Thing 2
August 4, 2009

I made a commitment to complete the 23 Things by May 2010. I think this will be a great opportunity to learn some new things that I will be able to use in my business and personal life. I will have to admit that I am very shy about putting my words and thoughts out there for others to read. I am also not real comfortable with all of the new technologies. It seems like I learn something new and then something changes. I grew up in a time when things were simple, and I feel comfortable with simple things and I get a little nervous with complicated things. Maybe it is my fear of failure, that I might make a mistake. Well, aside from all of my fears, I will try my best to learn some new things and you never know, I might like using them.

I watched Steve Abram’s video and he is correct when he tells us that learning new things is a choice, and that we should set a priority to set aside time each day to learn new tools.
I went to Steve’s link to John Blyberg’s blog and I found it very interesting about all of the tools that are out there and all of the different ways you can use them to communicate to different groups of people.

I made a list of some of the new web tools that I read about in Thing 2:

1. Libraries can use You Tube as a way to share videos of story hours, teen contests, rock concerts, gaming nights, literacy training, etc. This is a great marketing tool to get the word out to the patrons about what is going on in their library.
2. You can also use Second Life as a way to promote events like book clubs, teen outreach, and others.
3. Facebook is gaining a lot of popularity lately with the older generation. It is a great place to connect with political groups, friends, and family. You can create your own page and you can put restrictions on who is allowed to view your information. I joined Facebook, and I am not quite sure yet how much I like knowing what my friends are up to every minute of the day. I do like the privacy feature though. I was also pleased to find out that I can delete feeds from my friends so it doesn’t clutter up my page.
4. I think I missed one of the tools. I will try to clear this up later.
5. Flickr is a web tool that you can use to collect pictures in one place and share them with others.
6. Podcasts can be used to tell stories. This is another way that libraries can promote services and make announcements to the community.
7. Wikipedia is a place where you can set up a PB Wiki and set up RSS feeds and enter information. This is a great place to keep information for a group of people. We use this with the Leadership Institute. Participants can go to the Wiki to communicate with others in the group and keep up with homework and announcements.
8. Ning is a way to create communities within communities. You can find and organize supporters for a campaign.
9. Twitter is a way to keep everyone in contact and informed. You can send out emails to a large group at one time.
10. Mozes is a way to build a messaging dashboard to tweet mailing lists with community news, events, and ideas.
11. Now Public – this is a Tremours site. I’m not real sure what this is all about. I think I will learn something about this later.

12. Blogging and RSS – Blogging is a way to express yourself. You can write about things that you are passionate about and share with others. RSS is a way to send information about specific topics directly to you.

Wow! That is a long list of Web 2.0 tools that are out there. I’m sure as I am writing this that many more tools have been added to this list. I hope to learn something about each one of these tools by the end of my journey and I am sure to find that several of the new tools will make my life a little simpler by finding news ways to communicate and get information. I am going to try very hard to overcome my fear of trying something new. This will definitely be an adventure for me.