Thing #15 (Online Games and Libraries)

I watched the Second Life video. It reminded me of the Sims games that my kids played when they were younger, only much more interactive. I ended up downloading Pirate Puzzles. The puzzles were similar to online games that I had played before, but found to be somewhat addicting. The time can go by much quicker than you realize while playing some of these games. I have since given up playing them. It seemed like the other pirates and I were all just trying to learn the game so we didn't interact very much. I did accept a challenge to a sword fight and also issued one.

Thing #14 (Library Thing)

I took the LibraryThing Tour, and created an account. It took several tries before I found a user name that wasn't already in use. Adding titles to my library and making the standard blog widget were both very easy. Here is the link to my catalog: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/mygr8books. This is a great way to keep track of what you have read, as well as, get recommendations and ideas for further reading. I have no reservations about recommending LibraryThing to patrons.

Thing #13 (Online Productivity Tools)

I created home pages in both Yahoo and iGoogle. I liked iGoogle best. It was easy to customize my page, and not as limited as Yahoo. I added a "books" tab in iGoogle, and it brought up several interesting book review lists. I looked at Backpack, but did not actually try it. It appears to be a great organizational tool for business travelers that allows you to upload your files, set reminders, post messages, etc. As for the other productivity tools, I really liked TinyURL. It's fun, cute and helpful.

Thing #12 (Do you Digg?)

I spent some time exploring Digg, Reddit, Newsvine and Mixx. The amount of information out there is mind boggling. I found an article in BBC News and and shared it on Reddit. The article tools at the end of the article made this very easy to do. Of course, I now have another username and password. I probably won't be a frequent visitor to these sites, but I can definitely see the attraction for students and for those who want to keep up on certain topics.

Thing #11 (Tagging and del.icio.us)

I tagged a couple of my posts. It was very easy to do. Del.icio.us is a really useful tool . Storing bookmarks on the web allows you to access them anywhere you have Internet access. I can see where being able to see what others have bookmarked could be very useful in terms of gathering information, but having the choice to mark some bookmarks as private is also a nice feature.

Thing #10 (Learn about wikis)

Editing the 23 Things Wiki was fun and very easy to do. Our library has a staff wiki. One of the many things it is used for is posting sign-up sheets. We can now volunteer for library events without leaving our desks.

While I have used Wikipedia to look things up for my own use, I would encourage students to verify information they find there with other sources.

Thing #9 (Collaboration)

This was not an easy exercise for me. I received invitations to edit in both Zoho Writer and Google Docs. In both of these collaboration tools, I could find the document, but after logging in, I could not get back to the document to edit it. After several tries, and much wasted time, I gave up.

I think the founding fathers would have found that being able to collaborate online would have saved them a lot of time--if they could get it to work.