Thing 28: Well we're big rock singers…

--> NOTE: Although Jamie is officially June's L2.1 Learning Guide, I just had to add this one 'thing' for my contribution for the month - Helene <--

"…we've got golden fingers
And we're loved everywhere we go
We sing about beauty and we sing about truth
At ten thousand dollars a show
We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills
But the thrill we've never known
Is the thrill that'll get you when you get your picture
On the cover of the Rolling Stone."

I don’t know how many of you recognize these lyrics from Dr. Hook’s 1973 hit, On the Cover of the Rolling Stone. But if you've ever dreamed about being featured on a magazine cover, these image generators will give you that chance. (Note: Some magazine image generators may not adhere to library collection management.)

• Wired magazine cover
  
• Time, National Geographic, Business Today, etc.
  
• Time – Person of the Year
  RollingStone, Time, etc.
  
• Create your own magazine cover - generic

Discovery Exercise: (This one is purely for fun)

1. Select an image generator of your choice, upload a photo and create your magazine cover.
   
2. Save your creation by using your mouse’s right click and select “save image as”
   
3. Create a blog post and upload your cover to either your blog or ning profile.

Optional: Upload your magazine cover image to Flickr and tag it “LibMagCovers”

Think about how you could use these image generators to create unique signs for your library? Or offer a creative class for library users on magazine cover fun?

In the meantime, why not join me and put yourself “on the cover of the Rolling Stone.” :)

Thing 27: Photobucket

In Learning 2.0, we looked at Flickr, an excellent resource for finding photographs of places and things, and an excellent place to post your own photography.

Photobucket competes with Flickr, although they have slightly different target audiences. Like Flickr, Photobucket is a photo sharing website, but it also lets you share other kinds of images (including animations) and video clips. Photobucket dominates the photosharing website game with 40% of the market in April of this year. (No other site has more than 6% of the market; only Yahoo! Photos has over 5%, and Yahoo! Photos is set to be discontinued in favor of Flickr, also a Yahoo!-owned website, before the end of the year.)

In addition to photo and video storage and sharing, Photobucket also lets you save animated clips, create slideshows of images, "remix" videos and create avatars. Oh, and they have lots of pictures of celebs and other newsworthy items. (By the way, Photobucket is being purchased by Fox Interactive Media, the company that owns MySpace. FIM is, in turn, part of NewsCorp.)

You may have noticed a few "things" ago at LetterPop that you could import your images directly from Flickr, without downloading and uploading them to and from your PC as an intervening step; Photobucket has a similar arrangement with many, many websites, notably social networking site MySpace and others. One big difference is that from Flickr you can only use photos you have posted; at Photobucket, add any image or video you like to your album (or further organize your choices into sub-albums), and you can use it, no matter who originally posted it. In other words, anything you add to a public account at Photobucket is fair game for any other Photobucket user to see and use on a blog or profile at any website (as long as it's not for commercial purposes).

Discovery Exercise:

1. Create a Photobucket account.
2. Search for images and videos that have something to do with your favorite book or books and save at least two or three of them into an album or sub-album(s). (Why? All will be revealed in Thing 28.)
3. Use the "Find stuff" tab to browse for items (instead of searching).
   
4. Be sure to click the "My album" tab - that's where you'll add your own photos, create slide shows and avatars or remix videos.
5. Blog about your experience at Photobucket.
   

Thing 26: Little bits of the Internet, on your desktop

Widget, widget, who's got the widget?

You will, at YourMinis!

Okay, back up. What’s a widget? Well, the Google definition is here.

Clear as mud, right?

Essentially, a widget is a small, interactive program that allows quick access to often-used tools or information. Most – though far from all – widgets are connected to the Internet. Some are very practical; some are just for fun.

Windows Vista and the latest Mac operating systems have widget software built in; widgets show up right on the desktop. (Windows calls them Gadgets.)

So, umm, what's a widget again? The best way to find out is to play with some.

If you aren’t lucky enough to have the latest OS, you can install the Yahoo! Widget Engine on almost any recent PC or Mac, or some USB drives. But because you might not want to (or be able to) install widget software on your computer, try using YourMinis to investigate widgets.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Go to YourMinis and click Open Startpage.
2. Click one of the "templates" at the bottom of the right-hand pane to add a tab full of widgets to your pages.
3. Create a new tab by clicking Add Tab at the top of the page, and use the gray bar on the left to add some widgets to your page. (If you don't see the bar, click Add Content in the upper left corner.) It's easy to drag them around on the page. Mouse over each widget and click the buttons that appear in its top right corner to set options and change widget color, etc. You can also use the small drop-down arrows beside each tab's name to change the tab background color, delete the tab or perform other "maintenance" tasks.
4. Write about your experience with YourMinis in your blog.

