Week #9 -- Podcasts & Videos

This lesson was fun. I’m familiar with YouTube, have been sent links via email, and occasionally stop in to check on what’s new by just using the search term “funny”. It always brings up something that makes me laugh. “Introducing the Book” was too funny. I also enjoyed “Thriller” by the National Library of Australia. Looks like a fun place to work. But while watching the “Library Dominos” all I could think of was who would re-shelve all those books. Japanese dominos was much more entertaining. Yahoo Videos & Google Videos are interesting as well but I still prefer YouTube. Although I might use Metacafe to check out movie trailers once in a while.

The video I chose to link to in this post is one I found of the band, Maestro’s Men. I grew up with polka music, my dad was a polka DJ, and my brother has been playing with polka bands since he was 16. So I searched in several of the sights for a video of Maestro’s Men, the band he currently plays with. They’ve won several awards and were nominated for a Grammy a couple of years ago. I looked in 3 or 4 of the video sights and YouTube was the only one that had several to pick from. So here’s the Maesto’s Men.


I didn’t spend much time on the Podcasts lesson. Fortunately I have children who are well versed in various types of technology. From them I learned how to download pictures and load my Ipod. So I have Itunes set up on my computer at home. I love being able to pick and choose types of songs from different artists and put them into different folders. So when I told one of my daughters that I wished I could play music at some of the craft shows that I do, I found that the technology was there for that as well. I have a cute little Ipod docking station that will run for 8 hours or so on its rechargeable battery. How convenient is that?

As for Ebooks...the jury is still out on that one. I spend a lot of time on the computer and can’t imagine reading a whole book that way. Though I might like an audio book to listen to in the car, I prefer current publications and they’re not available for free download due to copyright issues. So, are ebooks as valuable as paper? Well, online journals are useful as it’s usually only an article or part of a journal that students or researchers need. Having that journal available to more than one person at a time is useful. Then most people will print off whatever they need. Databases are searchable and allow you to zero in on the pertinent topics. But recently someone in my town needed a section of the town codes. He was given a website where they could be accessed. It’s hundreds of pages and too expensive to print. But the online version is not searchable and therefore not useful at all.

Reading for pleasure, I still prefer the paper version and probably always will.