Tammy's Library

Hello to All,

I have spent the past three months creating a new website that I hope my public librarian colleagues will find  useful and tell their patrons about.

Here is my first attempt at social media marketing for tammyslibrary.com

One's Self 

Intro to Tammy's Library

These short clips should pique your curiousity as to what Tammy's Library is all about.  Once you are at my homepage, there you will find the details explaining the purpose of my site.  I would most appreciate feedback from all you librarians.  Thanks for viewing.

Tammy

MOOC Massive Open Online Courses

Hello and Happy Spring!

Spring is a great time to air out and freshen up one's mind by learning a new skill or dusting off old skills with a refresher session on a topic you once knew well. I have been spending time these past few weeks taking online courses via Udemy.com . These courses offer lifetime access, so you can tap into learning anytime. I learned about 21st century leadership, social media and marketing,  SEO optimization, and Google Analytics. I may brush up on web design with CSS3 and HTML5 since they were not around when I took web design in library school.

Courses from Udemy vary in price. Many are free and others have a fee. Sometimes Udemy offers a discount for a few days. After I completed my first course, I received a coupon to purchase my next course at 50% off. When your instructors create a new course, as a former student, you are offered a steep discount to register.  Courses I have taken varied in length from one hour to fifteen hours.  Courses are available to you 24 hours a day. You simply read the handouts and watch videos when you have time.

I am also scheduled to begin a couple of Coursera courses in May.  Coursera courses are always free. CEU credits are available for a fee.  Coursera courses have a weekly schedule with assignments, but you can sign up for a course and be no more involved than simply perusing the videos and handouts for that course.

ed2go is another online source I will be working with later this year.

MOOCs - the title of my post -have been around and growing in popularity for a number of years. Here are a couple interesting articles on the subject:
New York Times July 17, 2012  "Top Universities Test the Online Appeal of Free"
Here is an article which gives many resources for free courses.

Code Academy is a free place to learn code. Another source is w3schools if you wish to learn web development. They also offer certification in each topic area for $95 per test. Tests must be proctored, and many public libraries are willing to assist you with that.

For more details, visit my MOOCs page in Tammy's Library.  Take care and happy learning!

Tammy

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.

March 12 Update - Udemy.com is offering a $19 special on a course entitled Certificate of Social Media Marketing and Management. Coupon expires on March 14. I signed up for this online and asychronous course. It looks to be very in-depth on eight top SM sites! Use coupon TOP19

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.....