Sharing info thru the Web…One Web App @ a Time
Cindi Hickey, Louise Alcorn, Christa Burns, and I presented at the 23 Things and Counting session. Obviously I didn’t take any notes. 🙂
The slides from the portion of the session that Cindi and I gave are online here, and the website that we created as part of our presentation is available here.
It went very well (I thought), and I loved how well the session easily segued into Gretchen and Brian’s session on Transliteracy that was next/last on the day’s track.
I am attempting to get caught up on 23 Things Kansas slowly. I had every intention of participating week-by-week, but between work at NEKLS, maintaing the project site, answering questions on the site by email and by  chat, and helping write two lessons, I’ve admittedly (and not surprisingly) gotten way behind. As tempted as I am to do what Liz did (although it was ingenious, and I’m jealous), I’m still trying to get in the habit of blogging at least a few days a week, and will try to do each lesson as an individual post (although they probably WILL NOT be in week order). Which leads me to this week’s lesson on Video on the Web, led by David Lee King.
I love online video and as the semi-millenial that I am, it’s where I consume most of my media content these days. I lose too much time on YouTube (became a huge Wicked fan, thanks to YouTube clips alone of the musical). In fact, I lose many hours on YouTube, watching different musical clips and the Logan Show. I watch my favorite TV shows online for free, through Hulu and other sites, as I don’t have cable, and until recently, didn’t even have a working antenna. I bought an antenna during the Winter Olympics, when I couldn’t find places to watch them online live, and I wasn’t about to miss the ice skating! I also utilize a NetFlix subscription, and watch funny cat videos, and videos that challenge my thinking.
My favorite one of those ice skating videos? (I linked to four of my favorites above) Todd Eldredge’s “First Knight” free skate at the 1996 World Championships:
I’ve also recorded, edited, and shot a lot of video over the past 12 or so years, starting clear back in high school (yes, I just dated myself). I created a couple of videos last year, for a presentation at the Computers in Libraries conference. Here’s one that’s a quick “tour” of all the KLOW sites (from March 2009).
Finally, I’ve starting shooting more videos with my own video camera, since getting a new iPhone with video capabilities last summer. Most are of my niece and nephew. Having the iPhone has made it very easy to quickly grab and shoot small videos on the fly. Here’s one no family member should yell at me too much for posting:
I love video of all kinds; it’s a way entertain, educate, or to tell a story, even if it’s just through text.
Testing out Twitterfeed to help a 23thingskansas participant out. 🙂 Nothing to see here!
I’m currently working on tweaking this blog’s appearance and organization. 23 Things Kansas has definitely challenged me to work on developing my coding skills. That link was this week’s challenge: to find a way to quickly and easily deploy a list of links to all the participants’ blogs, a sortable, filterable, searchable solution. I think it worked! We’ll see.
In the process of tweaking this blog (in its perpetual beta), I’ve managed to briefly completely break it three or four times in the last 24 hours! Thankfully, due to great WordPress documentation and Google searching, I’ve resolved most of the issues each time. If things look weird, or bizarre, or nothing is displayed, please bear with me. Blogs are sometimes a work in progress.
One thing I’ve partially accomplished, but not completely yet, is I’ve removed my Twitter Digest posts from appearing on the homepage everyday. I hope that helps clean this up. I set that up, so the people that are interested in what I have to say on Twitter each day, but aren’t Twitter users, might be able to follow the stream. You can still see those posts under the Twitter category. I hope that helps! More changes to come.
I’m Heather Braum, and I’m the Technology Librarian at the Northeast Kansas Library System. I’m one of the mentors for the 23 Things Kansas program, but I’m also going to be participating right alongside all of you and learning. The more I dig into the library technology world, the more I realize how little I know. You never can stop learning!
A little bit about me personally (read my professional bio at the 23 Things Kansas mentors page):
I’m a lifelong Kansan, and grew up near Holton in Jackson County on my family’s fourth-generation farm. Dad decided to change careers and became the Valley Falls funeral director as I entered high school, so our family moved to Valley Falls into the town funeral home. That experience always makes for interesting discussions as I meet people. 🙂 I have an adorable nephew and sweet niece, as well as
two cats that are my kids. White Sox and Storm are lovable, and yet their first choice to sit when I’m home is right in my lap, whenever I’ve working on my laptop; it’s ever so convenient! Oh yes, and I’m a diehard KU basketball fan and loathe the colors black, yellow, and purple (you do the color sorting)! 🙂 Rock Chalk Jayhawks!
Mom (who’s participating in 23 Things Kansas (will link to her blog when she starts it)) is the Holton High School librarian, and she told me for years I’d be a librarian. I ignored her, studied political science in college, and started graduate school in political science. I quickly realized it was the wrong field, and returned back to librarianship. After my first semester of library school and focusing on law librarianship, I realized that technology+librarianship=Win! and applied/started at NEKLS, and the rest is history. I finished my MLS at Emporia State a year ago; was so glad to be done with Capstone!!
When it comes to technology, I’m a social media addict (especially Twitter — I’ll be the lead Mentor for the microblogging lesson). I love Macs, especially my iPhone, and enjoy teaching others about technology. It’s scary and frustrating, but it really can make lives easier!
I’m taking part in 23 Things, because the best way to learn is to learn from those around you. I also am excited to be learning alongside so many Kansas library colleagues. It’s a very diverse bunch, and I’m looking forward to “meeting” and “learning” from all of you.
I’ve had this blog for a long time, but it has been mainly serving as a place where I digest my Tweets each day. I hope to get back in the habit of blogging regularly thanks to the schedule of 23 Things Kansas. This weekends’ discussion in response to Seth Godin’s post about the future of libraries was enough to want to get back to writing. I hope to be able to respond to that here later tonight.
Update: I realized tonight, after an adventure of managing to break my blog for fifteen minutes, that I never did say what this blog runs on. I run this blog on the WordPress software. Many 23 Things Kansas participants are using WordPress.com, which also runs the WordPress software. The My Kansas Library on the Web project also uses the WordPress software. I set up a domain that hosts my blog, which gives me a greater ability to customize and gives control over my site. However, the domain hosting is not free, and like I found out tonight, sometimes too much freedom means you break stuff. I always learn from breaking things, though. It’s the way I’ve always learned about technology. You break it, and 99.9999999999999% of the time it can be fixed. So don’t be scared to try something new or be worried you might break something or do it “the wrong way.” There is typically no wrong way with technology. That’s the beauty and the frustration of it! 🙂