Thing #13

I LOVE Delicious! I went to TCEA in 2009 and at the end of the conference I was like a deer in headlights. I knew I had to get a Delicious account. If I am at home or at school if I have a site I come accross I can quickly bookmark it. I stay signed in almost all the time I am looking for something.

I went to our Summer Tech Camp last week and heard of more social bookmarking sites. The presenter was Jenni Keith and she was great! She gave us time to play with the new sites. She actually made us sign up for the accounts and some have educator accounts too! Those sites were Symbaloo, ShareTabs, and Diigo which was Furl on the Library2play site. I think that Symbaloo would be good for me to organize the links I use for reasearch with my students. Sharetabs we didn't spend too much time on but Diigo is great. I works with Delicious and you could save links from your phone.

Tagging to me is like subjects in the card catalog. The more tags it has the easier it is to locate, expecially if you are looking for a specifick link and you can't remember what you tagged it as.

Thing #12

I wish this Thing was earlier. I'm just understanding the blogging concept now. Two things I learned from all this and I think is important is:

1. It's 'O.K.' to put yourself out there. If you don't comment on other's blogs then you are not part of the conversation and you are just eavesdropping. My mother taught me that it is impolite to eavesdrop. But I also know it is not alright to interrupt conversations.

2. When you do comment and put yourself out there then you need to sign your posts. It's 'O.K.' to use your real name. I think it is more professional to use your real name then a cute made up alias. I use my real name because I'm not that creative and all I could think of was "Mrs. Cardon" which is what I am called about 90% of the time. The other 10% is "Mom" or "Dear."

3. I went to 5 or more of the blogs in the Library2Play and left comments here and there. I looked at when the last post was. I have discovered through this experience that I like blogs that are more current. I lost count as I had fun reading other's blogs and looking at their backgrounds and how they have customized their blog. I ran across 2 that had finished today. Those blogs looked very professional like they had been blogging for a while.

4. When I was going through the instructions for this thing I mustered up my courage and left comments if I could. Those links that discuss blog etiquette were from 2008 and I felt a little behind the curve ball as it is now 2010!

Thing # 11

After reading the introductory information and watching the YouTube video, I created yet another account, which was super simple, and looked around before adding my required 5 books. As I was adding them I thought about the uses for this LibraryThing.

When I was in the classroom I would have loved to have this so I could keep track of all my books and who had them and which were loved so much the student who borrowed it added the book to their collection. I loved how when I added a book it told me how many other members had the same books. There were reviews and suggestions if you liked this book you'll like this sort of thing. This will not only help with my personal reading but in choosing books for my library. Every once in awhile I'll buy a dud but I like to go on student recommendations because they bug me about "Did that book come in yet?"

I have arranged my library schedule this school year so that I can meet with the teachers of each of the grade levels I work with. I will also be able to present a technology tip of the week. This wil be one quick thing I will show them as it is something that they will be able to use.

I also lurked around the groups and added two or three to my reader and created a separate folder for them. The blog folder was getting a little crowed.

I checked out talk and found a couple of threads where people were actively "talking." I also looked at local for events. This might be a good way to get out the word for a book fair at my school or when we do the Barnes and Noble event in November.

All in all a good experience and well worth the time.

Thing #10

In this thing I visited all the online generators listed on the Library2Play site. Every site I visited I tried to create something. The one to the right, or any of the images on the Comic Strip Generator could be used as a writing prompt for students.

When I went to ImageChef I loved paying in there. Teachers could allow students to create their own and print them out to put on anything that needed to be labeled in the classroom. I emailed my creation to my husband.

The Happy Face Generator was fun and I spent quite a bit of time there as there were many choices to do things. I wanted to create something that I could use in the library. My creation is to the left. I could print this out and place in the library or on my website.

I have been to Wordle and Gloster in the past. In Wordle I did create one from a brochure I hand out to parents on "How to Raise a Reader" but I have been unable to post it in my blog. When I put in the code they gave me, all I see is the code and not the Wordle.

When I posted my Gloster into the blog my Internet explore could not handle it. See, I live out in the country and have satellite for my Internet and although they say it is "high speed" you won't break any speeding laws with this connection. So here is a link to my website where I have placed my Gloster.

One bad experience was Dumpr that would not load my photo although it was a really neat looking site. I will have to try it when I get to school with a faster connection.

Thing #9

I was kind of glad to get to this "thing" because after thing #8 I really wanted to spend some more time figuring out the RSS feed and finding some quality blogs that will help me in my job as a school librarian. I was anxious to build my "circle of the wise."

I looked at all the suggested links but really spent quite a bit of time going over the Edublogs Award Winners and added many of those blogs. The cool thing is that with the reader, anything new added will be in my igoogle reader and I don't have to spend a lot of time going over and over all the blogs. I can just read the new posts!

The news feeds were the most confusing and hard to read. I also discovered the more "stuff" they had on their blog the less likely I was to take the time to read all of that. I'm kind of a bottom line person. Tell me what you really want me to know. I'm not into a lot of fluff.

Thing # 8

1. RSS feeds and readers are very useful for people who need to keep up with a great deal of information but don't have a lot of time. Like educators! I had some problems at first finding things I really wanted to follow. Adding them was easy. Once they were added I had to figure out how to organize them-that's just the librarian in me.

2. After I organized them in the Google reader I had one blog that I purposefully didn't read in the reader and went to my igoogle page and there it was-ready for me to read. I think this will really help me keep more up to date with what everyone else is doing out there. I'm incorporating technology but seem to be a step or two behind the trend. The reader will help some I just have to go to it and see if there is anything new!

3. People in the education field can use this to communicate or share so that all persons don't have to be in the same room. You can check when you have time.

4. I shared something from Google reader and then I went into my igoogle account and tried to share something from there. I couldn't find anyway to share from the reader in igoogle. I'll try again later.They are always updating things. Maybe this is one thing they can add or maybe I'm just overlooking it.

Thing #7

When I saw what Thing #7 was I got excited. I've been wanting to explore the Google tools for some time to find some things I could use but never seem to have any quality time to spend with then to get down and dirty with them.

Last summer after our district's Tech Camp I set up an igoogle page and used that some this last year. This year at Tech Camp Tammy Worcester came and showed us lots of neat stuff but what I found cool was that you could add tabs to your igoogle page.

So I added tabs to my igoogle page and a different theme and gadgets to each one. I have a cooking page with all kinds of recipe hints and recipes of the day. I have a news page with gadgets from all the news sources. I linked to Facebook and my emails so reading my email will take a lot less time now.

I also set up a google alert for me and my husband and have already recieved an alert on my husband. There are actually a couple of people with my husband's name somewhere in the states, a doctor and a lawyer, and the alert was for one of them.

Most of the other Google tools I have already been using. My daughter puts pictures of her kids on picasa and I get to see them that way. I did a lesson last year with Google Earth after learning about it at our Tech Camp.

I didn't care much for google scholar but maybe with more investigation it will grow on me. I love the advance search and will be using that more next year as it will make looking for certain files much easier, especially powerpoints.