Thing #15 Library 2.0

I think web 2.0 and library 2.0 are all things that we as teachers should be thinking about and how to bring this technology into our classrooms and teach it to our children. Sometimes I think our children are more advanced than us in technology. They are sponges and are ready to absorb everything. Have you ever seen teenagers figure out a new cell phone or how something on the internet works - they do it in a matter of seconds. We need to give them access to these tools and guide them in their learning. As the article To more powerful ways to cooperate suggests - we (students and teachers) can work together and create new and exciting things. If you give them the tools, just imagine what they can create. I think librarians can serve this purpose too and can help facilitate the knowledge to patrons of the library.

I also think that tools are going to advance the way we teach and educate our children. There is so much functionality with these types of tools. I am excited about the future of technology in the classroom!!

Thing #14 Technorati

Technorati is a way to find blogs. You can do all types of searches, including tag searches. If you have a blog, I suggest you register it with technorati so it will be more accessible to others. I also suggest saving your favorite blogs and adding tags. This site will even rate your blog, mine is pretty low so please show some love and add me as a favorite technorati blog. You can click on the button above.

I'm really loving all of this tagging. The more information you can attach to your favorite sites and blogs, the easier they are to find when you need to look for them again. Try to think of tags that make sense to you and anything and everything that comes to mind when you think of that website. By tagging you are just organizing the internet for you :) and others, but mostly for you! So the more work you put into the more you benefit from it. And tagging isn't really a lot of work, as I'm finding out. You can use del.icio.us and it will import all of your bookmarks - you can add tags at your convenience. You can also dowload tools for your tool bar that allow you save right to your del.icio.us account and add tags!! Try it, I promise you will love it!

Thing #14 Tagging and Social Bookmarking

I'm in love, no seriously in love!! Where have all these tools been hiding. Today I have been introduced to del.icio.us - what a cool tool. I can't wait to use it. Have you ever found a really cool website and bookmarked it to your favorites, but when you think about using it again, you can't find it in your thousands of bookmarks. Well I have, actually it happened just the other day. About a year ago I found a really cool idea to use a mailbox in my classroom. I wanted to give credit to the teacher who had the original idea, and I couldn't find it among my thousands of bookmarked sites. This is going to be so nice!! del.icio.us takes bookmarking sites to a whole other level. You bookmark sites, but you put tags on your sites so they are easy for you to find. But they aren't just on your computer, you can access these bookmarked site from work, school or wherever! Also you can share your list of bookmarks with other uses. Here are some ideas I think this tool will be useful in and out of the classroom.

Research projects - As students research projects at school they can bookmark their sites they have found on a site like del.icio.us - then they have access to everything at home they have found so far. No duplicating work or having to have students print out the websites they have found. I'm sure parents will love this!

Teachers gathering ideas for classroom - Let's say you are working on a unit. You can find ideas and resources and bookmark them on del.icio.us - you can search bookmarked sites by other teachers and double your info! Also you can switch between work/school. No need for separate bookmark lists. And other teachers can access the links that you have found - making it easier for them to plan their lesson.

I am so excited to get my bookmarks tagged. I already downloaded them to the site, now I just have to update tags so it makes it easier to find them.

Thing #12 Comments

I think commenting is very important to blogs. I think when you comment on a blog that you are justifying that person, whether you agree or disagree with them. Bloggers want to know they are being heard by someone, anyone. I really liked what Drape's Take said regarding comments. I think the blogger should interact and respond to comments. I try to respond to everyone who sends me a comment or email. It's why I created my blog in the first place - to help and let others know some tips/ideas that have worked for me. I also agree that sometimes we won't agree with someone's viewpoints, but we should never bash or take our commenting to extreme. We should be courteous with our comments!!

With that, I will follow up with this post as I find some blog to stalk.

Library2Play blogs

• The Comfy Reading Corner made an excellent point about using some of the tools like magazine creator due to the inappropriate images.
• Love, Laugh, Learn was having a little bit of trouble with wikis, I offered some suggestions.
• Crazy Prek Man had a great suggestion for leaving comments.
• Belle of Books completed the 23 things as well
• Information is Bliss made an adorable photostory
  

Other Blogs
Days of a New DC Teacher
Elbows, Kneeds dreams

Thing #11 LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a great tool to catalog you books, chat with others who have read the same books, join groups with other that have similar reading interests and review the books you've read. I had fun on this site. I love to read books and I love reading books that others suggest to me. I can use this site in so many ways. I can share books that I loved and find out what others are reading. I could make a classroom assignment using this site where students could have accounts and review books. When I was browsing through the groups, I saw several teacher who grouped together so each knew what books other teachers had in the school that could be shared between classrooms - what a great idea!! I even found a widget for my blog that shows everyone what I am reading currently. I also found 2 groups to join. Multicultural books for children and Picture books. I was hoping to find a teacher group or an elementary group to share ideas, but the ones I found were specific to a school or weren't exactly what I was looking for. Maybe I should create one :)

I did love this site. I think it could be a very powerful tool in the classroom. I don't think I will catalog all of my books just yet. Last year I found amazing software that creates a database for my books. It's called bookcollector. But I would be willing to do double entry if the teachers in my school decide to create a group so we can see what books we can borrow from each other. For now I will record the books I'm currently reading so I can continue to use my blog widget!

Thing #10 Image Generator

This was such a fun exercise. I found so many useful tools to use in and out of my classroom. Here are some of the fun things I made.

Image Chef:

This site has some cute tools to use. You can create an image with a message on the beach or create a baseball jersey. How fun is that! This is a fun tool for kids. Here is something fun I created. Enjoy!

ImageChef.com Flower Text!

Custom Sign Generator

There were so many great tools on this site. You can create magazine covers, add your face to a funny body, and so much more. I created a magazine cover. I know the kids would love this. I thought this would be a great tool for an autobiography project. The funny body one was cute too and would make cute Christmas gift for parents. 

Big Huge Labs

This site also has some great tools. I had fun playing with the motivator tool. I thought this would be a great way to give out awards in class. I also loved badge maker. This would have been prefect for my comic book class that I held this summer. But teachers could do all types of things with this for themes throughout the year. I also found the palette generator to be really cool! You upload a picture and it will tell you what colors coordinate with that picture. What a great tool for scrapbookers.

I spent all morning on these sites. They really are a lot of fun. So many possibilities with these tools.

 

Thing#9 More RSS Feeds

Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?

• Right now, I'm very interested in teacher blogs - and specifically about teaching. Honestly the best method for me to find new blogs is by finding a great blog and looking at their blog roll. I also found teacher lingo, which is just a community of other teachers. So for right now, this seems to be the best method. If I'm looking for something in particular then I think that I will use search sites.

Which Search tool was the easiest for you?

• I have to say Google Blog Search, it truly was the least confusing to me. Plus I'm used to Google.

Which was more confusing?

• I would say syndic8, it was very confusing to me. It was way too busy.

What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?

• I found some great feed on education technology. This is the field I think I want to go for my masters, so I'm excited that I found a few blogs dedicated to it. I also found some more teacher blogs that I look forward to exploring.

What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?

• Not news feeds but rss feeds, Teacher lingo - it's a great community of teachers and their blogs. I love that allows people who already have a blog to still join the community.

I'm still learning RSS feeds, I don't want to overwhelm myself with sorting through news as well. I will adjust this as I get used to just reading the blogs in this setup.