the other "majors" but it differs in that it tells you where to go to get the best price for your hotel. I don't think it sells directly, but is more of a referal service. Try it for the Orlando area, you might be surprise how inexpensive some high quality hotels can be!

This is the End....
As you have probably heard, this is the last module in Learn 2.5. I am constantly reminded that all Libraries aren't created equal and that the people at OCLS are what makes it such a special place. I met a LMS grad student last week that was out to observe at our middle school LMC. She told me that she had just learned the definition of Web 2.0 and Learn 2.0 the week prior to her visit! To say I was shocked would be an under statement! All Libs are not created equal - you are at a good one!

My many thanks to those folks that made this happen from Learn 2.1 through Learn 2.5. Sheri and the talented DAAs. Lynette and her constant stream of great ideas. Debbie Moss, the Sayer Of "Yes"! It has been fun andI have enjoyed writing for you, and reading your comments and blogs. You can find me at PCS Tech Dir if you care too. I think you might recognize some of the stuff there and maybe you will see that schools aren't that different than Librarys!

And for those of you that were looking for some corny easter egg finish with the Doors singing The End....come on! Do you think I would troll out 10 minutes of drug enduced pyshco babble-drama to end this? Isn't that a tad too cliche?? Ok, Ok! You heard the man, turn the lights down....The End

Back to School Web 2.0

Watch this video: Web 2.0 Kids

As I sit here and write this, school is getting to start in a majority of the country. (since you are in FL and I am in NY, I think we can consider the national perspective) Many of you are just getting over the Summer Reading Program, hopefully, parents and teachers will see the fruits of your work. Lets take a look at kids and Web 2.0 this month.

You might be thinking that kids and Web 2.0 go together like peanut butter and jelly but surprisingly enough, not all digital natives are embracing the technology the same way you and your colleauges are. For example, for the most part, kids and teens don't Twitter. They might toot, but they don't tweet! Here are a series of articles from Mashable.com -

Twitter Teenager

Why Teens Don't Tweet

Teens Don't Tweet

Ok, lets think about this for a moment - if you are using Twitter as an info feed for your location or dept - who is your audience? Are you hitting the folks you thought you were?

What is hot with kids? If you have kids or you have observed kids on any of the Lib's computers, you will know that the #1 and #2 websites for 12 and under crowd are Webkinz and Club Penguin. Both of my own children would spend entire days on either site if left to their own accord. I, personally don't think either site is true to social media or Web 2.0. Sure, there are blogs and user generated content, but they seem to be more of a web based gaming platform. Maybe I am just old to get it!! Here are THE Journal's recommendations for Web 2.0 Apps for kids.

What are the dangers of kids using social network sites? Digital natives, by definition, have always had access to the technology that we are learning. They may not associate the dangers of sharing personal information on the web. Facebook to them is like the phonebook and yellow pages are to us. When you were growing up, did anyone "teach" you about sharing your personal information in the phone book? Probably not, for a variety of reasons. How many of you have been trained, as parents, on how to teach your kids to be safe on the interent? Now we have two problems - kids that don't know better and parents that don't know how to teach them. For example, my oldest daughter Kayla recently received a tourism/travel/vacation planning pack from the state of Colorado. Her mother and I asked if she would take us on her trip. She is eleven, and mentioned that since she needed a ride to the airport anyway, we could probably come too. Cute. This child's parents ARE digi-savy and she has been taught net etiquette, but kids are still kids and providing your name and address to access a website that you want seems easy enough. We determined that she provided her mailing address info to some website that sold it.

eXplorers: Since children make up a large part of the Library's buisness, lets take a look at some of these Web 2.0 applications that are safe to recommend to parents or provide to the little tykes as information resources:

Glubble - is a mixture of Flickr, Facebook and a little bit of Power Point. Glubble is perfectly suited to be the default homepage on a family's web browser. It offers a place to upload pictures and the ability to create a family time line to share. Extended family and friends can be invited into the page and kids can create and edit their own page. Glubble also has pre-selected website destinations for kids or parents can add to the list with their own choices. Not bad - I created a page for my family and invited our kids - we will see where it goes.

