Thing 14 - Technorati blog search

I have been very curious about Technorati since it has been referenced many times in this 23 1/2 things adventure. I explored keyword searching which helped me get to the right area, and then tag searching to follow out specific themes such as "library_love" to watch the latest video submissions on You-Tube. I am quite sold on tags. I also did some research on solar energy blogs on Technorati and on Google Blog Search. Both pointed me to excellent sites, although different ones on the top 10, so I think searching in tandem is the key -- not sticking to just one site.

It wasn't really surprising to me to see that the most popular blogs at the moment are technology-related (with the exception of The Huffington Post probably because it's an election year). I think things change so quickly in technology that blogs are the only way to keep up with things. Educationally speaking, I think this site is more geared for older students and professional development. I did see some interesting videos promoting the library which gave me some ideas for creating one for our elementary library this year. I found so many more blogs of interest to me on Edublogger.

While I explored the widgets I chose not to join Technorati because I feel I'm getting spread too thin. If I get too many things going, I won't develop the habits I need in any depth. At least I know what the site is if I need it again. There were no tutorials for using the site either which makes me feel that the site is really for techies, not so much for educators.

Thing 13 - del.icio.us and tagging

del.icio.us is delightful and i don't know how I managed with my ikeepbookmarks account which I found very slow to load sometimes crashed on me. Having the buttons on my browser made all the difference and I am smitten with tags. Now I understand what all the chatter has been about replacing sears and Dewey categories with tags. You can create your own categories that make sense to you. I appreciated the simplicity of the embedded Commoncraft video. Here is my fledgling list.

For professional development, seeing what everyone else is reading is so important. Finding helpful websites, vetted by other librarians is so easy with this site. Organizing flexibility and specifically remembering what I liked about a site, will be so helpful.

For students, keeping track of all their sites to go back to fix citations and check facts would be helpful. Finding sites preselected by the teacher without having to type them , even from home, will be very beneficial. Teaching students to evaluate websites for instance by looking at the difference between a popular and unpopular site with the same information.

Only thing I don't like about del.icio.us is the name! The word Furl is easier to type but I didn't care for it as much aesthetically, and there weren't as many results as I would have liked on ma.gnolia,.

June Authors' & Illustrators' Birthday Calendar

June Authors' & Illustrators' Birthday Calendar

Thing 12 - commenting

This Thing really made me realize the differences between generations. While I see the need to contribute, I am on a steep learning curve and I find it exhausting to be in these types of learning communities online and sitting at my desk communicating so much. I still prefer face-to-face, showing my age I guess. The other comment I would like to make is the using your name discussion should have been part of Thing 3 as I was creating my avatar and setting up accounts. I probably would have made different decisions.

But, OHHHH!, there are gems in all the digging. YouTube - We Think was one result of searching Drapes Takes today. I find it amazing that one simple 2 minute video can change many of my long-established understanding of the teaching process and am glad he posted it from YouTube where I'm afraid to go directly anymore because too many hours go by. I've subscribed to Drake's feed too because it seems very thoughtful and uses big, new words like adhocracy in his posts.

I was able to comment on the Library2Play blogs, but had much more difficulty commenting on "expert sites". I don't feel qualifed except to lurk at this point. But I finally found a very welcoming post on the Library Tweeter blog titled "Is Anybody Out There" which gave me confidence to post as I had already read the Bluebonnet Books. Then I found a great article on Information Overload when I searched google blogs. Needless to say I had some newfound expertise in that area!

Thing 11 - Library Thing

This was an easy one. IT was a piece of cake to add titles to my catalog. I like having the widget to pop right from my blog to my catalog on Library Thing. In the Thingology blog I read an interesting comment on mashtags perhaps taking the place of traditional catalog entries one day, or at least bridging the gap. I'm going to try to put more care into tagging here, and in my catalog on Library Thing. I also read about the possibilities of using Library Thing for Readers Advisory Services. That really looks promising down the road as more titles are put in. Right now I just have the five books on my desk in there so I'll need to put in a few more to find a "kindred spirit" to share titles with. The Zeitgeist tab brought up some interesting data, but I think the figures just apply to the actual users of the site in terms of book and author popularity.

I would use the site more if they had a separate section for children's books, though.

An update: It's official. Library Thing is now officially trying to create a new catalog based on tags and is looking for volunteers to head up the endeavor.

Thing 10 - images

I created the stop making excuses sign on sidebar using Imagechef. It's my little reminder that I CAN DO THIS! I am a lifelong learner. I found it very easy to use and to upload photos for home use. For school purposes, it would be a great idea to create fun new signs for the kindergarten community sign unit, to have kids create motivational buttons, to introduce authors.



After about 1 hour of playing around with all the different possibilities, I felt like this from Comic Strip Generator.

The site was friendly and I'm sure students could use it to introduce creative writing assignments, write thank you notes to speakers, and just for fun practice typing.

For most flexibility, I still prefer the BigHugeLab site we explored in thing 7 which has losts of cool project templates and is the easiest by far to use.

Thing 9 - library blogs

I really like Edublog as a tool. The first thing I saw when I clicked in was Best Librarian Blog Awards. I followed out to the first place winner Hey Jude and read about glogster for the first time. Amazing! One of the posters was an Internet scavenger hunt theme and the librarian radar clicked in - Scavenger hunt?! we do scavenger hunts in the library. This would be more fun than the ones we do.

