Week 2: Genealogy

I signed up to both My Heritage and Geni, and I liked them both. There are things I prefer about each site, but I think my preference overall is for the My Heritage site, probably mostly because of the "fun" activities. I like the photo slideshow on My Heritage and I had great fun doing the celebrity face recognition collage, which shows what celebrities you resemble. I have posted my celebrity look-alike collage on this blog. I also saw myself morph into Jesse McCartney using the celebrity morph, and I am looking forward to trying the look-alike meter once I have uploaded more photos of my kids and my ex-husband onto my home computer. However I don't like the fact that my family tree shows me under my maiden name because that's what I had to type in when I entered my name - I haven't yet managed to figure out how I can possibly show both my maiden name and my current name. I also don't like the homepage on my family site which assumes that my current name is the same as my maiden name - so I need to do something about that! :-)I like the family tree part of Geni better than the one on My Heritage because it shows both my current and maiden surnames, and I like the arrows radiating out from each person on the family tree so that you just have to click on them and add brothers/sisters etc (down arrow) and parents (up arrow) etc. There are lots more things I like about each site but this post would end up a mile long if I listed everything - so I won't :-) Would I recommend these sites to customers? Definitely. I would recommend both of them and leave the customer to make up their own mind, because what might suit one person more might not suit another so much. And I will continue to add my own family tree and photos etc to both sites ...they each have different things to offer and different strengths and weaknesses.

Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

http://www.myheritage.com/collage

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities

My family tree from Geni.com

View more of Merrilyn's tree  |  Get your own family tree at Geni.com

License to Play ... I'm back! :-)

Hey, I'm back! This is great! :-) Just made it back from a couple of weeks' holiday in time to register for this course on Monday 2 February so I'm lucky I just managed to scrape in. Thank you for doing more of this "web 2.0 learning stuff" 'cos it's fun and I really enjoy it..and I definitely don't need the prize incentives to do it...I'd do it anyway :-) I am resurrecting the blog I created for the first ACL Web 2.0 course. It wasn't too bad finding it again because I'd set Blogger up as one of my Favourites...but I had forgotten which email address I used to set it up, and then I had forgotten my password...but it only took a few minutes to work out which email address I should be using and then to reset my password. As to memories coming back, yes there were a lot of those :-) I really enjoyed the first course, forgotten some bits here and there 'cos I haven't used them (hate to have to admit that but it's true and it's mostly due to lack of time to "play"...but at least I know the different things that are available and I've got them all set up as Favourites so I can use them when I want), and probably should do a refresher of that course sometime too... But as I said, I'm glad to be back :-)

Thing 23

Reflect on my learning journey and post a few thoughts about my journey through this programme? I have absolutely thoroughly enjoyed it and I am sorry that it is at an end...but as ACL Learning 2.0 says "Is this really the end? Or just the beginning?" I think it IS the beginning...it is the start of my learning journey with all things web 2.0....there are so many things I want to go back and explore in more depth now that I know of their existence. I think this programme is brilliant...I enjoyed being able to do things at my own pace, work things out myself and create things...like this blog...a few weeks ago I had no idea that all of this web 2.0 technology existed...I had heard of podcasts and had no idea what they were (and neither did my kids so I was able to teach them something new :), I'd heard of Flickr because my cousin had sent me an invite to look at photos they posted on a trip to America, but I had no idea about how to add photos myself etc...I didn't know that Wikipedia was a wiki and what exactly a wiki was (although I knew that anyone could edit Wikipedia)...never heard of Technorati or Rollyo or Bloglines or Zoho Writer...so I knew bits and pieces...but really rather an ignoramus :-) Now I still know bits and pieces...I doubt that I could call myself an expert on web 2.0 technology...but I am a lot more educated and I am pretty confident helping others use this technology...so many many thanks to Elgar and Learning 2.0...it's been a great journey, very worthwhile...AND it's been a LOT of FUN :-)...and I am looking forward to the next such-like course..

Week 9/Thing 22

I looked at NetLibrary, created an account and added 4 titles to my favourites. One book that I particularly want to read is Africa on Six Wheels: A Semester on Safari. I read the preface and it sounds like it would be interesting...I enjoy reading books about Africa as one of my goals/dreams is to go on safari there. The other titles I added to my Favourites were 101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving; Adobe Photoshop; and Advertising on the Internet....some very interesting titles on NetLibrary. I didn't look through the lot but now that I know they're there, I will be back to look at them in more depth etc. I am particularly excited by the thought of possibly and hopefully being able to download audiobooks from NetLibrary to the new MP3 player that I am going to earn in a very short time :-) And the MP3 player will be another new bit of technology to master because I've never had one or used one...my kids have them but I do not have a clue about how to use them...yet :-) I most definitely think I will be using NetLibrary in the future....have to get used to reading from a computer and I think that's a very different thing from reading a book in hardcopy...and I think it would be great if I could download an audiobook to my MP3 player and listen to it while walking/driving long distances etc....And lastly I like the fact that you can choose your "interface language" from several languages...I'm sure that will be a very useful feature for many customers...

Week 9/Thing 21

I looked at podcast.net and did a search for author interviews. Added Authorlink Audio Interviews to my Bloglines account and then went back to look at a podcast. I tried to access a podcast on James Mitchener Remembered...and found that you had to pay...oops...not really wanting to pay at the moment but I may look at that in the future beacause it looked like a good site to listen to author interviews. Next I did a search for "libraries" and came up with Talking with Talis... and a podcast called Introducing the Future Librarians Gang....this time I did things in the right order and actually listened to the podcast before adding it to my Bloglines feeds. It was really interesting...interview with a group of librarians in the UK who had been nominated as some of the top librarians of the future... and they discussed all sorts of things from salaries to the stereotypes of librarians etc. I will be listening to other conversations on Talking with Talis. Also looked at podcastalley.com but much preferred podcast.net. I didn't like the thought of having to download yet more software on my home computer (and I wouldn't even consider it at all on my work computer) to be able to listen to podcasts...my computer is already straining under all the software I throw at it :) So the outcome of that visit was that I didn't listen to any podcasts from podcastalley.com even though I found some interesting library ones that would have been good to listen to...I found listening to the podcast very much like listening to a radio interview...and I'll be listening to more in the future, whether work related or not..and I also added all those sites re how to publish podcasts etc to my Favourites...and I just very well might try making my own one later on ...gotta think of something to talk about first...maybe linedancing dogs.. :-)