Kids Tube - bills itself as the biggest kids video site on the internet. Youtube isn't the best place for kids to hang out on. Kids Tube probably won't cut it for kids that are used to the huge variety on Youtube, BUT if they are doing research for a school project, or need video to include in anything, Kid Tube might be a good place to suggest.

Quintura for Kids - Quintura is a visual search engine - I believe that we examined it in Learn 2.1. Quintura for Kids uses a combination of visual icons, phrases and traditional word boxes to focus down to what the child is searching for. Take the tour before you use it, it makes it easier to understand!

Ask For Kids - Ask.com scaled their regular search engine to make it appropriate for kids. I did a search for Hannah Montanna and it returned the official fan web site and a few Disney sponsored links.

In your blog, tell us about your experiences with these websites. Are there any others that you could recommend for kids?


Adventurers

Since you are all living on the cutting edge of technology, lets take a look at an application that might make your life a little easier. Friendfeed is a one stop feeder service for all of your social media accounts. Take a look: Friend Feed

Facebook quizes are the most popular application on Facebook, but are they taking more than you are giving? You hated quizes in school, what makes you think that they are good for you now? Take a look and change your ways! Facebook Quiz link

Finally....Collaboration Software

If you participated in the original Learn 2.0, you may vaguely remember the pre and post survey that we did for the course. At the time, one of the survey items dealt with collaboration software. Anyone remember that? The focus of the Learn series has always been collaboration (and exploration and fun) but at the time, we didn’t really have “collaboration software”, so the course never covered it. Like all things in life, that has changed and several companies have created free, web-based, office suite applications that allow you to truly collaborate with anyone in the world. (remember Information is Open Source from L-2.1?) This month, we are going to take a look at some new web based software and try to do some collaboration.

Not that long ago, documents and computers were focused on the individual user. Microsoft had a very public dream of one PC with Windows for every person in the world. The documents that you created (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) were stored either on your PC or the network. If you were on a computer that you shared with others, you still had your own account and you could use office applications to create your documents. If someone else needed access to your docs, you had to print it out and sneaker-net it to them (geek speak for walking it over to them). Later, you could email it to the person, or if you were technically savy, share the document on the network. Many, many, MANY versions of Learn 2.0 were emailed around the lib for different people to see and comment on. Rashal McEldry edited most of Learn 2.0 and 2.1 and we would use different colored text to mark our revisions. The process worked, but it was less than effective. Just the act of emailing it back and forth consumed hard drive space on our email servers and bandwidth in the network as the docs were sent back and forth.

Now there is a better way: New Ways to Collaborate
(the narator speaks very fast, but the content is very good)

Since Google owns Blogspot and you just happen to have a blog on Blogspot....your blogspot username and password will get you started on Google Docs! Isn't it cool when things come together? We aren't going to get into the nitty gritty of using Google Docs, that is beyond the scope and capabilities of this course. If you are interested, EXPLORE!!! Find an exploration partner and see what you can do, you might surprise yourself! If you get frustrated, (I know that you aren't AFRAID to try!) check with the CRC to see if they offer a class. Here are some Youtube video resources to get you started:

Google Docs Community

How to Use Google Docs


eXplorers – lets collaborate on a document! I have been frustrated with Blogger in that the Follow feature doesn't allow me to back track to your blog. I can see who is following me, but I can't follow you! To fix this, I have created a spreadsheet for you to copy and paste your blog URL into, so I can follow you too. If you have the follower’s widget in your blog, you will soon see my smiling avatar in your followers box.

New Directions: Click the link to open Google Docs. Click the "edit this page" link and add your data. You can cut/copy and paste your blog URL into the cell if you don't want to type it out. Google Docs Spreadsheet

Zoho - Zoho is a G-Docs competitor. Zoho seems to have more applications available and may offer you more capability. You can also log into Zoho with your Google account - sneaky or what?? Take a look~Zoho


Adventurers - you are probably already veteran users of G-Docs, which is cool. The spread sheet above was created with Zoho Sheets - another open source, web based suite of colaboration tools. While I personally don't have a preference for Zoho or G-Docs, it is always good to know both. You can create a Zoho account by using your Blogger account, just click the Google link at the bottom of the Sign In box. What other web-based free applications are you using? Are you using G-docs on your mobile phone or ipod Touch?