Technorati also yielded many interesting results, in all different formats, but with 1500 blogs tagged libraries I still feel overwhelmed, even with the descriptor attached. I can see that, as always, precision is key so got better results (for me) when I typed in elementary school librarian. The tutorial wasn't really worth the trip, especially since it loaded in Dutch the first time! I have used the free lesson accelerators before with Atomic Learning and one or two of the free tutorials, so that was like finding a friend in a crowd of strangers.

I am getting lost as I move from place to place and need a better system for keeping track which I hope to find in future lessons. Now that I can open several tabs on the browser, I can get even more lost than I was before! Where do all the hours go?

Thing 8 - RSS feeds.

Some of my favorite feed articles are linked in the side bar. I access them easily on my igoogle page's Google Reader gadget. I think RSS feeds are a great professional development time saver, plus I feel more likely to "stumble upon" the things I need to know to do my job. I will still rely heavily on my LM-Net Listserv friends for good ideas and practical tips, but the sites I chose are good for thinking and building a vision about what the library is becoming.

I saved the Eagles Read site so that I can build one like it for my own students. I hope they are as excited about talking about Bluebonnet books, research question troubleshooting, new books, and keywords as I am.

Thing 7 - Google earth

This posting has taken the longest time thus far because every time I opened a link to a different Google tool I lost track of time playing with it. I signed up for everything I think but I still feel as though I've just scratched the surface. The tool I played with the most was Google Earth which I downloaded for the first time today. I've set my home as a begin from here location and I've added different fly to locations, the seismic layer, and have everything just right except it doesn't open from the little icon and I need to use updater to try to reload every time. Fortunately it saves everything even when I delete and add the software as I've tried twice. It has something to do with my graphics card apparently. I guess it's time for a new computer. The uses are mindboggling and the students will be so impressed. Enrichment for geography, of course, astronomy lessons, world missions for Bible classes, writing prompts, story settings, biographies for social studies, current events. Great fun.

I have also customized my igoogle page to the hilt. Went so crazy I had to take many things off to keep it cleaner but kept 1000 places to visit, sticky note, weather, calculator, translator, notebook, reader, dictionary, news feed and moon phases. I also added a game tab with Sodoku, NY Times Crossword, MahJongh for fun. I may move all of the google tools to a new tab.
See it here.

Thing 6 - mashups

I created a stamp in Big Huge Labs using the framer tool and a photo we took in Hawaii. I plan to have our 3rd grade students create stamps for their state reports. There are so many tools that would be useful to me professionally and personally. This is the site I've been looking for! Our kids don't have access to professional photo editing tools and they are too young to use most of the ones I've looked at. If I can do it they can too. Posters for teachers to make, badges for our bookfair volunteers, biography trading cards, science fair demos, staff trading cards, scavenger hunt type trading cards, writing prompt photos -- too many things to count. Thank you 23 1/2 things!

Thing 4 - registration step

I have officially registered, but well past the deadline of June 10th. Even if I don't get continuing ed professional credit for the work I'm doing this summer, I am learning so much that it really doesn't matter. I was too overwhelmed to tackle 2.0 without a plan, and just having the framework in place is all the help I need to get started and take those baby steps. I obviously have alot to learn because I keep forgetting that posts are made most recent on top so my Thing numbers are very new math, I'm afraid.

I can't wait to get back to school and start implementing these ideas. I wish I had seen this a year ago!

Thing 5 - photos

This photo was taken by Darren Hesten and found on the Flickr site in the Creative Commons/Attributions section. I liked it because it is the perfect "apple for the teacher" picture with a twist - the colors seem to be the reverse of the stereotypical red apple. The flickr site looks very useful, especially the creative commons section. I especially like the link to the Creative Commons photos from the Library of Congress which will come in handy when we need to have primary source photos in history, art, science, etc... I can also see accessing the pictures for 5th grade world geography projects, 2nd grade animal reports, signs unit in Kindergarten, really too many places to count. But really interesting to me since we are FINALLY getting class sets of digital cameras and this will help us manage.

Thing 2 - 7 1/2 habits

I read Covey's book 7 Habits books several years ago and it made quite an impact on me, but I had never thought of the habits in the context of information literacy. Great "mash up", is that the word? As was the case in the past, despite actively working to improve this area, my main issues are with seeing problems as crises to manage instead of challenges to learn from. Intellectually I know that the most creative work comes from having to think outside the box to deal with a perceived challenge or problem, but in real life I still struggle to flex and bend in a new direction. The easiest for me is to accept responsibility for my learning. That's why this old dog is still trying to learn new tricks.

Thing 3 - avatar and personal blog

I am slightly intimidated looking at some of the blogs thus far. I feel like a foreigner to this new world.' but the Chinese proverb comes to mind: "Even a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." Here is my first baby step into Web 2.0. Setting up the accounts turned out to be the hardest part of the assignment. None of my email addresses were accepted by blogger until I opened a gmail account, but things went well after that. Another account opened at yahoo, but working with the avatar was fun. I chose an explorer because I really do feel like one. Might be that the most difficult part of this assignment will be keeping track of all the passwords and user names! Very much looking forward to the next step and am so grateful for this structured program to help me in my explorations. Thank you Dr. Bishop and Spring Branch ISD.