First Torch Pass ...

Wow! I can't believe it's June already and half the year has nearly gone by. But with dawn of a new month, I'm pleased to begin the torch passing and introduce Jamie Christenbury who will taking the reins for the next 30 days as our Learning Guide.

Jamie's a dynamo trainer at PLCMC's Virtual Village and a social networking diva (she's also responsible for setting the Ning community as well), so I'm really looking forward to following her discovery suggestions and learning a few new things myself.

Anyone can be a Learning Guide for Learning 2.1. All you need to do is to submit a sample post and commit to adding three or four new discoveries during the month. If you're interested, please feel free to drop me an email. The best thing about a learning community is that we all can be teachers and students at the same time. So why not think about it and sign-up to carry the torch for a month. :)

Thing 25: Newsletters in a Pop!

To create great looking newsletters you no longer need a graphic artist's degree (or even access to MS Publisher templates). Thanks to LetterPop.com, newsletters are now a breeze pop!

LetterPop is a nifty free online website that lets you create great looking newsletters and announcements with a few clicks and drags of your mouse. The site itself is built upon an ajax platform -- I know, this is more info then you needed. But hey, it good to drop a new term into the mix every once in awhile -- that lets you freely drop and drag elements on the screen wherever you want and with over 90 templates (be sure to check out the multiple page layouts available with each template) there’s so much you can do.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Play around with LetterPop.com and mock up a newsletter or announcement of your own.
   
2. Post a link to it from your blog and share your creation and discoveries with others.

PS: Here’s a LetterPop creation that was actually created by a group of participants who recently attended a mouse skills workshop at our library.

What a neat way to say thanks and a useful tool to share with patrons. Try it yourself and see if you don't agree that creating great looking newsletters with this tool is a ... POP!

Thing 24: Got file conversion issues?

It happens in every library... a user approaches the service desk with a problem -- the PC won't read their file.

File conversion issues have always been around. But until lately, the only solutions available were the those that were locally installed on PCs. But enter Zamzar.com (my new best friend). This website offers on-the-fly conversion of text, image, audio and video file formats without ever installing a download. The best thing about the site is that you don't even need a login to convert. Simply browse for your file, select the new format type and it does the magic and even emails the results to you. A big bonus is the pdf converter- which is one I know I'll use a lot. PDF stands for "portable document format" and is a file type that maintains a document's original look format outside of the program it was created in.

Discovery Exercise:

• Take any document you've created in a word-processing program (Word, Open Office, WordPad) and try steps 1 through 4 at Zamzar.com to convert the file to pdf.
  
• You'll need to check your email once it's done for the final product.
  
• Create a post about how this service might be of use to yourself or your library.

Note: Personally I love the option that allows me to convert YouTube videos to mpg. This is especially helpful for including video in PowerPoint presentations when you don't have access to the Internet. Thank you Zamzar

The adventure continues ...

In the past few months it seems that a week hasn't gone by when someone hasn't asked me what they could do to continue their explorations and discoveries after Learning 2.0. Well, if you're one of those people then you've found the answer here ... Learning 2.1 :)

Learning 2.1 is a continuation of the original online discovery program and combines 21st century skills with lifelong learning. Like the original program, participants are encouraged to follow along with their own blogs. But there are three major changes:

• The program is continuous. There is not a finite new list of 23 Things. The program simply encourages participants to play with two or three new things a month. Feel free to explore what you want. The program not only emphasizes discovery and play; it also has a Ning Learning network that you can use to connect with other learners.
  
  
• Anyone can become a contributor to Learning 2.1. All you need to do to become a guest blogger is submit a sample post and agree to post at least 3 new discoveries within a month. Interested? Contact us.
  
  
• Sorry, there are no prize incentives. But you, of course, could change this if and when you win the lottery. :) But as many of you said in Learning 2.0, there is still a great reward in learning itself.

So why not renew or start a new blog and follow along? Learning is a journey that is best done with friends. So let's do it together as we Explore ... Discover ... and PLAY!

PS: Looking for a discovery exercise to start you off on this new journey?

Why not start by creating a profile for yourself in the Explore ...Discover .. Play Ning. Of if you prefer to participate a little bit more anonymously, add your blog to the Learning 2.1 wiki.