#20 You too can YouTube
Wow! You have made it to the last week!
Online video hosting sites have exploded, allowing users to easily to upload and share videos on the web. Among all the web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog serving up over 2.5 billion a day and allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also embed clips into their own sites easily.
Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You’ll find everything from 1970s TV commercials to library dominos and kids singing about bloopers here.
Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer. 
Discovery Exercise:
1. Explore YouTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
2. Create a blog post about your experience. What did you like or dislike about the site and why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any features or componets of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites?
OPTIONAL: Try placing the video inside your blog post. Use the short code provided on YouTube and copy/paste to your post. This is easy and adds so much to your blog posts!
Other popular video hosting sites:
NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light internet usage times.
#21 Podcasts, Smodcasts!
The word podcast is used to refer to a non-musical audio or video broadcast that is distributed over the Internet. What differentiates a podcast from regular streaming audio or video is that the delivery method for podcasts is often done automatically through RSS.
In 2005, “podcast” was named the “word of the year” by New Oxford American Dictionary and with the growth of podcasting over the last 24 months, it’s easy to see why.
Podcasts take many forms, from short 1-10 minutes commentaries to much longer in person interviews or panel group discussions.
There’s a podcast out there for just about every interest area and the best part about this technology is that you don’t have to have an iPod or a MP3 player to access them. Since podcasts use the MP3 file format, a popular compressed format for audio files, you really just need a PC (or portal device) with headphones or a speaker.
iTunes, the free downloadable application created by Apple is the directory finding service most associated with podcasts, but if you don’t have iTunes installed there are still plenty of options.
For this discovery exercise, take a look at some popular podcast directory tools. Do some exploring on your own and locate a podcast that is of interest to you. Once found, you can easily pull the RSS feed into your Bloglines account as well, so that when new casts become available you’ll be automatically notified of their existence.
Discovery Resources:
·To find out more about podcasts start with Feedforall tutorial
· There are many, many podcast directories and finding tools out there. Here are just three of the more popular ones that, unlike iTunes, don’t require a software download:
o Yahoo Podcasts
· What? You want to learn how to be a podcaster too?
(Optional Resources for those who want to learn create podcasts)
o Odeo’s Studio – online recording studio.
1. Take a look at one or two of the podcast directories listed and see if you can find a podcast that interests you. See if you can find some interesting library related podcasts here like book review podcasts or library news.
2. Add the RSS feed for a podcast to your Bloglines account
3. Create a blog post about your discovery process. Did you find anything useful here?
#22 Audiobooks (or “The end is in sight “)
ACL has had NetLibrary and downloadable eAudiobooks for our customers for quite some time. Have you used these great resources yet?
To establish a NetLibrary account, you must first create your account through the ACL website in-house. But once you have a Netlibrary user name and password (I know, I know … you’re tired of user names and passwords, but I promise this is the last user account for this program that you’ll have to create) you can access NetLibrary directly and bypass the ACL site.
For this discovery exercise, you merely need to familiarize yourself a bit with the structure of NetLibrary’s Downloadable eAudiobooks site and get an idea of the types of titles you can find here. Take a look around and locate a few titles of interest.
Discovery Exercise:
1. Establish a Netlibrary account for yourself by accessing Netlibrary while at the library. Note: If you are not a member of the ACL staff or don’t have a ACL library card, full access to NetLibrary may not be available.
2. Once you have an account created, you can access NetLibrary directly at http://netlibrary.com
3. Click on the eAudiobooks link and explore some of the 1300 + titles.
4. Create a blog post about your findings. What titles did you find that you might use?
OPTIONAL: Try downloading a title from the NetLibrary. You don’t have to have a portable player to listen to audiobooks, you can also listen to it from a computer.
#23 Is this really the end? Or just the beginning …
Wow! Congratulations!!
You’ve reached the 23rd thing. Be sure to give yourself a pat on the back for completing the program.
For your last and final exercise for this program please reflect on your learning journey and post a few thoughts.
Here are some questions to prompt you if you’re drawing a blank…
· What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
· How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
· Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
· What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
And last but not least…
· If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?
In closing, I want to thank each and every one of you for joining me on this journey. My greatest hope is that this not the end of our learning journey together as a staff and a system, but rather it’s just the start of something amazing …
Where can I find YouTube’s short code?
Thanks.
to the right side, click (more) and the url will show