reflections

I was aware of what these "things" were, but hadn't tried them all. I may have just been impatient, but was disappointed that some of them were not too user-friendly. For example, I never did figure out how to actually do anything in Second Life. It's good to know about these things to respond to patrons more effectively, but I can't envision using most of them myself.

gaming

I play Yahoo games a lot and find them very relaxing. It's nice to know where some good kid games are too.

mapping

Google earth looks promising -- may even be helpful for visualizing terrain changes for hikers. I was disappointed that I couldn't zoom in really close on different locations--it seems to lose focus at a higher level than I expected.

avatars and second life

I'm sorry, but I don't see the point of second life. Why not just do the same thing in the real world? My teen avatar is one of the ones used for the instructions for this unit, so I didn't create another one.

online apps

Well, Zoho wouldn't let me in so I can't compare the 2. I would have a concern about privacy if I was to use this, but it's probably nice to have if you can't afford the software.

search engines

I was surprised to only get 1 hit for my search on Rollyo, maybe I need to study it more to use it to its full potential. The other 2 gave me the number and type of results more like I expected, but you wouldn't need to use a metasearch engine to get the same results. In other words, I got very similar results from Google.

Podcasting

I listnened to some teen book reviews. We're already doing some podcasting--seems like folks must be listening in. I would think the ones that are programs or that are spoken books or book reviews would be most interesting to the public. In my experience, the public isn't that interested in general library or library instructional info. I have listened to a few podcasts, just to see what they were about. I don't see myself making a lot of use of them, but if needed, I'd rather just find one on a topic I'm interested in than subscribing to them.