Thing 9 e-Books

Until December I wasn’t aware of Barnes & Noble Nook. I was aware of Amazon Kindle. As, a graduation present I received the Color Nook. I am learning about the features of e-reader. My first experience was downloading a free trail for Women’s Day & Good Housekeeping. I was very disappointed in reading them on e-reader it seem all about adds. Yes, it does have a feature to eliminate the adds but, not the same. On the Nook you get 14 days free trail and if you do not cancel it becomes a subscription and your account is charge. I would prefer to have paper copy of magazine. I am using my Nook for its features, as getting the internet, music, games, and e-reader. I was in Charlotte NC airport and I could not get onto the internet, because I was told WiFi was too busy. With the Nook you have to rely on WiFi for using the internet. Where I was staying in Charlotte did not have WiFi, so I could not use the Nook for the Internet. I have free books that came with the nook (not my preference), and I have downloaded one book. I am slowly reading the book. Barnes & Noble do have a lot of free books. You can search from the Nook for free e-books and there are a lot of choices. You also can go to the store and read books for a short period of time. I have not yet done that.  Another feature you can lead and borrow e-books, which I have not done yet. One fault of the Color Nook is you cannot read it in sun or bright light. On vacation it may be hard to read on beach or at the pool. But, still will try and use it outside as must as possible. Another fault of the Nook is the battery needs charging more frequent than I expected, so you may always need the connection for charging. I did check 2 libraries and I could not find e-books to borrow, so maybe it is going to take time for libraries to have e-books.

Overall, the Nook is a great new tool to use today to meet your technology needs and of course reading e-books. Barnes and Noble  have added more APP to the Nook making it more fun to use.

Thing 8 Video

While thinking of what video I would look for, I decided to look at videos on Tim Berners-Lee. If you do not know who Tim Berners-Lee he is known as the father of the internet. He developed the html/http in 1992 and the organization for standards for the web known as World Wide Web consortium. Why I chose Tim is I met him at RPI at a conference in June 2008. He was talking on Web 2.0. I was able to sit with him and talk with him. He made such wonderful impression. He is down to earth, knowledgeable, and friendly. I look back and think I met the man who invented the standards for the web that we all use now. What opportunity it was to meet him in Troy New York. The video Tim talks about Web 2.0. I hope you enjoy his talk.

Thing 7 Productivity and Collaboration Tools

Thing 7 was very interesting. I have used Google docs. I hope to have some faculty use Google doc this summer, they have a project that they have to share information and hopefully make corrections and changes on the doc they are sharing. I do not use electronic calendar, but I love my sticky notes on my desktop. I do not feel comfortable use any electronic source to store my passwords. I am doing the old fashion way by having them on paper copy stored in my desk at home and work. Even if someone found my paper they would have to decode it. I am only one who could read and understand who has what password.  I did take tours of these tools Evernote, Dropbox, delicious, diigo, and join.me. When I have more free time I hope to join and use some of the tools.  I really liked Dropbox and diigo and will look more into them. I really like to share my desktop from work at home. I will look into further. Polly has done a great job in finding and posting these tools.

Mary Cay

Thing 6 Webinars

I have never done a webinar, so this one is a new one for me. I could not do the ones listed on web page thing 6. I did find a pod cast on "how to fix copyright" it was just audio. It was little boring and just starring at blank media player does not make the subject interesting. Then I looked into Elluminate archives and found webinar on "classroom 2.0. At beginning she talked about how the webinar is going to work and how to use the tools for the webinar. I could see how patrons were interacting and asking questions. I found it very interesting. Only wishing it was live. I did get to see how the tools are used to participate in the webinar. This webinar was for grade school and how to use this particular web game for your class. Over all this was a good way to see webinar. I have a question how do you find webinars? Some do come to me through my email. But, if I was looking for a particular subject how do you find them? This week was good new learning experience. A goal will be to actually do a live one.

Mary Cay