Week 11

Well, I think this is it! I have enjoyed some weeks and been confused and frustrated other weeks, just like most good classes! I learned some, forgot more than I wanted to, and will hopefully remember enough to be able to help when asked questions about subjects that we discussed. I still love Library Thing, don't understand Technorati, and will leave the MySpace for Letitia up. I will probably still update the MRRL MySpace more often, but the other one is out there if anyone asks. I need to update my xanga and Facebook, which I have better access to my teens through. I am glad that Robin and Bobbi have kept backing this training, but I'm even happier that Betty found money for MP3 players. Now, for something I wish we had learned...my daughter is going to have to show me where to go for reasonably priced downloads for my MP3 player so that I don't end up using it to listen to books through DBRL's NetLibrary (an option we don't have at this time). Thanks for the lessons and, hopefully, the memories.

Podcasts

Ok, I am learning a lot from podcasts, including the fact that I don't like Podcast Alley because it tells me that I need to download an aggregator. I don't know what that is and I can't download on the library's computer, so Podcast Alley is useless for me.
Podcast.net was the easiest to use, in my opinion, but there was nothing newer than 2006 in my area of interest, which was Teens and Libraries. Some of the podcasts were still interesting, but a little dated. Their search was the easiest and most user-friendly of any of the podcast examples. This is also where I discovered that you can put up anything on a podcast, if you have the technology. I listened to a baby "read" a book. Very strange!No words, just babble.
Yahoo Podcasts was great! It had newer podcasts. Some of the podcasts were over an hour long, which meant that I just sampled a few of them. It also puts an "Explicit" warning on podcasts that it sees possible issues with, instead of blocking the podcasts completely. That gives the listener the opportunity to decide whether to censor or not. One issue that I did discover on Yahoo Podcasts is that some of the podcasts are no longer available. If it is part of a series, sometimes it had been recorded over. You never knew for sure what you were going to hear, which could be entertaining, but made the search function useless. It was still my favorite of the three.

Netlibrary

I will come back to podcasting, but the computer down here in the PCC does not have sound, so I can't listen to podcasts.

I did get signed up for Netlibrary and am currently reading this scary book called "1001 Chemicals in Everday Products". I don't understand the "checking it out" thing, but I am enjoying having access to books that are not physically in our library. I have helped lots of people set up accounts for Netlibrary, and I may have even had one before, but since I don't use it often, I have no way of knowing what username, password, or even which email address I signed up with. Hopefully, I will remember the new ones.

YouTube

Since I have never been up close and personal with a live armadillo, this will have to be the next best thing:



I have liked armadillos since we moved to Oklahoma when I was nine. I think that they are cute, in a piglet sort of way... and if you ever want to know armadillo trivia, I have more than you probably want to hear!