Search Vs Navigation

Watch This Video: One Powerful Tool

Lets talk a little bit about searching for information versus navigating for it. Search Vs Navi. Navigation systems are popping up all around us. Most new cars offer a built in navi systems and even my latest workout watch has a built in GPS unit. Is navigation the best way to find information? Do you direct patrons to wander the stacks until they find what they want? Have you ever been lost and stopped for directions – did you make it directly to your destination or wind up lost again after two or three turns? Did your "navigation" turn into a search for your destination??

Now there is no doubt in my mind that many, MANY of you can drive right to the exact spot in the stacks or surf the Dewey Decimal system to find the exact item that you are looking for. Can you do it on a computer????? Dewey hasn’t changed his Decimal System in a few years, the Web, on the other hand has changed a zillion times since you started reading this. The world of search and the technology of search are changing just as fast. The cool thing is that we are keeping up with it!

Basically, there are three different types of searches that you can do on a computer – you can search the computer that you are using, which is a desktop search. You can also search the entire Internet using search tools like Google or Yahoo. The third kind of search is an enterprise search. Enterprise search refers to locating information that lives on the organizations intranet, file servers or website. Here is more information from our good friends at Wikipedia: definition

How does searching work at OCLS.info?
You may know this, I guess it is common knowledge, but I wasn’t aware of it, even after working in IS for 18 months and sitting two desks away from the Search Master herself, Sheri Chambers! OCLS our own Google Search appliances. (An appliance is geek speak for a dedicated piece of hardware, which is semi-geek speak for a special purpose computer.) The first appliance was acquired around 2004 and was named Minnie (Mini actually). Minnie’s job is to search OCLS.info and the Orange Peel. This dedicated computer works at night indexing our website and every morning returns a list of indexes that are then, magically, made available to us. The very cool thing is that we have control of how or what Minnie returns to our patrons. What does that mean? Well, if you have an important initiative going on (Summer Reading Program) or want to focus people or bring attention to something, we can dictate how search results are returned and put those links at the top of the search return list. Think about that for a second, can you think of links that should be at the top for a specific search? Tell your manager!

The second Google appliance is named Mickey and it is just coming on-line. Mickey is newer and will be dedicated to searching ocls.info (Minnie will take a well deserved break and only search the Orange Peel). Mickey will also be able to create a fresh Site Index every morning. That means our site will always have an up-to-date Site Map without having to manually build it. (more Geek Speak that means our searches will be updated and currrent as of that morning, so if something was moved from the OCLS.info page for instance, Mickey will know where it is) Here is a short 2 minute video for those that are really curious about what a Mickey will do for our search capabilities: Mickey Video

The other search tool at OCLS is the federated search, which is primarily a librarian’s tool that allows a search to be tailored to specific subject areas. For example, if we were to do a virtual gallery on the topic of Bob Marley, we could include a federated search in the VG that searches for Reggae music, Jamaica, the Marley family, etc. Search Central is another example of a federated search.

The point of all of this great information is that we have some very powerful search capabilities right at our fingertips. When you are looking for something or working with a patron to find information on our website, try using the search box at the top of the homepage. Even better – point out the search box to the patron and demo it so they can learn to fish too.

eXplorers –We are all creatures of habit, and those habits are based on our personal preferences. At one time, I was a devout user of the search engine Alta Vista. Remember it? Then came Google and it became so popular that it has become it’s own verb!

Believe it or not, there are other search engines out there! Here is a list of a few of them, try them out and see what you think. My advice is to search for the same thing on all of them and see how they perform for you:

Lexxe- natural language search
Hakia - semantic search engine
Quintura - visual search engine
Bing - have you seen the commercial? Bing Commercial

In your blog, Tell us about your experience with these Google alternatives

Adventures - So far, we have covered Social Networking, Mobile Technology and with this month, Web Search. Here are two links to articles that currently deal with the topics that we have covered. This “stuff” is relevant to your life, our culture and our history!

Images from the Iran Election – these are coming through via Twitter -

Taptu – this is a web search application that works with your mobile web device – ie Iphone/Touch or web enabled phone:

Mobile Web 2.0

Watch this video: Ipod Touch

I have to be honest and tell you that I wasn't a big user of mobile web technology. My current cell phone is web enabled and I have used to test out the mobile Flickr application and to find addresses when I am away from home. Trying to read the screen was frustrating and I wasn't thrilled with the experience. My friends in the Digital Content area heard my diatribe about wanting my phone to be a phone and my music player a music player. Jim Elder was the first kid on the block with an Iphone, and despite his enthusiasm, I still didn't get it.

