#23 Is This Really The End?

Wow! Congratulations!! You’ve reached the 23rd thing. Be sure to give yourself a pat on the back for completing the program. Your reward for completing this journey before the January 12 deadline is a useful and handy MP3. But before sending this off to you, I ask for one last discovery post.

For your last and final exercise for this program please reflect on your learning journey and post a few thoughts. Here are some questions to prompt you if you're drawing a blank ...

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

And last but not least…

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?

In closing, we want to thank each and every one of you for joining us on this journey. Our hope is that this not the end of our learning journey together as a staff and a system, but rather it’s just the start of something amazing …

#22 Audio Books (or "The end is near")



In anticipation of your new MP3 player, it’s time to take a look around Overdrive downloadable eAudiobooks.

Discovery Exercise:

For this discovery exercise you merely need to familiarize yourself a bit with the structure of Overdrive's Downloadable eAudiobooks site and get an idea of the types of titles you can find there. Take a look around and locate a few titles of interest. That MP3 player is right around the corner and once you have it, you’ll definitely have a reason to try out this popular library service.

Discovery Resources:

Overdrive tutorial: Overdrive Quick Start Guide .

This tutorial takes a long time to load, so you'll have to have time and patience.
There are "Getting Started..." resources available as soon as you access Overdrive

# 21 Podcasts, Smodcasts

The word podcast is used to refer to a non-musical audio or video broadcast that is distributed over the Internet. What differentiates a podcast from regular streaming audio or video is that the delivery method for podcasts is often done automatically through RSS.

In 2005, "podcast" was named the "word of the year" by New Oxford American Dictionary and with the growth of podcasting over the last few years, it's easy to see why.

Podcasts take many forms, from short 1-10 minutes commentaries to much longer in person interviews or panel group discussions. There’s a podcast out there for just about every interest area and the best part about this technology is that you don’t have to have an iPod or a MP3 player to access them. Since podcasts use the MP3 file format, you really just need a PC with headphones or a speaker.

iTunes, the free downloadable application created by Apple is the directory finding service most associated with podcasts, but if you don’t have iTunes installed there are still plenty of options.

For this discovery exercise participants are asked to take a look at some popular podcast directory tools. Do some exploring on your own and locate a podcast that is of interest to you. Once found, you can easily pull the RSS feed into your Bloglines account as well, so that when new casts become available you’ll be automatically notified of their existence.

Discovery Resources:

Video: Podcasting in Plain English

There are many, many podcast directories and finding tools out there. Some require you to download software in order to use. Here is a brief list:

iTunes

Podcast Alley

Odeo

Podcast Pickle

Podnova

Discovery Exercise:

1. You often must sign up or download an aggregator in order to view podcasts. However, you can find podcasts all over the Internet. Take a look around for a podcast that interests you. See if you can find some interesting library related podcasts like book review podcasts or library news.
   
2. Add the RSS feed for a podcast to your Bloglines account
   
3. Create a blog post about your discovery process. Did you find anything useful here?

Optional Resource: Creating a podcast with Blogger

# 20 You Too Can YouTube

Within the past year online video hosting sites have exploded allowing users to easily to upload and share videos on the web. Among all the Web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is at the top having recently reached a billion views per day by allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also embed clips into their own sites easily.

Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find absolutely everything there including some library types who appear to have a lot of free time: library dominos. Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer. :)

Discovery Exercise:

Explore YouTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.

Create a blog post about your experience. What did you like or dislike about the site and why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any features or components of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites?

OPTIONAL: Try placing a video inside your blog. After you've found a video in YouTube you want to place in your blog, copy the code from the "embed" field on the right of the video into a new blog post.


Yahoo Videos

Google videos

NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light internet usage times. Remember to pause the video until it completely loads and then click on play.