WEEK 6 - THING #14

When I first opened Technorati, it looked like a difficult site to navigate through. Thing 14 instructions said to check out popular blogs, searches and tags. If they didn't have the link right there, I don't think I would have been able to find it in their website. Looking past that, there is quite a lot of info on this site. I did search "School Library Learning 2.0" and "Classroom Learning 2.0" and found many blogs and blog posts relating to these topics. However, when I searched tags I got no hits for either of them. I really enjoyed searching the popular blogs. Boing Boing was really interesting. I can't believe that they have editors, senior editors and whatnot. Is this a business for them? If not, when do they find the time to keep up with all the latest info that is available there?

I guess I didn't really understand the concept of tagging until I read chapter 8 in Nancy Courtney's book. The advantages that I find to be most important regarding tagging is inclusiveness, currency and low cost. With inclusiveness, people can find those rare allusive topics that controled vocabulary may not allow. For example, if you practice shamanism, thereare many buzz words that only shamans would know. Currency is important too. It takes minutes to update and create tags. It takes a lot longer to update "a large taxonomy". Low cost seems to be the biggest advantage for obvious reasons. Some disadvantages are the lack of hierarchy and gaming which is like spamming. There are no relationships in tagging. With gaming, anyone can just make many many tags for any content. This is a serious tax on the tagging system.

Tagging for personal reasons may not be a good idea for me. At work, I file a lot of information and I find that what I file stuff under depends on the mood I am in. I am a very inconsistent person for which tagging probably wouldn't be helpful.

WEEK 6 - THING #13

Delicious is pretty cool. I checked out the SJLibraryLearning2 account. I clicked on a bookmark named TweepSearch. It had a Twitter tag, so I clicked on that. Then I saw a bookmark called 100 Ways to Use Twitter in Your Library. I do not know much about Twitter, so I thought this would be a cool site to check out. This lead me to wanting to save the site which lead me to making a Delicious account for myself. Once there, I imported all my favorites from my computer, which was very easy. I don't know if this is the kind of thing I will keep up with for a month and then forget about it. Regardless, in the meantime, I like it.

I am curious about people putting bookmarks in their accounts that might have a virus associated with them. Does something in Delicious prevent this from happening? My daughter just recently put a virus on my home computer so I would be leary of clicking on just anyones bookmarks.

WEEK 5 - THING #12

I love the practical use of Rollyo. It would give students direction when completing an assignment for a teacher. Instead of aimlessly searching the Internet, they will be able to focus on only the websites that you trust and that are relevant to their report, project, etc..

The only thing I didn't like about Rollyo is that it is really slow. I used Internet Explore and I would still have to get up and finish some chores while the pages were loading. I found that the earlier you go on Rollyo, the faster it is. Not sure why this is so. Anyway, I created a Rollyo on Native Americans. I would think this would be a good topic for fourth or fifth graders. There are a lot of erroneous website concerning Native Americans so I am glad I was able to pick out reliable ones. Here is the link
http://www.rollyo.com/search.html?q=Try+it+out...&sid=582665&x=12&y=7

WEEK 5 - THING #11

I enjoyed browsing the Web 2.0 award winners. There are many interesting sites some that I have never even heard of. First off, I though Last-fm was amazing. It is kind of like Pandora (see Pandora post) but it has options to watch videos and talk with others about your favorite music. Since I am a huge music lover, I signed myself up right away. I also liked LuLu which is a self-publishing site. This is for all of us who are planning on writing a book someday (at least I know I am). I saw an old friend in the awards list, PBwiki. I can remember using this with a group of classmates for a class assignment. I was so much easier than e-mail files back and forth.

If I were to pick a site that could be useful for a library it would be WuFoo. It helps you design online surveys. Not only that but it organizes and analyses your data, creates reports and builds graphs. This would be a useful tool for a school library (taking a survey on what new technologies the students would like to see in there schools) or a public library (what type of book discussion interest you). I was a psychology major and I know how time consuming and sometimes mind boggling raw data can be. This site does everything for you.

I tried to sign up with library 2.0 and classroom 2.0 but they have to approve me first. The amount of info they wanted was impressive. I guess they don't let just and rift raft on their Ning.

WEEK 5 - THING #10

I went to http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/ and spent about an hour there trying to decide what picture to use. This was a lot of fun. I can definitely see why the directions for this "thing" said to keep it in good taste. I think a teacher could use this tool to make reminders and print them out and post them around the classroom or post them on the classroom website (if he or she has one).

WEEK 4 - THING #9

Subscribing to more feeds in Google reader was really easy. I was able to search for feeds by topic or search term. So now, in addition to my classmates blogs, I have:

KDKA Pittsburgh News
Library Stuff
Library.net
Wikitravel
Crockpot Recipes
Free iTune Downloads

I am going to attempt to put my public library into my reader as well. A RSS feed is like free publicity for libraries. The community will be informed of any new library developments and events. My library also has book sales (that I habitually miss). It will be nice not to miss another one!

WEEK 4 - THING #8

I created an RSS account in Google Reader. I didn't even try Bloglines because once I was in Google Reader, I saw that it had imported all of my classmates blogs that I follow. That was a big time saver and I was sold! I love having a RSS reader. I can keep track of everyone's blog here and it is so much easier then clicking on each individual blog (especially when I would forget whose blog I looked at already!). I read all the "helps" and "abouts" and I really liked these two RSS analogies:

RSS reader is like TiVo for your computer.
An aggregator collects all of your subscriptions in one place like a magazine rack in your home.

I will definitely use my RSS Reader (even after this course is finished). There are many websites that I frequent and subscribing to them will make my life easier and more efficient.