computer assignment

For my school computer assignment I have created a web page. It is fairly basic & there are a couple of things I need to work on but here is the link if anyone wants to look at it.
http://www.geocities.com/krazykat_aus/mypage.html

I'm still here

I haven't posted since August - where did the time go? Despite a sunny start to spring true natives of Portland were not fooled or surprised by the fact that it snowed today. The footy season is over and it was a successful one for the Portland Colts winning the grand final against Oberon. If anyone wants to look at pictures then check out facebook

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003221&l=0b292&id=1434905115
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003223&l=c6b95&id=1434905115
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003220&l=012d2&id=1434905115
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003217&l=8474d&id=1434905115

I will try to post more but it seems as though I am the only one reading this lol.

time flies

I received a certificate for finishing Learning 2. I was beginning to think that I had not actually finished the course or had missed some vital part of it, but our main library had the certificates and called Di and I in to have a little presentation and have our photo taken. Very nice. It is some time since I posted but here I am at last. Work is busy as usual and on the fifth of September I will be going to our 2 local schools to judge their book week character parades. I am off work for a week as I will not be able to have bulk time off because my relief worker is heading for Europe for 2 months. Lucky girl. Well I must go and do some housework as I promised not to waste the time off. I may head for Canberra later in the week for a couple of days.

The End of Learning 2.0

No I don't think so - I might even do it all over again just to review what I have done. There are so many things I only just touched on that I will continue to explore for a long while to come. I will be looking for ideas to incorporate into the small branch I work at and I would like to introduce customers to things such as online applications because I can see great possibilities there. I might even be able to offer discovery tours (online) to wonderful museums and libraries and their resources.

more about social networking

I was very impressed with the museums and their presentations of their collections and services. The Boston Museum of Contemporary Art is excellent and I really like the fact that people are encouraged to upload their photos of the museum and exhibits to flickr and share them with everyone. It truly makes the people feel that the museum belongs to all of them.There was so much information on some of the sites it is hard to know where to begin. There were Friends of libraries donations guidelines, codes of practice, advertising of services by libraries like Renfrewshire and so much more. Every site had many ideas that could be adapted by other libraries whatever their size. The British library was on Facebook but I was more impressed with Rotorua Library which used Bebo.
The Coshocton Public Library has a very specific club for animanga and I imagine that this use really appeals to young people. Not only do they target a specific group of customers but they use a medium that is particularly appealing to younger people to contact them and advertise activities etc. They offer information about meeting times and times for such things as drawing workshops etc.
Libraries (no matter how small) could use social networking to reach a much larger group of clients, in particular young, computer savvy customers. In our small library group (main & 2 branches) there are large numbers of people that are not being reached by what we are currently offering and it would be good to expand our advertising of services etc to explore whether that would increase patronage. There are author interviews available, book reviews, ideas for games and contests, and it would be an ideal way to keep up with trends in other libraries. A more modern approach hopefully would interest younger users and help them get past the idea that libraries are just for reading books or doing homework. On the other hand lots of older people are not even aware that libraries offer more than books and are missing out on opportunities to learn to use technology in a meaningful way. The occasional introductory computer class could be expanded to cover such things as social networking, blogs, flickr, youtube, online applications, podcasts etc. I had no real idea of the vast resources available and have enjoyed challenging myself to go beyond the boundaries of the way I normally use computers. I feel that I would like to offer small classes at the branch I work at to cover individual topics like flickr etc. Time constraints are always a problem in a one staff member branch but small windows of opportunity exist and have to be made use of more efficiently in order to reach more people.

week 12

I have passed on the web address to the free commoncraft presentations to a couple of teachers at the local school. I am doing a computer course via the school and the department of education's server blocks lots of sites even though they are harmless. The commoncraft videos actually work, so the teachers can use them for ordinary school computer classes as well.
I have enjoyed looking at this weeks subjects.
to be continued

online applications

Well, you just can't trust computers. I made a slide presentation in both google docs and zoho and after trying to save zoho and thinking I had failed and lost my 2 slides, I checked today and there it is as large as life. Beats me why it said it couldn't save. I had no trouble with google docs - it uploaded a picture that failed to upload on zoho (even though I had pared the size down drastically from the original). I liked the prettiness of zoho but google docs is very functional and user friendly. I was totally unaware of all the applications available online. I will be encouraging customers to use things like google docs as out of 5 public internet access computers in my small branch there are only 3 with office capabilities. I find that there is a heavy demand for the best performing computer and once a customer has backed up their work to the hard drive then that is the computer that they want each time they come to the library. Using online apps will mean an end to that heavy demand and make all computers useful for work processing, presentations etc. It will also mean that customers can go to any of the 3 libraries in our system and be able to access their work anywhere. Our libraries have a very restricted budget and can't run to expensive computer application programs for all our computers so this is a way of customers not missing out on any features without the cost to us. For children it will mean that they can collaborate on assignments by sharing docs and that they can all contribute at different times from either the library or at home. If one child forgets to come to the library at an appointed time then another child has access to the work already done. I will be exploring these online applications further to better inform the customers of what is available.