Playing around with YouTube now. I've only recently started using YouTube, I kinda resisted the phenonemon for a long time, mainly because I had friends pushing mediocre videos on me and so what I'd seen wasn't terriably impressive. But once I started using it to look up things for myself I was surprised by the quality of many of the vidoes presented.

I'll try embedding one of the videos I looked up just last night into my blog.


Here's a link to the second one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7ozG-YNLNg&feature=related

Learning 2.0 Web-based Apps.

I'm using Google Docs to type and publish this blog post after checking it out as an online word processing tool.

Blah, Bling, Blong. I like how the MS Word keyboard shortcuts work here also. Cross-platform standards like that in computing are one of the best arguments against cynicism ever.

- Micahel L.

Web 2.0 Awards

Kinda frustrating component of the Learning 2.0 course, due to the fact that most of the sites I tried to visit are blocked at work. I did check out the google image game which was fun, but I doubt it'll be useful work wise.

I used to think Wikis were the bane of all that was true and accurate. Allowing anyone to make changes to information on any topic sounded like a recipie for disaster, but they're not. People contributing to Wikipedia, for example, almost always act sensibly and are able to provide useful information. In recent times I've been using Wikipedia more frequently when I just need to look up some small fact about the topic. However, I would be somewhat hesitant to use it for anything important or for any topic on which people have strong feelings. Issues like abortion, movies or books with religious themes would warrent a close reading, although if you look up the Wikipedia entry for Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, based on the author's heavily athiest themed book series, the article is quite neutral.


I made a post (duplicated below) on our Learning 2.0 sandbox Wiki under favourite books.
http://plcmclearning.pbwiki.com/Favorite-Books

My favourite books are:

His Dark Materials (trilogy) by Philip Pullman
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
the "Sandman" graphic novels by Neil Gaiman
the Dune series by Frank Herbert
- Michael L.

Web 2.0, Library 2.0 Perspectives

I've been reading through a lot of articles about Web/Library 2.0 lately. It's facinating stuff. Dr Wendy Schultz's article struck the biggest chord with me. For me, the biggest impact of all the discussion surrounding the future of libraries is that it's all web-dependant. I consider myself to be fairly familiar with internet culture but a lot of the stuff Dr Schultz is talking about seems like sci-fi to me. Some of the concepts she discusses, like "star librarians" existing almost exclusively in an online form, pretty much already exists today, except that they're not trained librarians, they're just people who know how to research the web.

However, still a lot to consider.

Del.icio.us and Technorati

I've used del.icio.us before and can't honestly say I can envision ever using it. If you know how to use google, then you'd struggle to justify the amount of time required to set del.icio.us up properly. Technorati is new to me though and looks like somthing I'd quite likely use. The ability to search blogs is becoming a much more important tool these days as blogs are becoming quite commonplace so I see Technorati as filling a niche in information searching.

Blog Post 2

Welcome to my Library. Here at Pugs' Library we are committed to providing the highest level of recreational reading, quality information services and community entertaintment... and aquiring funding to move to new premises.