All that changed when my oldest daughter announced that she was saving her money to buy and Ipod Nano. When she got close to her goal, we went to look at them. To be honest, I wasn't very impressed. An MP3 player is an MP3 player. Ok, so these can do video, so does my TV..., quite well actually. While she looked at the Nano I looked at the Touch models. It took about two seconds to see that the Touch offered way more than just audio and video services. Kayla, to her credit, stuck to her original purchase plan. However, it was Easter time and the Easter Bunny was holding some cash so we worked out a deal and upgraded to a Touch. Here is Kayla's Ipod Touch:

Keep in mind this is NOT a phone, but a plain Ipod Touch. You can see that the three icons in the gray area are the typical functions of a music/video player. The Settings button allows the user to configure the device's wireless functions and that is where the fun begins! Once connected to the Internet, this little hand held device becomes a very capable communication tool. Within range of a wireless network, Kayla can send and receive emails, browse the Internet using the Safari web browser, download music via Itunes or Amazon. Even as a skeptical adopter, I have to say that it is very cool! The Touch has the ability to turn the screen either landscape or portrait, so you can use the screen in whatever mode suits you - that was a big seller for me.

My previous point of wanting a phone to be a phone, sort of becomes blurred when you add the functionality mentioned above. I will add that Kayla has misplaced her Touch, somewhere in the house and hasn't seen it for the last week. While she may have lost quite a bit of an investment, it would have been even greater had it been an Iphone. (the Easter Bunny is sad for her, but realizes that she is learning a life lesson)

So just what is mobile technology? Think of it as a hand held Internet device - a PDA or a phone, some companies call them smartphones. Here is what our good friends at Wikipedia have to say: Mobile Web This is a pretty good article from the BBC about the development and future of the technology: Mobile Web Coming of Age

According to AC Nielson, the Weather Channel leads the US in visits to it's mobile website. Check out this video on The Weather Channel's philosophy on mobile technology. This is pretty deep level stuff, probably the kind of thinking that our digital architects use to develop our site. While the content is deep, it provides a great insight into how the country's largest mobile content provider thinks. Take a few moments and listen to how consumers are using their website and what the Weather Channel is doing to meet those needs.

Of course, how the average person uses their own smartphone varies, here is a short App-noxious - I hope this isn't you!

By now you have probably seen the virtual gallery for our mobile resources. Right?? Just in case.....

The July 2008 issue of Library Tech Reports featured an article about library use of mobile technology. I can't share the entire article but if you open the link and click the"view article" button, you can read a partial article via PDF. If you are interested, I am sure you can find this issue in house somewhere. Libraries and Mobile Technologies.


eXplorers - So you are wondering...how are we going to experience this mobile web technology? Is Tom buying us all new phones??? No.....we are going to use a mobile emulator or simulator. All the fun of mobile technology without the messy contracts!

Click the link below to open up the webpage that contains the emulator. Enter your website into the gray textbox and click preview to see what it will look like on a mobile device . This tool only presents a portrait screen, and it isn't real sophisticated, so be patient! Emulator

Check out the Lib's mobile site (copy and paste the URL into the mobile emulator) -m.ocls.info

Try these popular websites:

Flickr - m.flickr.com

Weather Channel - m.weather.com

Facebook - facebook.com (you may get a message saying the website is too complicated - click continue to see the site)

Twitter - twitter.com (same message as above)

In your blog - tell us about your experience with the mobile websites. What did you think? Would it be useful to you if you were running errands some afternoon and needed info quickly? Are you already a user of a web capable mobile device? Have you fielded questions from patrons regarding using their mobile devices at your location?

Adventurers- you are the advanced kids; the gifted and talented group - right??? Tell us how you use mobile web technology in your daily life. What are some of your favorite websites or applications?

Social Networking 2.5

Watch This Video: a short little Facebook song!

It is interesting how technology changes, how it improves and how it gains momentum, or “gets legs” as some say. This month, we are going to look at three applications that aren’t really new, but seem to have grown legs within the last six months. Matter of fact, I previously researched all of these for Learn 2.0, but passed on because, well, at the time, they were boring! Ah yes….I can hear you say it right now…..let me just say that I have a computer, not a crystal ball!!! Who knew???

