Wiki's and the future

I really enjoyed the wiki presentations. You chose some excellent presentations for us to explore. I have explored Wiki's a little bit before this exploration class. The Princeton Book Wiki is really good. I chose a couple of books from that Wiki to add to our collection at the library.
I still have a bit to learn about the wiki. I had an interesting discussion with my seventh graders today about wiki's. They had used them, but didn't really understand how they worked.
Sometimes, I have used the Wikipedia to begin research. If I need some quick info., I may access a wiki. But, I am still a bit of a purist, being a former World Book Encyclopedia salesman. The World Book Encyclopedia, or others, are good places to start research also.
I have also enjoyed exploring the Montana Librarians Wiki. I will probably register and input in the near future.
This has been an absolutely eye-opening class for me.

del.icio.us

Wow! del.icio.us is pretty cool. I can see patrons using this site when they are accessing public computers. They will still have their bookmarks, whichever computer is available. Plus, somebody else hasn't added to or deleted from the bookmark list. Thank you for adding this to our learning schedule. I have heard of del.icio.us several times and never had taken the time to explore it and see how it might work for me.

Happy Leap Year this week!

YouTube

I have been exploring YouTube this week and previously. I often wonder if people have asked permission to put other people or other people's kids on their YouTube videos. I found some interesting presentations in my discovery. There is an interesting library musical from Seneca Libraries. It is done by Michael London. I hope I am imbedding it correctly here.


We will see how this works. I may delete it if it isn't working. It is a bit of a long video, but it is well done.

Podcasts

I discovered podcasts last year. Wow! What a joy. I have subscribed to about 25 different podcasts. They cover a wide range of topics: Reading, authors, sports, baseball, Yellowstone Park, my son's church in Denver, fiction, photography, NPR, StoryCorps, Story of the Day, American Life, etc. Some of them are video podcasts, but most are audio. Being a radio sports commentator myself, I really enjoy listening to the audio. There have been some that I have tried and not enjoyed. But, there are always new podcasts available.

Some of my favorites are:
Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac from NPR
Book Lust with Nancy Pearl
Barnes and Noble's Meet the Writers
NPR's StoryCorps
NPR's Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me

Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me is a news show on Sunday's that is an enjoyable, humorous look at the week's news with interesting guests and fun little pieces of news.

A couple of the authors on the Barnes and Noble Meet the Writers' podcasts have been authors from our MLA conferences. There was a great interview with Greg Mortenson about his book: "Three Cups of Tea..." One of my wife's reading discussion groups was discussing that book the week after I listened to the podcast, so I put it on CD so that the whole group could listen to the interview. It also introduced most of them to what a podcast was. Podcast is a new term to many.

The other author interviewed from our conferences was last year's fun speaker, Nancy Pearl. I really enjoyed that interview also.