Wrapping Up

The web challenge is a great way to expose the staff to a variety of technology out there that many of us are not aware of. I plan on using ListenNJ and the Web 2.0 awards for sure in the future. I am also interested in using the Google Docs for collaboration with coworkers.

I look forward to using one of the photo sites to post pictures I want to save and possibly share. This will also free up storage space on my hard drive and eliminate the possibility of loss due to hard drive crash.

This was a wonderful opportunity but it was very time consuming. Several of the staff who worked on the web challenge did it from home because they just did not have the time at work. I have just spent 2 hours doing the last few things so the 1 hour per week estimate was way off for me. I do think it was very beneficial though!!!

ListenNJ

I would love to use this once I get my mp3 player. This was so easy to use all I had to do was go to theoceancountylibrary.org and chose databases a-z and ListenNJ. I selected new arrivals and then "The Appeal" by John Grisham. This was easy to download and I am really excited to use this in the future!!

Podcasts

http://www.bloomberg.com/tvradio/podcast/

This is a link to the bloomberg podcasts. I listened to a podcast about the Texas wine industry and the huge amount of wine they produce there. Most of the wine is consumed at the wineries locally so people outside of Texas do not realize that Texas is such a large wine producer. (Similar to the North Fork of Long Island.)

You Tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaUDBi395Is

This is David Cook American Idol 2008 thanking America for choosing him. I looked around youtube and had a hard time finding anything I was interested in. I asked some of my coworkers if they use YouTube and if so what for and they said they do not use it. You can find old clips from news reports, sporting events and concerts which can be useful but there is so much that is just plain weird. I don't understand why anyone would stick out their tongue, take a video and post it. Very strange.

Web 2.0 awards

I went to travel first and found the sites that do multiple searches at once. The first site #1 gives predictions of airfare costs but I was looking for something for May 2009 and it was not included. The latest date is March 2009 so that does not help me for my next year's vacation planning. I checked out real estate and found craigslist which is a great site for all kinds of stuff for sale, rent, etc. I also looked at the list of awards from the beginning and found other interesting websites. I plan on going back in the future and looking at the best rated sites to see what else is out there.

Web Apps Google Docs and Zoho

Google Docs is very similar to Microsoft Word but has the collaborative ability. I love the possibilities.

I looked at Zoho also and there are lots of uses for this tool as well. One that came to mind immediately is for meeting planning.

We could easily use google docs for many of the projects we work on with our colleagues. One document I have been working on and emailing back and forth with others is our new union contract. Google docs would give us the opportunity to all see the document, make comments and changes and get it done quicker without sending it back and forth with every little change.

Wikis and pbwikis

I love the possibilities with wikis and I think we could do collaborative projects among Library Branches, workgroups, etc. and even projects with other Library systems or community groups.

One project we could do is to create a wiki with clubs and organizations and have the participants enter their own information and keep it updated.

I have used wikipedia often to find basic information or as a starting point and find it to be a very useful resource.