Facebook – Facebook (FB) is the hot social networking site right now, knocking My Space off the top of the hill. FB seems a little different than My Space, mainly because there seems to be fewer kids! The NY Times reported, “According to the site Insidefacebook.com, the median age of a Facebook user is 26, but the fastest-growing user group is women 55 and over, up more than 175 percent since last fall. Men 55 and over are right behind, having increased almost 138 percent during the same time period.” (link to article)

FB is growing at the rate of a 1,000,000 new users a day! If you aren’t on it, or haven’t seen it, there is a strong chance that a patron or co-worker near you is on – right now! For me, I have “found” several friends that I have lost touch with over the years – the guy that sat behind me in physics in HS, back in ’83…two co-workers from my job in Charlotte, at least three people that were former students of mine (they are now in their 30’s which I did not need to know). I posted a status update on FB as I was writing this module. A friend that I met in Jamaica a few years ago, responded with this link from her local paper in Vermont : Friends with Benefits . Is this Facebook imitating life or Life imitating FB????

Here is a link to Wikipedia’s entry on Facebook. It is a tad lengthy, but gives a pretty good background. Read until you are full.

OCLS has two Fan Pages on Facebook. A fan page is a space where fans can gather for information about the object of their fandom! We have the general OCLS page and a Club Central page for teens. On these pages, our fans can find out about programming, special events, locations, hours and how to get a card. Good stuff!


Twitter –Twitter is almost a micro application when compared to Facebook. Twitter’s purpose is to let you share your thoughts or activities in 140 characters or less. This keeps the information down to very small bites! Twitter can be used to tell the world that you just ate a second donut or that a gunman just invaded the The Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, India. It can be used to organize government protests in Moldova, to tell your friends that you watched Star Wars for the 100th time or used to post a local update concerning Swine Flu in your area. Frivolous or Serious, it is all in the hands (and minds) of the tweeter.

So you are thinking that there are many billions of people on this planet if if just half of them are posting 140 character messages – that just might be information overload. You would be correct! Twitter has a capability that allows users to follow a specific user. If you are a fan of anyone that uses Twitter you can follow their specific posts(or Tweets as it is called) and read their tweets. You can also use the settings to control who reads your mind and tweets.

OCLS has five different Twitter accounts for the library.

@Oclslibrary – general and main Lib.
@Oclscomrel – all things Com-Rel related
@Oclsteen – all things teen related
@Oclsnorth – the north branches including Edgewater, Eatonville, and North Orange
@oclscitizenship – for the citizenship inspired program

Lynette Schimpf has led the Lib’s use of Twitter to actively promote the library and to develop relationships with our customers. She says, “I have been able to communicate with customers in a way that is new and relevant to today’s communication methods. We have been able to promote numerous programs, events, classes and share information.” For example: “ I have sent a link to our locations page for someone who posted that they wanted to know where the nearest library was. I sent how to sign up for a card information to someone who posted about being interested in a library card, I have thanked numerous people for using the Orange County Library System when I find that they have mentioned us.”

LinkedIn –LinkedIn is the professional networking version of Facebook. I know from reading many of your blogs that you may not be comfortable sharing your personal stuff with the whole wide planet. I get that, this article may help you see another perspective. Even if you are someone that likes to keep yourself to yourself, you may want to consider Linked In for your professional career. A quick search of the people using the term “library” returned 136,928 people that work or have worked in a library. On the first two pages of results, I saw people from Sydney, Australia, San Francisco, Phoenix, Louisville, St. Louis, Houston, Tennessee, and Boston. A search of groups using the same term returned groups focused on reference, state library associations, academic libraries, library support groups – “friends of..” and international library groups. I think you could find someone to connect to!

Like Facebook and Twitter, you can post your brief random thoughts or activities. Also, like Facebook, you can reach out and connect to people that share your professional interests via email or third person introductions.

