Thursday, April 17, 2014

Thing 11. Library and Reference

I am a great fan of  ELM. When I was working at a school, I encouraged the students to use it in school and at home. It is a wonderful resource. At the public library, when parents and students are looking for information for projects and papers I show them the site and explain how to find what they need.

My library does not have an App, but I looked at several and can see how easy and useful they are for a mobile device. I do use Overdrive and it is wonderful to use. I love reading books on my iPad, Overdrive makes it simple to download and organize the books.



Thing 10 Sharing Photos




I decided to try Instagram, after my daughters laughed at me for considering Snapchat. Actually, they were torned between laughter and horror.  Obviously, there were connotations that I was not aware of.
Even after read about Instagram and downloading the app, I did not get the purpose of the app. It seemed no easier or  faster than emailing a picture.  Part of the problem was that so few people that I knew used the app. Only after a kind friend agreed to join and follow me, did I finally "get" the app. It is a picture tweet to anyone who follows you.  I am not sure that I will often use it personally, but I can see how a library could use it. 

If the library could get teens to follow it on Instagram then the teens would get library info instantly. A picture of a event, or  a picture of a flyer of a coming event  could spark interest and attendance.
I thought our library's teen poem program was a great idea, but few teens participated. A Instagram of a flyer might have intrigued them.

Friday, April 4, 2014

Thing 9 Taking and Editing Photos



I tried out the app Line Camera. At first I was a bit confused but after watching the video and reading instructions, I realized that it is quite simple to use. I am not a photo editing expert. For me, editing photos is like going to the eye doctor for glasses. I can't really tell the differences between the choices. I played around added frames and captions to photos. My efforts in the beauty selection were less successful. Most of my pictures turned out worst. 

I do plan to experiment with the app more and I can see how labels and frames can be useful.