23 Things, Week 16 Wrap-Up (sniff)

...and 23 Things Kansas rides off into the sunset. Not hardly. I participated in the April 28 wrap up webinar and now am writing this last post to describe my experience. I've invested a lot of time and effort in this project, and it's been fun and intellectually profitable. I'll make a stab at 23 things I've learned (in no particular order): 1. Be patient when learning about new technology. 2. Be fearless when learning about new technology. 3. Be forgiving when learning about new technology. 4. Don't let your laptop battery run out of juice when you're almost finished with a project. 5. There are lots of colleagues who are willing to help. 6. Don't be afraid to ask for help. 7. I love Animoto. 8. I like Facebook a lot more than I thought I would. 8. Screencasting will be a great teaching tool for us. 9. IM can be useful, but I'm not quite ready to use it yet. 10. Twitter is great for quick and dirty marketing. 11. Sony digital cameras have proprietary video file formats (and re-read #4). 12. I already do a lot of computing in the clouds and it doesn't scare me. 13. I'm going to be spending a lot of time on Shelfari cataloging my personal wine library. 14. I can't keep up with my Google Reader RSS feeds. 15. I just love "attending" webinars. 16. It's not who you know, but how you contact them. 17. Bob Dylan is right (the times, they are a changin'). 18. Hang on tight. 19. A broken wiki can be fixed. 20. But a broken flash drive generally can't be. 21. We have started using Google docs at work for interdepartmental communication. 22. I'm sorry it's the end of 23 Things. 23. The 23 Things mentors were AWESOME! Thanks, guys.

23 Things, Week 15

I have a small amount of experience using wikis. My department uses a PBWorks wiki to document departmental procedures and record useful links to work related sources, but it's absolutely bare bones. For the first part of this assignment, I ventured into Wikipedia, created an account, and edited the Eudora, Kansas page by adding a link to the Eudora Public Library under the "External Links" section. I chose Wikipedia because the 23 Things blurb said you didn't need an account to edit pages, but I was not able to add that link until I had created one.

I just completed part two by creating and linking my page on the 23 Things Kansas wiki. I also took a few moments to read other participants' pages to see what others had enjoyed most about 23 Things. What a fun bunch of folks we are!

23 Things, Week 14

Coming down the home stretch. Shelfari is my choice for sharing my bibliophile self. It seemed really easy to use, plays well with Blogger, and with Amazon's backing, will have tons of cover art to pretty up my shelf. I've found a glitch or two that I need to solve-- "From Vines to Wines" actually shows that I have 2 editions. I only have one, but wanted to use the cover art from another ed. and now Shelfari thinks I have 2. For my copy of "The Grape in Kansas" (1901), I made my own record for it because I couldn't find that edition on Shelfari. I hope to go back and fill in a little more information about it later on and add scanned cover art, but it's fine for now. I have TONS more books to add and am looking forward to doing so. I've added a Shelfari profile photo and put a widget on my blog. Here's my official Shelfari page: http://www.shelfari.com/charleeg

23 Things, Week 13

I had a great time with this assignment! My subject is one of my favorite "people" and I wanted to illustrate her favorite leisure activity. I used Animoto to create this slide show. It was extremely easy to use and produces some very cool effects. I did use Adobe Photoshop Elements to reduce the size of the images to the 1024 x 768 size recommended, but otherwise it was easy easy easy, like falling off a log easy. Hope you have as much fun watching as I did making!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

23 Things, Week 12

This screencasting assignment took me almost as long to complete as the Week 10 video project and was almost as nerve-wracking. Writing the screencast script was a lot like doing technical writing-- clarity, brevity, de-jargoning, and not assuming the viewer has any existing knowledge about the topic are all important. My script kept taking tangents I hadn't counted on and I had to keep pulling it back or my screencast would have been very long! After a few rehearsals, I was ready to record. Or thought I was. First I noticed my voice got funny. Then I found I couldn't see as much of the screen on my Acer netbook as I'd like, so I ditched the browser toolbars (F11) to expand the browser window. Several recording attempts later, I realized I was so nervous I couldn't make the glide pad work right, so I attached a mouse to my Acer. One annoying thing I couldn't fix was my mouse pointer: it kept jumping/flashing/pulsing while I was recording. Happily, it did not come through on the finished product:

I can think of all kinds of uses for screencasting for staff and public: tutorials, procedural docu-casting, reader's advisory tips, "ads" for upcoming programs that could be embedded on the library's Facebook page. It's great that the tools for making screencasts keep getting easier to use, and the price is certainly right.

23 Things, Week 11

Break! Whew! Only not really, since I'm so far behind! ACK!!

23 Things, Week 10, Part Dos

I am experiencing technical difficulties-- if/when I can find a video cam that works with Windows Movie Maker, I'll fill in the rest of this blog entry.
(tempus fugit...)
OK, I'm back. It took me a really long time to get this video together. I'll probably think it was fun in a week or two, but right now I'm feeling lingering frustration. I had this really neat idea that almost did me in because nothing seemed to work right. Initially I thought I'd use my Acer webcam to shoot the video and edit it in Windows Movie Maker. It quickly became apparent I wasn't going to be able to hold the Acer still enough and aim it accurately. So I checked my Sony Power Shot digital camera, and hooray! it had the capability to make movie clips! I made several, then tried to load them to Movie Maker. No dice. Sony is sooooooo proprietary and Movie Maker hated the file format. Scratch Sony. The library owns a Flipcam and I borrowed it. It was very simple to use and has reasonable sound and picture quality. I filmed all my clips, then tried to import those to Movie Maker. Ooops, I didn't have the right codec. Sigh. Tried downloading the magic codec to no avail. Finally had to install the software included on the Flipcam to my laptop to make Movie Maker "see" the files in all their glory. Did some editing and adding of titles and credits, et viola: