Thing #15: Web/Library 2.0

Will come back to this.

Thing # 14: Technorati

Will come back to this one.

Thing #13: Delicious

Another amazing tool! I think delicious will be helpful professionally and personally. I had to laugh when watching the video...the old way(my favorites list) is completely a mess. I have quite a few folders to try and organize and then I forget what is where. I have spent some time and will continue setting up and bookmarking here. It's great. At school, I also believe this will be very useful. It's great for research. This will be a great way for students to access information and what's better, it will not matter what computer they're on. It will always be available. Delicious may be a great way for our literacy team to share information that we find online as well. We have sent each other sites before but I know I've lost them. What's more, if the unlimited potential for find more than we had on our own. This will be much more efficient. I also think it would be great to share different ways people have thought of to use this and other things learned as well...

Thing # 12 Comments

I will add to this as time passes and as was an option. However, I needed this to be numerically correct. :)

I have to start out by saying that I've been a lurker. I've looked through other blogs but had not left comments. That's changing now. Others have written interesting things and it's important to let them know that. I agree with coolcat, that comments are important.

There were two things that struck me the most about commenting. One is to be polite and comment meaningfully. Saying, me too or right on or whatever doesn't really add much. When you comment directly and specifically to what has been written it adds value. It's kind of the same as when we compliment students. Specificity means more then generalities.

The other thing I think important about commenting is disagreeing respectfully and diplomatically. It is ok to disagree or have a different opinion. In fact, that's part of how we grow and learn but it is not ok to be rude. Rudeness can stop a conversation and stagnate growth. Respect and diplomatic opinions can further open minds to different kinds of thinking.

So, I'll practice what I preach by commenting and commenting specifically and respectfully.

Thing #11: Library Thing

Well, this is cool. I set up a home library but what I really will spend time doing is setting up my classroom library. I have quite a few books and sometimes forget what I have and so forth. This site will be very useful. I including a few books from librarything on my blog but I also added shelfari. I was looking at Paula's Space blog and saw it on there. I thought it was cool. I don't know if that's something I'll learn about in other things or if that's something she added but I liked it and copied it as well. Thanks Paula!

I am meeting with my kinder team next week for training. One thing we are looking at is setting up their classroom libraries by genres and features with the students. We will go through the books they have to pre-categorize them and look for holes. I think librarythings will be incredible useful. So, I'm excited to have this to share with them as well.

Thing #10: Image Generator

This was fun. So many possibilities. I'm not quite as creative as others and found it difficult to make something with no thoughts in mind. I can see how useful and enriching these will be throughout the school year, both in the classroom and in presentations. I used comic strip generator for one and custom sign generator for the other.

Thing #9 Newfeeds,etc...

I spent sometime looking through these different sights and WOW, there is so much out there. You could spend days and never touch the surface. The article on choosing your circle of wisdom was a good one.

I like google blog search best if I am going to search for blogs on a topic. It is very easy to use and is more like the kind of searches and results I'm use to doing and getting. I looked at the lib. blogs on suprglue and saw the blog from my librarian there. That was cool! :) The only thing that was surprising was that they put her blog on as one that doesn't have an RSS feed but I was able to add her on to my google reader and if you click on her blog page, the feed icon lights up on my toolbar. So, I don't know...

Topix is actually my favorite to use and I added on a couple of topci feeds from here. With the elections coming, I was able to get quite abit on both McCain and Obama. What I like is that you get news, articles, and peoples comments all together on your topic of choice. All from different parts of the US. So far, I've realized that I not as interested in reading random blogs on topics as I am reading articles and then the comments about the article. That may change as I try to build my circle of wisdom as suggested...

Technorati was ok. Not as easy as google but not bad. Syndic8 is my least favorite. When I put in a topic, I didn't really understand what came up and was less interested in really spending time with it since I like the others. I may go back to it but for now I'll continue with what I like. And actually, my reader has enough info that I'm good for a little while. However, I can see my reader changing often. Loving the learning! :)

Thing #8 RSS Feeds

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/06394150381610539219

The above link is to my public google reader share page.

I like RSS. The ability to look at things of interest on one page is great, especially since it lets you know when knew stuff is added. I've put a few things on there as a start but I know that I will continually add and change. I have several sites on my favorites list that I constantly go back and forth to but now this will be so much easier. I also like that it is very easy to use.

RSS feeds have many uses for school. As a SIS, I think this would be a great way to share information about education across the school without sending mass emails. Considering all that is going on with SBEC and the changes in TEKS. This would be a great way to share the news as well as opinions through blogs with teachers. I can also see this being utilized in classrooms, especially upper grades. I know our 5th grade teachers do much with current events and setting up share page would be helpful for kids to pick and read from a variety of sources. I can also see setting it up to include specific topics that are being covered.

As far as libraries making use of this, I think that's a given that it would be useful for many of the same reasons. I know our librarian teaches a blogging class for students. Setting up this and including the blogs from the students would be a great way for a person, teacher or student to go on and read and comment on blogs with out having to look up all of them and it would include the most current. There are other ways as well. I know our librarian is on top of things and probably has thought of other ways. She has taken this course so I'm really looking forward to talking with her when school starts back.

Thing #7: Google

http://www.google.com/notebook/html?nbid=BDSelIwoQjcu-37Uj

This is a link to the notebook page I started about Greece. I believe I exported it as a web page to put on here. Some friends and I are planning a trip for potentially spring break and this is a great way to find and keep relevant information on the trip. What's wonderful is that I set it up to share with them so that they can read and add info as well.

There is definitely more to google than just searching. Through our amazing librarian, I had heard of google earth and its potential in school. It was great to learn a little about all of these things. I wish I would have known about google scholar in grad school!

I spent sometime exploring google docs. This, I love! I am part of the leadership team at my school and consequently apart of the trainings for DDI. Google Docs would have been and will be VERY useful for our trainings. I set up a page so that I can upload the powerpoints that we use and then we'll be able to edit and change and let each other know without either meeting or sharing back and forth through email as we had done in the past. That did not work so well. This is an answer to a prayer. :)

Thing #6

Big Huge Labs, what a great place. I looked through the trading cards and believe as most that there is a lot you can do with them especially in social studies and science. In writing, this might be fun to utilize with book reviews.

I spent most of my time on the magazine cover. I created one using a picture of my Dad's bluegrass band. It was easy to do and I can see how kids would be able to utilize it easy enough. My only complaint was the lack of options on the layout. I wish that I would have been able to move things around and control the size of my picture, change font and backgrounds, etc. Through this, I did learn more about flickr. My picture was cropped more than I would have liked on the magazine page, so I uploaded it to flickr and through picnic on flickr, I was able to resize it to fit they way I mostly wanted on my magazine cover. I love picnic.

There is more here I intend to play with. I am giving a training in August with a group of teachers and intend on including a few of these as part of the training. I think mosaic maker, with kindergarten students, or even trading cards potentionally with some of the "research" they do.

I am loving the learning.