Week 9, Thing 23....DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well, I have officially completed 23 Things.

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
Definitely Bloglines and LibraryThing. Most of the other exercises I'd had experience with, so they weren't very innovative to me. However, both Bloglines and LibraryThing are services that I continue to use now, even though I am done those exercises.

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
I plan on being a lifelong learner for sure. Even though I am a part of the new "tech generation," there were still services involved in 23 Things that I had never used before, such as Rollyo and Blonglines. I think it was a good learning experience.

3. Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I know I will continue to use some of the services used in the 23 Things program. But there weren't any unexpected outcomes; I came to learn about technology and so I did.

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
Not much. The exercises were pretty loose so you could learn without strict formulas (like "click here, then click here, then click here," that would be boring).

5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?
I would probably participate, unless it was something that I was already familiar with. The advantage of 23 Things is that I learned a lot. If that were possible in future discovery programs, then I would participate.

6. How would you describe your learning experience in a few words or a few sentences, so we can share our successes and promote this program?
23 Things introduced me to different services that, even as a young person, I had never heard of or used before. It was a great discovery exercise for beginners and veterans of internet services alike.

Week 9, Things 21 and 22

Thing 21: Search tools for podcasts.

I am not very familiar with podcasts and I don't know anyone who listens to them. Podcasts, by my understanding, are basically recordings of radio shows, books, etc that can be played back on an iPod, mp3 player, or other device. Podcasts are basically TiVo for your iPod.

I first went to podcast.net and searched for "film," it came up with a number of podcasts so I picked an interesting one, Indie Film Nation, and added it to my RSS feed. I also searched for "spanish" and ended up finding quite a few podcasts that were in Spanish, aside from the usual ones that will teach you the language.

I went to podcastalley.com next, and clicked on the "Arts" category. I ended up with a Harry Potter fanfiction podcast, which was interesting. I can see what podcasts have to offer, but I myself am not buying into the hype; podcasts just don't interest me.

Thing 22: Overdrive/Project Gutenberg.

I was very disappointed with Project Gutenberg. I typed in 4 different authors who are pretty well-known and ended up with nothing each time. I am skeptical as to the reach of their collection if these authors were not available. Overdrive was a bit of a confusing site, as was NetLibrary. I felt kind of like they were trying to make it as hard as possible for me to locate books, especially NetLibrary. But since I would rather read a book than listen to it, this exercise was interesting but not really my kind of thing.

Week 9, Thing 20

YOUTUUUUUUUUUUBE!

I am a big big big fan of YouTube. Not only can you find almost any music video you are looking for (including things I haven't heard since middle school, favorite bands, the most popular new
songs, etc), you can watch them all absolutely free. YouTube also allows you to discover independent film and support their efforts. The only irritating thing that I absolutey cannot stand about YouTube is that people use it as their own personal soundbox. I don't really care for others' opinions, even if they agree with my own. Not to mention that the amount of stupid people who just sit there babbling. Despite these factors, however, I still like YouTube for the fact that you no longer have to download an application (Limewire, Napster, etc) in order to watch videos; you can just go to YouTube and see them without all the spyware and viruses associated with downloadable programs. In the end, no matter what you're looking for, YouTube probably has it, and that makes it entertaining and sometimes invaluable.

I attempted to embed a video from one of my favorite bands in this post, but Blogger won't allow that type of HTML. BOOO BLOGGER!

Week 8, Things 18 & 19

For things 18 and 19, I went to Zoho Writer. I don't particularly see the point in online word processors. I mean, come on, how lazy are you that you can't just convert the files between word processors (which all word processors do automatically anyway). The question of plagiarism also struck me, because it would be so simple to hack someone's account and then have access to all their documents. A lot simpler than trying to break into their house and boot up their PC. I can't say that I enjoyed Zoho, and Google Docs was no different.

For thing 19, I visited the Web 2.0 awards site and found some very cool sites. My favorite, however, was One Sentence.org. On this site, you tell a story in one sentence. I thought the idea of limiting a story like that was very interesting and a good way to force people to become creative. I added a story of my own. That would have to be my favorite site.

Week 7, Things 16 & 17

So this week I discovered wikis, and also that my font changes a lot. I like that.

Wikis, I discovered, are interesting but not particularly useful unless complete credibility can be achieved. There's a reason they won't let us use Wikipedia and other wiki sites when writing papers; information can be tampered with too easily through the wiki system. By having an system of open editing, wikis are subject to vandalism and false information. For example, recently someone sabotaged the Wikipedia page of a 90s television actor, claiming that he had died. The page went unchecked for days before someone noticed, and by then, flowers and sympathy cards had been sent to the actor's home.

With that being said, the Wikis that I checked out (including Book Lover's Wiki and Library 2.0 in 15 Minutes a Day) were reputable and fun. It was interesting to see all the book reviews, and the Library 2.0 had some good information about different types of browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox), as well as web tools like blogs, social networking, and other things we have learned about so far in 23 Things.

I also went to the Sandbox wiki and read through a few entries before adding one to the Favorite Fun Memories entry. I thought that it was cute and a great way to share thoughts (another one of my favorites being Random Thoughts).

All in all I think Wikis are useful for entertainment and not so much information unless they are kept in check, like Library 2.0.