Lesson 11 Wrap-Up

My biggest take-away is that I now use the snipping tool ALL THE TIME. It is really the best thing for saving a small piece of screen - much better than a screen shot. I still love - and embrace - technology wholeheartedly. My life is in my telephone. It really should have a better name. Honestly I enjoyed 23 Things more because it made me explore what the Internet as a whole had to offer. I got bored fairly easily with 11.5.

Lesson 10 Challenge

The mere fact that some cities and states are weighing laws regarding whether or not it is legal to film law enforcement officers tells volumes about the impact mobile technology has had on society. Many years ago the Supreme Court ruled that a person in public has no reasonable expectation of privacy. If you are walking down a sidewalk in broad daylight what you do cannot be construed as private. I think about this every time I hear a story about using a smartphone to film something that is being done IN PUBLIC. Filming it doesn't make it any more or less real, but oddly some people seem to believe it does. Someone was complaining recently because their elected official had "passed them off" to an aide. The person felt slighted and ignored. Do you really thing telling your legislator or congress member something gets things done quicker? The aides are the ones who get the work done. Smart technology may make reaching out to elected officials easier, but smart technology doesn't make the constituency any smarter.

Lesson 9 Part 2 Library Digital Offerings - Zinio

This service is going away March 31, with more periodical titles being added to Overdrive. Three titles: Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Star 7 Formats: iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 8, Mac, PC, Kindle Fire/HD/HDX Zinio allows me to exercise my guilty pleasure: Celebrity Gossip. I can read the trashy star mags without slipping them beneath a loaf of bread at the grocery store checkout line.

Lesson 9 Part 1 Hoopla

What If by Randall Munroe Insurgent by Vernonica Roth The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty Services like Overdrive, Hoopla, Zinio, etc. have made it possible to be a library user without ever actually setting foot inside a physical library. With SAPL we do require our patrons to get their cards in person, but some libraries do not.

Lesson 8 Part 2 Challenge

OVERDRIVE The Book of Old Houses by Sarah Graves HOOPLA The People I Want to Punch in the Throat by Jenn Mann Probably because I search for things all day long, I don't find either Overdrive or Hoopla difficult to navigate. I can use boolean terms to pinpoint pretty much exactly what I want in Overdrive. Hoopla's format is more akin to that of Netflix or Hula. With that said I guess I tend to use Overdrive for my serious searching and Hoopla for the more relaxed, let's-see-what-I-can-find search. I am a user of both services.

Lesson 8 Part 1 Challenge

DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth ebook formats available for Kindle, Overdrive Read and EPUB Owned: 82 Available: 34 eaudiobook Owned: 16 Available: 0 3 Holds

GRAIN BRAIN by David Permutter ebook formats available for Kindle, Overdrive Read and EPUB Owned: 14 Available: 11

Lesson 7 Part 1 Challenge

This ain't no Glamour Shot ... Yikes!!

The selfie wouldn't email from the iPad, so I posted it to Facebook, then copied and pasted, then uploaded. Do I get extra points for knowing how to do that?:-D

Lesson 6 Part 2 Challenge

Sadly we've all heard about women and men who were killed after a face-to-face with a person they met through an online dating site. Pedophiles target children. A man disappeared after answering a job ad posted on Craigslist. These are examples of the worst aspects of social networking. Sadly, too, many people want to substitute online chat for personal interaction. There are hoards of men and women who would rather text than sit down with a person and have an actual conversation. Yes, social networking has broadened our worlds, but in some ways social networking has given some the ability to create nameless, faceless relationships.

Lesson 6 Part 1 Challenge

This article felt like a walk through history. My first exposure to computers came in mid-1970s when I worked for Baker & Taylor. The mainframe was housed in a huge room and the building had to be kept ice cold so the mainframe would not over heat. Now I hold the equivalent of that mainframe in my hand - my smartphone. I became a Facebook users when SAPL completed 23 Things. Admittedly I started the page for the challenge, but over time I began to use it more and more. Now it is a constant in my life. Yes, I have connected with a lot of folks from high school and college and former workplaces. It is nice to keep up with their lives through FB. I get to see photos and short videos of my nieces and nephews and of my great-nieces and nephews. They are growing up virtually. My three-year-old great-niece can work a smartphone as well (or better) than I can. There's a big difference in how to access information today versus using the old clunker CompuServe way back when. I had a subscription to CompuServe in the early 1990s and let's just say using it was clumsy. Several years later I would sit and chat with foodies on aol.com. Can any of us forget that horrid modem squak? At the time we lived in rural Northeast Oklahoma, so our connection was long distance. You couldn't stay online for very long. Today we're connected 24/7 almost everywhere. There are a few places on the map where coverage is spotty, but those are few. Today using the internet is so simple and so seamless that many people can keep a running patter during the Grammys or Oscars or Emmys. It's like having a viewing party, but not really.