Thing #12 - Social Networking

I entered social networking with some reservations about its value for me, the amount of time it would take and how to maintain some amount of privacy. It seems like most of the students I talk to have either MySpace or Facebook accounts. I know that the majority of students who get past our filter do so in order to get on MySpace. Educators who know how students are communicating with each other can utilize that knowledge to create similar ways for students to receive information related to the classroom or library.

Here is a link to my Facebook page. My son says I need a photo so I don't look so "confused"; photo added! A useful feature in Facebook is the ability to create groups. I'm going to check with our student book club to see if they have any interest in having a Facebook group to discuss books. You can also check the photo albums of your friends and upload video. I don't really like that any time someone contacts you on Facebook that it sends you an email, especially since I used my school email. On the positive side, that feature may keep you from constantly going to check on your page for new messages.

MySpace seems like a much larger site. It has dozens more options, including its own version of YouTube, classifieds, forums, linking through favorite film and TV shows. lots more. That could be an advantage if you need those options. For me it was too much. If I were to consider using it as an educator, I would have to be very cautious about some of the ads and other postings that students would be exposed to. I think that Facebook would be more useful for educators, because there are less pop culture distractions for the students.

If the sites were unblocked, I could see a classroom teacher creating class groups for project work or for a forum to discuss issues.

Ning is such a great way to create a social network. I was very interested in the Teacher-Librarian Ning and the Classroom 2.0. Since we are helping teachers in the library, I like to read about what other teachers are doing so I have realistic ideas for projects involving Web 2.0. Our Mesquite Librarian Ning could be an interesting forum for discussion on issues that we deal with. It's an improvement over email, because you can see all the posts at one time on a topic. If we had an issue with a challenged book, we could submit our thoughts to the group. I'm going to keep looking for more ideas on using social networking.

Thing #11 - LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a great idea for sharing favorite books. It is very easy to use and to update. I enjoyed seeing how many other readers liked the same books as me. I can see using the list to create groups of books for book club (thanks, llanolady, for that idea.) I couldn't think of all the titles that I would add to a virtual list, so as I remember my favorites, I'll be coming back to add new titles. The Tools option gives some interesting ways to share the books. I put a widget on my blog to share my list.

Thing #10 - Online Image Generators

This was a fun exercise and limited only by my imagination. The Comic Strip Generator had lots of fun cartoons to use. What a great way to bring a little fun into any presentation or web site. I'm thinking about using the one below on our web site in February. Unfortunately, I don't think I can recommend that site for students, since it contains some images that are inappropriate for them.




Next I tried Custom Sign Generator. What I loved about it was the ability to upload your own photo to customize with frames or text or other "frills". I saved this picture to my computer, but the HTML button was not working.

Image Chef had some very creative, humorous templates. It also seemed easy to use.









Happy Face Generator would be a good place to go to find a quick image to convey emotion.






I'm going to try to use image generators for our web site and also for inserting some humor in powerpoint presentations and signs.

Thing #9 - Library Feeds

Whew! I feel like I've just been around the world on the web. I had no idea that blogging was so organized and easy to get to. Even though it is not a search tool, one of my favorite ways of finding feeds is to look on the blogs that I enjoy reading to see which ones they subscribe to. Many of those blogs were interesting and expanded on the topics from other blogs.

The Feedster link was not working when I checked it. Through Edublogs, I found A Library By Any Other Name, which seemed very organized and had interesting, short comments. The Google Blog search was very easy, but I didn't find what I was looking for: teen authors or YA authors. Since I have Google Reader, it was very easy to add feeds. An interesting feature of Google is that it lists how many people are subscribed to the blog.

Syndic8 was confusing to me because it returned lots of results that didn't seem to be relevant. Also, I thought the blogs were old until I realized you can sort by date; then the recent rose to the top. Also it seemed confusing to find the link to the actual blog.

One interesting thing I found was that School Library Journal has a long list of feeds on very specific topics that you can subscribe to. I added the feed to Joyce Valenza's Neverending Search. On all the topics she addressed, there wer good links to find more information. I also added the Cool Cat Teacher Blog. I'm still searching for one for teen authors.

I would use Technorati and Topix.net again. Technorati returned some useful blogs and posted lots of video and audio as well. Topix was great for news feeds. I put in plagiarism and found out that bloggers are passionate against plagiarism. I can see that Topix would be very useful for class assignments on current topics.

I didn't really find an unusual blog, but I found an unfamiliar graphic. It seems like many of the individuals who blog put a homepage banner at the top that contains a what seems like a random collection of items that interest them. It's like a collage that reflects their interests. Hmmm....

On one of the Blog searches I found a tool that would let you subscribe to a search for a keyword. In other words, it wasn't a direct blog feed, but a feed that showed where any blogs were talking about a certain subject. Now, I can't find which of the search tools had that; hopefully, I will locate it again. I'm looking forward to checking my feeds regularly and looking for ways to use them.

Thing #8 - RSS feeds

I'm so glad to finally understand (at least the basics) of RSS feeds. It's an interesting concept to have news come to you, instead of searching for what you want. I like that not just blogs, but also news agencies have RSS links. I chose Google Reader because I also have an iGoogle page and thought it might be easier to link the 2 pages. The list of headlines is a convenient way to quickly scan the postings, and it's easy to customize.
I can see classes who are doing research on current events subscribing to feeds from all over the world to get an average citizen's view on the events in their country (for example, Iraq.) The challenge will be to remember to check the reader frequently. I'm looking forward to being more connected now.

Thing #7 - Google Tools

One of the useful Google tools is the calendar. It was very easy to create and to modify events using this calendar. We could either use it for our library scheduling or teachers could use it to post the daily deadlines for a project or homework. If the teacher had a web site that parents used, they could check it for assignments. I prefer it to the current program we are using.

I also created an iGoogle page. I love being able to add the different features, like weather, Spanish word of the day, Bible verse of the day. I also added a countdown to Spring Break! I hope to consolidate some of the technologies that I have been learning on the iGoogle page, like RSS feeds and other links.

Thing #6 Flickr Mashups

One of the interesting mashup tools is Spell with Flickr. Once the program chooses the letters for you, you can click on an individual letter and choose another one. I couldn't find instructions for how to upload the word, but it was very similar to uploading the HTML for a photo. Designs like this could be used to make our web site more interesting and to attract student attention. Knowing that there is a mashup that will "spell", teachers could create assignments for a certain topic where students have to take pictures of scenes that contain letters. Words that relate to the topic could be created for memorable visuals.