Thing Twenty-Three: Evaluate 23Things

I loved having to learn more about my own device in the beginning. Many of us simply never take the time to familiarize ourselves with how smart our phone really is. It's much more common to be shown a new trick or two by a friend, than to read and try out and read some more. This program caused me to learn more than I ever had before in the 9 months of owning a smartphone.

I read many other blogs in my first week of participating. It was good to see where other librarians stood in their tech savvy-ness.

My favorite things were getting to know my own device, working withCamMe and image altering apps, experimenting with Vine, and brainstorming about how I could use AudioBoo at work.

Participation in your program put me very far ahead of where I was in my knowledge of apps. You did an excellent job setting up each Thing. They included everything necessary for self-instruction. Thank you.

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Thing Twenty-Two: Discovering Apps

I googled "best travel destination free apps"

CNN Travel has a great article, November 2013, which they continually update.They give screenshots and a couple paragraphs of details for each app.

Another great article is from Time Out Travel. They organize their apps according to topic: Plan, Navigate, Explore, Communicate, and Document.

Gadgets & Tech lists 10 best travel apps. There is overlap with the two previous articles, but serious travelers will appreciate knowing they haven't overlooked those apps which are most highly recommended.

USA Today has a reassuring article entitled, "Can destination apps take the place of guidebooks?" They simply caution tourists to bring their charger along each day, as using apps all day tends to drain the smartphone battery. :)

Thing Twenty-One: Free-for-All

The free apps I appreciate or use most are:

WebMD - I use the symptom checker and list of conditions most frequently. There is an alphabetized First Aid section, Just look up your incident (ankle fracture, broken nose, or ear pain from diving, etc.) You can read definitions of medical terms or read about specific medical tests and procedures before you go to your appointment. Finally, you can use your location to select a physician, hospital, or pharmacy.

Trip Advisor - type in your location or destination and browse hotels, restaurants, local attractions, flights, vacation rentals, forums, or reviews. You can also add your own review after a trip. It also has a link to travel tools such as Seat Guru, a neat app which shows where you seat # is located on the plane.

Kayak - When searching for flights, I do a daily check to see price fluctuation. You can also get price alerts. Search for hotels, car rentals, and track flights. There's also a place to plan your trip agenda.

Thing Twenty: Games

This topic is challenging for me. I spend very little of my time on games. I really like the website Sporcle because it's educational games. If I were to play a game, it would be with family as a form of socializing. I wouldn't really even find it relaxing to play a game by myself on my phone. Yes, they are most definitely addicting and there would be some I would like. My downtime, clear-my-head time is spent reading or passively watching movies.

I chose the Draw Quest app. There is some excellent artwork on that app. The more you play, you earn coins to buy more color options, etc. --so I can see that some people have been doing a LOT of gaming. I eeked out a squiggly smile on a face as my first accomplishment and the app wanted me to post it on FB! Seriously?!

The app for checking out game ratings, ESRB, is more my speed. Ahhhh, now I'm back in my comfort zone.

Thing Nineteen: Hobbies

Hey, RoadNinja, where have you been all my life? Oh, that's right, I haven't even owned a smartphone for a full year yet. :) I can't wait to use this app when I'm the Navigator. I wish to familiarize myself with this app before I try it on the fly as a sole driver. I like that you can text or email info on an upcoming gas station or restaurant. This will be great for caravans.

I'm steering clear of the garden app as I had no time for one last year and the near future looks unpromising as well. One day.....

Thing Eighteen: Education

I am set up with DuoLingo to have 5 minutes of Spanish lessons per day. They make it fun. Near the end of  each lesson, you speak phrases into the mike and they print the translation on the screen to see if you passed. The word for "woman" mujer seems to have a funny roll of the tongue or something that my Scandinavian-ness is having trouble with.

Next on the agenda, I downloaded iTranslate. We have a very large local population of Hispanics and many know little English, certainly not enough to talk library lingo (checkout, checkin, interlibrary loan, MnLink) :) This one is real difficult: "You returned an empty DVD case. Check your player for the DVD." Try explaining that one over the phone. This will be great when there is no one around to translate for the two of us.