Explorers: Joining a social networking sight is a personal decision. If you are interested, use one of the links above to create an account. Twitter is probably the easiest and fastest to get going on. Facebook will probably be the most personally satisfying and Linked In is a good move professionally. As all of these sites exist now, I can’t send you there to “browse” because you need an account to get in. Soo…. lets talk a little bit about why or how these social tools could be beneficial to the Library. In your blog, tell us what you think – are these tools for connecting to the public or not? Can you think of ways to use any one of them in your department or location? How about personally? Is this something you are doing or something that you have an interest in doing?

Adventurers: If you are an Adventurer, then you already have a FB account and most probably Twitter and Linked In too. If not, now is the time to join. There are LOTS of OCLS folks on FB and Linked In, so you will find friends almost immediately. Your Adventure challenge is to join one of the OCLS groups on FB. From a PR perspective – tell three people about our Twitter streams – tell them that they can follow us.

Collaboration is a founding principle of Web 2.0, and something that we love in Learn 2.x. With that in mind, a big Thank You to Lynette Schimpf for her Twitter contributions! Mahalo Lynette, the Twitter Queen!~

Also, a big Thank You to Liz Kelly in Milton, Vermont for sharing the FB article with us!

The Launch of Web 2.5 and IB3DVW

Watch This Video: Online Video explained by an old friend of the course. Press the play arrow to watch.

Welcome to Learn 2.5!!

For those returning Learn 2 Vets - Welcome back! I know we just finished up 2.1 a few weeks ago, but it is nice to see you back! If you are new to the Learn Experience, no worries, you are in good hands! This learning experience is all about trying new things, collaborating with your colleagues and having fun.

The major goal of the course is to continue the exploration of technology and culture. Once a month we will post a new topic for exploration. Some months we will focus on just technology, and other months, just culture. The very best is when the two collide or mash-up into something new. Based on the feedback received at the end of Learn 2.1, I am going to try to keep these experiences at about the 30 minutes of participation. If you do the Adventure activity, your time may vary.

Registration Process -registration is EASY!!!Just click the FOLLOW button on the lower right side and you are part of the course. To help me communicate with you – shoot me an email letting me know that you are part of the course – here is my email address: simpson.Thomas@ocls.info . Was that easy or what?

Are you new to the Learn series? You will need a blog to participate, click here for the step by steps to create your own blog: Link to L2.0

Internet Based 3D Virtual Worlds (IB3DVW)
By now there is a good chance that you have already heard of the Internet based 3-D virtual world Second Life. Our library has several employees deeply immersed in the technology, providing virtual information services for the participants of Second Life. The question here is why is this important? Why do we need to be a part of Second Life? The answer is pretty easy, so we don’t get left behind!! Second Life is a virtual world where participants (I thought about using the word “players”, but SL is more than just a game) create themselves as an avatar and participate in a community or communities of other avatars. Second Life is completely Open Source (blatant Learn 2.1 tie in!!!) and all parts of the Second Life world are created and built by the participants. So again, why is this important…..? Second Life isn’t the means to an end – this technology is going some place bigger, dare I say, some place better. We need to be part of SL to keep our knowledge base current; to give us the expertise for whatever the next evolution of the 3-D virtual web environment is going to be. To ignore the growth of 3-D web technology would be like telling Guttenberg that his machine is just a little too complicated and that people really like hand printed books!!


Explorers: Here is a 12-minute presentation that is a great source of information about Internet based Virtual Worlds. It was created by Kathryn Robinson and narrated by Chris Zabriskie. (the server necessitated splitting the presentation in two parts - not our choice!)

Virtual Worlds Part 1

Virtual Worlds Part 2

In your blog, share your thoughts about Second Life and 3-D virtual reality. I know some of you are thinkng “I would never do that” and that is fine, I am not a SL citizen either. But…what do you think of the technology? Do you see a use for it in your library world? Are we competing with virtual reality worlds now – will we in the future?


Adventurers: Have you already been to Second Life?? We want to see your Avatar!!! Post your avatar to your blog. You should be able to take a screen shot of you in SL and then save it to your hard drive or send a digital post card. (Disclaimer: I am not a SL citizen, and I am pretty sure you can do this, but I have not)

Here is another example of OCLS in Second Life - take a look: Central Florida Memory

If you haven’t visited Second Life, this is something you will have to explore at home. The Library does not have the computer hardware of Internet bandwidth to permit access to SL – sorry!

Hey isn’t it Easter time….? Hmmmmmm….I wonder….?