MP3 Player

What am I going to do with my MP3 player? Well, hopefully, I'm going to learn how to use it and download some music on to it. Then I can use it whenever I go to the gym or for a walk or on vacation. Maybe I'll find some Star Wars music to put on it. He, he, he

I already record podcasts for the Children and Teen Podstories that OCLS provides, so I didn't record a new one. Learning a little more about the technical aspects of podcasting was fun though, rather than just writing and recording a podcast.

Digital Music and Star Wars?

Okay, I had to stretch a bit here to connect this lesson to Star Wars, but I did. On the LivePlasma site, I looked up John Williams, the composer of the Star Wars music, and found out what other artists were similar to him. Now, I found a little bit that explained the map, but I think it would have been better if there was a legend or something that showed what the different colors and sizes meant.

I listened to a little bit of music on the LastFM site, and glanced at the other two, but I didn't really play with any of the features because I didn't want to sign up for another thing.

I guess I'm not sure where I stand. I think it would be great if mass sharing was allowed, but I know that would cause problems for the artists. I haven't ever downloaded music because I don't have an Ipod or MP3 or anything. Besides the fact that it would probably take forever for me to do on my dinosaur of a computer.

Flickr and Star Wars

I enjoyed the investigation and playtime with flickr. After looking for the OCLS images, I decided to search for some Star Wars images. (I had to connect this lesson somehow...). I found a lot. I liked the Easter Egg pictures. I had bought that kit, but we never got the chance to use it this year, so I guess we'll try again next year.

I like on-line learning. After completing my Master's Degree online, I'm pretty used to it. I have helped a few people in this course with keeping up (or trying to keep up) and with posting pictures and Meez's on the blog. I have received a little bit of help as well.

Star Wars 2.0

This was a fun week. I've been trying every week to connect what we learn to Star Wars, which hasn't always been easy. This week was easy. I wanted to find out if my favorite hobby-Star Wars had anything related to 2.0. I discovered that there is! It is "The Force 2.0." They just started an area on their site that has video mashups. I watched a few of them, and while the idea is pretty cool, none of the combinations is very interesting. You can read the article here:
www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9722743-2.html and check out the site: www.starwars.com

As for the lighter side of Web 2.0, I enjoyed most of it. I glanced at Trainco, but it doesn't really appeal to me. I liked dogster and catster, but they seem a little obsessive. Blufr was interesting, but I didn't play it for long. I didn't even look at Chugged or Bottletalk because I don't drink.

However, I loved The Puzzle Player. I am a big Sodoku fan. I played Soduko and Shapeshifter, and enjoyed those. I tried to play Kakuro and Addoku, and they were a little harder. I plan to go back and play some more of those when I have more time. I also hope to go and create my own Star Wars mashup at some point in the future.

Moe's Library Thing

After exploring the library apps that were suggested, I think that I like Library Thing the best. I signed up for an account, and added many books to it, including of course, several Star Wars books. I intend to investigate and play with this more. I looked at the others a little bit, but I could not get Guru Library to work.

I also enjoyed playing with Wikimapia. I found my house (I did not label it), but I did label the church that I attend, and I found several other schools and businesses near my house that had been labeled.

I enjoyed propsmart also. I think this would be very helpful in finding houses in a certain area.

Web 2.0

I thought that the Web 2.0 video was pretty cool. It went a little bit fast and was a little blurry and hard to read, but I enjoyed it.

I knew that OCLS had 2 presences on Myspace, since I work in the Children's Department and we have to update the teen myspace, and Spryte is one of our friends. We have many teens as our friends, and also many libraries. It's great to be able to network with these other libraries through myspace, and we are able to contact the teens that are our friends more easily than calling each one separately.

I knew we had videos on YouTube because I've heard other people talk about them. I had never searched for them before though, and it was interesting to look at the handful that did come up. I never really use YouTube. At home with my dial-up computer sites like You-Tube are incredibly slow.

RSS and Star Wars

For the RSS feeds, I selected the OCLS Kids & Teens feed as the one from OCLS. I also selected "Quotes of the Day," WOTmania-a Wheel of Time RSS feed, the official LOST Podcast, and (big shocker...) the official Star Wars RSS feed. I don't know that I'll actually have time to look at or keep up with any of them, which is why I haven't subscribed to any feeds on my own time. I barely take the time to read my personal email.

On the Grokker searching I searched for...you guessed it, Star Wars. :) It was pretty cool how the links were grouped under topics, which would usually make it easier. However, after looking in a couple of these categories, I could not find the official Star Wars website (www.starwars.com) in any of the categories, which I think should be one of the first results to come up. Most of the results seemed to be links to something in wikipedia, which I don't necessarily like as a source for finding factual information. The Map View feature would not work for me, so I guess I'll have to try it again later.

Learn 2.0 is working with my learning style. I completed my Master's Degree program completely online through USF, so I am used to learning things in this style. I am a "read it and try it" learner mostly, although in the job I like to see a demonstration of most things in order to learn them.

Fun Stuff

Along time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

That was pretty easy starting this blog. I'm glad we had the background choices to choose from. I look forward to playing around with this and trying out different things.

The force will be with you, always!