Thing #18 - YouTube & Other Online Video

As usual, I'm blocked by the firewall at school. You know how much inappropriate content is out there. Besides, can't you see the kids all surfing YouTube instead of working on their assignments? At home, I don't have enough bandwidth to make it easy to view videos. However, I'm at my sibling's house this weekend - and they have DSL! Speed and access...yippee!!!

Unfortunately, I am still unable to link anything to my blog...hmmmmm....oh well, at least I gave it the ol' college try. And got to watch some of my favorite commercials at the same time.

Thing #17 - ELM Productivity Tools

It's frustrating when you're trying to follow the directions and half of the things you're supposed to be doing for the first time don't work as advertised. I never could get the RSS feed link to appear in Cengage Learning. From reading the comments in the 23 Things blog, it looks like I'm not the only one. However, it did work for some people, so I can't say for sure which bugs me more. It makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong that it doesn't work...

The EBSCO Page Composer went pretty well, but why do I need to do it? I guess I didn't get the drift of this one. ProQuest is cool...I've used this one a few times already. The e-mail feature is cool -- you can e-mail your sources to a colleague or patron and save trees.

I couldn't find the correct book "101 Ways to Promote Your Website" in NetLibrary. So I chose another one of the titles that the search returned. The Notes feature is kinda cool. Again, you have the "stuff" you did in a previous search or dig at your fingertips.

These tools could be very helpful for a research librarian, especially if people ask the same questions over and over again.

Thing #16 - Student 2.0 Tools

Never do today what you can do tomorrow...wait, I'm supposed to not be procrastinating anymore. At least, that's what I told myself at New Years. I like the idea of having the assignment calculator spell out exactly what you need to do and when you need to have it done by. This tool could be invaluable for research papers and thesis paper writing. I do wish it was a little more customizable though. Maybe I'll have to dust off my rusty programming skills (they were never trusty though, trust me) and make my own. Maybe tomorrow...

Thing #15 - Online Games and Libraries

As usual, I'm blocked by the firewall at school and don't have enough bandwidth to do this at home. Online gaming is okay I guess, but I can definitely live quite well without it. I went to college with a guy that actually flunked out because he spent all his time online in a MMORPG (back in the day it was called 'mudding'). And as open-minded as I consider myself, I would definitely have a large problem with someone sitting for hours in my library sucking up valuable resources playing games.

Thing #14 - LibraryThing

LibraryThing is really easy to use! The only thing that bothers me is having my reading preferences out there for the whole world to see. Do you see a pattern of not liking to expose myself to the whole world? I can see this being useful for new book lists, lists of books being discarded and recommended reading lists. It also looks like a quick way to see what other people that have the same book are reading. I'm always looking for a new book to read =)

Thing #13 - Online Productivity Tools

Here's a scary thought...the deadline for 23 Things on a Stick put in black and white.

If I had to choose a new home page, I think I'd go with PageFlakes. I like the layout. As for the calendars, I can see applications if you're away from home. Also if you're working on a project with other people in different locations. Personally, I prefer to have my calendar in easy-to-grab planner form that slips in my bag. Same goes for the to-do lists. I don't want to write it down on paper and then have to transfer it to computer. Guess one could say that I'm not dependent on technology to survive. Pen and paper are still well-used friends of mine.

The Zamzar file converter looks like a nice tool. I'll experiment with it to see if it works as advertised.

Thing #12 - Do You Digg?

I am definitely not digging Digg...or at least sharing something in it. They seem to want your whole life's history (or at least your vital statistics) to register and then you can't "Digg it" because you're not logged in. And reddit has a fit if it thinks you're clicking or typing too fast...here's the error message I got: "...too fast. Try again in 9 minutes." Like I'm going to wait nine minutes to share it again. I'm moving on to the next thing.

I think right now these tools are more of a productivity detractor. I know I spent more time clicking on stuff, especially in reddit to figure out what it really pertained to than actually reading the articles. And of course, like everything else, it's a popularity contest for these services. If your article is getting read by lots of people, it moves up the list and is easier to find. If not, then it moves down the list, making it more difficult for people to find.

Thing #11 - Tagging and del.icio.us

I can definitely see some good uses for del.icio.us. If your home computer crashes you still have your bookmarks stored somewhere that's accessible no matter where you are. I can also see this being a valuable tool for research. Type in the specific tag, ex. Missabe, and see what other people have bookmarked. And if a website works for multiple subjects, you can tag it that way and get back to work. And you could make lists of bookmarks for student research sites, book lists, what have you and they'd be available to others with a minimum of fuss.

Thing #10 - Wikis

Well, this was much easier than Thing #9. I took a chance and left my mark on the 23 Things on a Stick wiki with some words of wisdom. I think some of the reasons that teachers ban Wikipedia as a source for student research is 1) the fact that wikis are so incredibly easy to edit/add onto that without proper supervision the wiki can get completely out of control, 2) the wiki entries can have contradictory information in them (I've seen this one first hand) and 3) Wikipedia can get incredibly long-winded at times. With proper supervision, like the SYSOPS of old, wikis can be an incredibly useful tool.

Thing #9 - Online Collaboration Tools

Another lesson in futility. I must be stupid or something because I can't edit the sample document with either program. I think three tries is enough of a stab to figure out what this tool is supposed to do, even though it doesn't do anything. AARGH!

Thing #8 - Share Your Creations

After finding a lot of the tools in this section of the 23 Things blocked by the firewall, I wimped out and went back to play with Big Huge Labs again. I have to say that I am really impressed with how easy their tools are to use. The Energizer Bunny really has nothing to do with the rest of the pictures in the mosaic, other than it was taken last summer, too.