Just me now!

So I have finished the course that got me started with my blog. Now I can put what I want on my blog. I have been a little quiet lately as I had some bad news recently. One great thing about being a Christian is that God is absolutely there when you need Him. I never have to go through anything alone. In my life I have had to deal with a lot of physical pain and sometimes that can be draining emotionally and physically. However I have found new depths in God during this time. We all have choices in our lives. We choose everyday to go towards God or away from Him. Choose life and light, choose God, find Jesus. It was the best decision I ever made in my life. Anyway you can pray for me in the next few weeks, I will let you know how I go.

Of course Christmas is coming, so my blog will probably have a strong Christmas theme from now on. Have you started your Christmas shopping? Do you find those who have finished already to be slightly annoying? I love all the rush and bustle to do with Christmas and all the cooking.

Learning 2.0

For someone who was initally reluctant to do this course, (how much time is this going to take?) I really got addicted to working on my blog. There was times I was doing it in my freetime at home. I was keen to see all the features I could add to it and very willing to show it to anyone who would have a look. Just yesterday I recommended Flickr to one of our library users. So what were my favourite things? I enjoyed Flickr, image generators, Youtube and Library Thing. But most of all I enjoyed having the experience of creating my blog. What I hated was everyones pet hate Newsfeeds. So all and all I will have to say I am glad that I have had this experience, it has made me feel a lot better informed and equipped to help our borrowers. Thanks to those administering the course for all the work you put in reading all our blogs. I have decided to keep mine going.

Audiobooks or the end is in sight!

Wow, my second to last exercise. Ok Audiobooks there is a wide range of audio books to be downloaded on the internet. Some are free the rest you obviously had to pay. My fist observation was a lot of the material was old or classic material. I found the Christian Classics Etheral Library http://worldebookfair.com/CCEL.htm. This site had a lot of classic Christian texts ie The imitations of Christ, Martin Luther and various translations of the Bible. My other observation was the sheer range of subjects and topics covered. I am not the type of person who likes to listen to an sudio book. I will have a go however downloading one on to Windows Media Player. With more and more people carrying ipods I am sure this is an area that will only grow and grow.

Podcasts

This whole exercise has shown me that the internet is a whole lot bigger than I knew. Being able to search for podcasts wouldnt have occured to me before. As far as libraries go you could do a podcast of classes that are taught. In our case Internet classes. You could also do podcasts of borrowers sharing about their favourite books, or you could add oral histories to the Local history pages. Interestingly enough my Church has just begun using a program similar to Audacity to record our sermons through a laptop. This is very useful as it can be recorded using our sound equipment and the laptop we use to play our music so we need no extra equipment. Best of all it is free.

Youtube

I acutally like Youtube. I have managed to find a few things I like as you can tell from the number of videos I have added to my blog. I choose the video raised from the dead because I have seen it on dvd. It is the true experience of a man who was dead for three days who God bought back to life. He was in a car accident, declared dead by a hospital and placed in a morgue for three days. His experience of heaven is also worth hearing. The other parts of this dvd are on Youtube. I didnt find the categories very helpful. I think they need a librarian to organize their site. It would be useful to add videos to our library webpages. We have just added a new electronic chute outside our library. If we had a video going on our webpages we might cut down the number of times we have to go out and show people how to use it.

Raised from the Dead - part 1

This is part one of a series you can find on Youtube. The true story of a man dead 3 days who was raised from the dead and his experience of heaven.

Third Day-Cry Out To Jesus

Third Day is one of my favourite Christian bands. Check them out.