You can bookmark phrases or sentences, so I began typing in commonly used sentences. The Spanish woman who speaks the translation says the word Minnesota kind of like a Minnesotan. :)

Curiousity got me to get the Ted Talk app. I had heard of them while reading Sheryl Sandberg's book, and now I can check out a variety of talks whenever I want. This seems like a good activity when travelling and I am not the driver. Or to go to sleep to. TED has a great list of tags, making it easy to identify what I really want to hear.

Great job, 23Things, on selecting a variety of educational apps to try!

Thing Seventeen: Connecting to Community

Now I will be using the MN 511 app to monitor road conditions and construction. I can easily see areas where other family members commute too. Here's a few more I discovered:

MinnMix is a good free one for the metro area....news, weather, and sports.

Drivers Ed Minnesota is free....manuals, practice tests, and more.

KSTP Channel 5 has a free app.

Thing Sixteen: Audio

I plan to use AudioBoo to interview local or visiting authors and interview patrons about books they just read. We have a young man who lives across the street from the library who self-published a book recently. I will ask him to share a few thoughts and post it to FB.On a personal note, I plan to make Boos and tweet my personal adventures exploring the Bay area shores and Padre Island once I move.

Thing Fifteen: Infographics

Visualize Free is also only for the iPad so that left me out. I downloaded info.graphics -- navigation is very slow. Several times it closed by itself. I also noticed they spelled "developed" wrong on the footer. Hmmmmm. I will try it several different days to see if functionality improves before I decide if it gets prime real estate permanently on my home screen.

I envision creating infographics at the library using Color Splurge to spice up photos we take. Here's one I just made from my avatar and posted on library's page.

Thing Fourteen: Videos

I used Vine to make a pitch for a book I just read. People are quite creative imagining ways to fill up six seconds of video. I will be doing lots of experimenting at the library.

Thing Thirteen: Presentations

I am a new and future faithful user of Deck Slideshow Presentation. I am completely sold. I created a 7-slide show for my son's upcoming birthday. I am videoing the presentation so I can share it here. This is a surprise for him, so do not tell him.

Thing Twelve: Books.....

YALSA Teen Book Finder app.....oh yes! Just what I needed. This will be great to assist patrons who ask for recommendations for youth readers. Searching by Booklist will really help in such instances. Lists such as:

Fabulous Films
Graphic Novels
Outstanding Books for the College Bound
Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers
and many more

Searching by Genre gives six options and this will be great for readers' advisory as well.

IStorybooks is in my future as well. Grandkids will be coming any year now. Readers can listen to the very animated reader in the app or an adult can read it to a child. This will be great with an iPad, a perfect-size device for young children.

Thing Eleven: Library & Reference

ELM is a great site. It's a good idea to click around on the site occasionally to remind ourselves as librarians what's available. For instance, I selected "Alternative Health Watch" to access an article entitled "Teflon's Hidden Dangers: making the EPA's charges stick" about the dangers of non-stick coating and what DuPont knew in the 1980s.

I also looked at the libraries who have an app. Great concept and hopefully this will become widespread throughout the state. I'd like to know how much it costs to set up and maintain. This is exactly what every public library needs as people are expecting this level of "keeping up" from libraries. I see some apps had comments about the app being very slow or not functioning after an upgrade. The only thing worse than no app is one that really disappoints. Tweeking should be done ASAP to eliminate patron frustration.

My library has Zinio and OverDrive apps. We've had patrons who have had difficulty with both. We have instructional handouts, but even then, with individual devices one sometimes hit a roadblock. The OverDrive site is so good about support. They even have a list of specific devices/ models that do not yet work with OD. (or never will due to their age)

Full-steam ahead with tech advances....libraries can no longer ignore the digital world.

Thing Ten: Sharing Photos

I downloaded Instagram. I love the sample library sites you offered and will gain future inspiration from their ideas for our library. I also printed the lists of ideas on how libraries can use Instagram. Pictures help to bring small nooks or areas of the library to life. It's a great idea to ask patrons attending events to upload their own instagram photos because then we don't have to worry about permission to publish.

Thing 9: Taking & Editing Photos

 Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll be brief! For this party photo, I first uploaded it into Color Splurge. I greyed out the photo, then brought the color back on the gift. I saved it, then uploaded that photo into LINE Camera to add the text.

Sibling love at it's best!

For the library photo, I used Color Splurge to add color to our faces and my moccasins.

I also installed the CamMe app. Just what I needed to take photos with the people I'm with and not have to ask a stranger to assist.