I'm Certified !

Ha ha ha I am Dangerous!!!! I am certified. Watch out y'all. Yee ha ! I get an MP3 player ! Something else I know NOTHING about !!! :7 )

You know , it's great learning new things , no matter how old you are ! Congratulations to all my colleagues and good luck on the draw.

Browser Tools

Well so here I am , at the end. I had a bit of a problem understanding the difference between a bookmark and a bookmarlet at first. I think because they are both stored in My Favourites in Exploere. I did finally get my head around the difference. I liked the idea of browser add ons or extensions. After installing Firefox, I looked at some of the Browser tools.Ones I dowloaded and thought might be useful were the Canadian English dictionary, I had already added Delicious and I added Down them All as well. This extension aids the user with mass downloads. I just can't get over what is available in a computer. It's a total new world to me. Once I understood what I was doing , I was able to make a "Title" bookmarklet in Morris. I tested it by going to a Chapters website and highlighting the first book I saw. It happened to be A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. So I highlighted the title in the Chapters site and went to Morris to see if I could find it. Sure enough , the library has a copy. ( PS 8589.0473C66 ) It's a pretty neat tool. Makes searching all that much easier and a little less cumbersome. It's like a shortcut I guess. And one can make a Marklet file in My Favourites so that you can keep things organized a bit better. I hope I can remember all the stuff I learned !

Gaming and Virtual Environments

First of all , I think the reason why games and virtual worlds are interesting to libraries is because this is the way in which young people are communicating today. These are innovative strategies which can enhance the learning experience. They are tools we can use to capture a young persons interest in the library , to remove some of the old library sterotypes...yes , a library can be an interesting place rather than a dull and ( yawn ) boring place. I went to Yahoo games after trying unsuccessfully with Chuzzle. The giggling thingys in the Chuzzle description peeked my interest but I found I needed Explorer and I have FireFox at home so that was a no go.In Yahoo I searched for Crossword puzzles (another one of my loves) but the game will not play without allowing Java script from "About:Blank" which is not secure. So I didn't bother. Instead I went to Sudoku. Sometimes I do crosswords on Canoe.ca and I have also done jigsaw puzzles online as well. That's kinda fun. I also tried joining Second Life and was slightly successful. I was able to get a name and an avatar...the girl next door.I downloaded the software but it crashed twice. By then it was 11 pm and I thought I had better close 'er down for the day. I knew I had a full morning of blogging ahead of me! This has been a fun and educating experience for me.

Social Networks

I set up a Face Book account some time ago. Seems like eons but in reality , only a few months ago. I was inspired by Sarah who took to it like a fish in water. I don't use it much but I do really like it. I love posting pictures and checking out the profiles on my very limited number of friends. I checked out one of my friends on My Space, she's got over 600 friends! Socialite ! I like Face Book better. First of all , I am semi- familiar with it ( don't understand the poking thing!) , it's easy to post pictures for a not so tekkie person like myself, it's consistent in format whereas I found My Space was not. It was too confusing , too jumbled. I love control , routine , knowing where you are going and what you are doing. Face Book has those qualities which mesh really well with me. The only thing I find about this social networking thing is that it takes a lot of time to do and I don't seem to take the time. I get on it every now and again. Sometimes I leave my status" Audrie is at work" for days on end. Ha ha ha ! Of course , you know I am ! It's also interesting to hear about some of the things going on in the news concerning Face Book.

Applications and Tools

I went into Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Because I have a gmail account , the programme went through my email and found two documents. Imagine my surprise when I embarked on this new project and saw two documents in there ! Hey ! I made a test document and found this is very similar to WordPerfect or Word. So not too much of a learning curve for me. Phew! Toolbar and functions were quite similar and easy to navigate. One strange thing though , there was no place to put in a title for the document. I'm not sure if I will use this . I'd have to be pretty savvy...and well, that just isn't so !

Moving Along: Tagging and all that

In Delicious , I decided I would search on something that really intersts me ; fitness. One thing I really liked about Delicious is that it is available everywhere , where ever you go , so it's quite handy. You don't need to purchase any expensive software which is pretty cool. The tagging aspect is neat too and the concept of related tags helps one to hone their search that much quicker , I think. When I compare a search for fitness on Google , it appears you can get the same information but it seems as if a weeding process must be undertaken. You need to sift through data before you can get to something you might find you want to read. That's where the tags come in handy. Flickr is pretty neat too but I think I may have to do more exploring in order to become more familiar with it. This is a picture I really liked in Flickr.

Peanut Butter and wet Paint

It's been a while since I have been here and it took me some time to figure this all out again. I found these wikis pretty easy to use. I think one has to use these tools frequently in order to get familiar with them. I found it easier to navigate in Peanut Butter as opposed to Wet paint. Plus , I like the name! When I was experimenting , I inadvertently changed to skin but I rather liked the change. Kinda fun !