Thing #13 Delicious Bookmarks, etc.

I already had a Delicious account (hadn't been using it, though). I didn't really know enough about it to make it useful until today. Here are a few things I've done in the last hour:

• Took virtual tours of the Coliseum, Great Wall of China, and 5 more wonders (these were linked from the popular list in Delicious)
• Watched a video of a Berkely professor who opened a hat box and held a human brain in her hand
• Re-discovered how to log in to my Delicious acct.
• Added a feed to the top 10 most popular sites in education from Delicious
• Followed some other links about teaching social networking
• Looked at tag clouds to see current popular tags

Yet another way to keep up with topics that I am currently researching. I don't think there is any way to stay up with what I've set up lately (feeds, bookmarks, etc.) but over time I will see what works best for me and use it to make me a better technology media specialist.

I have not yet figured out how to share my Delicious bookmarks. I'll have to go back and figure that out and pick out a few of my favorite tags to share. OK--I'm back now. Here is a link to an eHow site that explains how to share D. bookmarks:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2019685_sharing-bookmarks-delicious.html

Thing #12 To Comment or Not to Comment

I liked the term "culture of sharing" in Meredith Farkas' blog. Although I don't like for people to act like know-it-all's most of the time, I do appreciate good advice when I need it (actually BEFORE I need it).

I also liked Drape's Takes:Edublogger Etiquette in which it was stated "there are multiple ways to respond to a post's comments - giving your readers a sense of validation, building a deeper relationship of your readers, and actively participating in the discursive field we call the blogosphere..."

After searching for blogs about Moodle and also about Interwrite Workspace I am now following two more blogs. I commented on THE Journal regarding electronic textbooks and Gov. Perry's signing of the new bill although that wasn't actually the reason I joined that blog.

Thing #11 Library Thing

My Library Thing

This link is the permanent link to my Libray Thing site where I cataloged 16 books (mostly Jan Karon's Mitford series because I could look them up easily without getting out of my chair). I checked out two other users who had some of these books in their list. This is an interesting concept that I had seen before but had not taken the time to examine closely. I'm thinking of several uses for it right now--our ladies' Bible study group, our small church library, my sister-in-law's extensive collection, etc.

I did add a feed to a YA group (although I didn't actually join the group) and I discovered that you can spend hours just looking through comments and clicking on the topic and reading the whole thread. And then you see a book that sounds good and you click on its cover and off you go to another page. That's my problem--one thing leads to another and I forget what I was doing originally. But I still learned something on my journey. I had not heard of a series that boys will like called Cherub--doesn't really sound like a boy "thing" does it. Then there was a neat idea mentioned by someone in a middle school where they asked the boys to check out girl-type books (like Twilight) and girls to check out boy-type books (like sports or adventure) and then have some class discussions. That sounded kind of fun (although sexist I guess). In fact, there were lots of boys that were interested in the Twilight books in my library.

Thing #10 Image Tools

Ok--I really, really like ImageChef. I did this Sing mosaic, made a customized baseball shirt, and did a couple more mosaics with a cat shape and a heart shape for a little 8-year old friend of mine. I also tried out the poster maker there and did one for my library page.

The image below was created in Wordle using words from my home page at school. I guess you can tell that I really like WORD images and BLUE.

I am still in the process of trying some of the other image generators but I wanted to post this before I fogot what I had done on these two.

I used Dumpr to make a Rubic's Cube photo for my school weg page last year. It is on my home page at http://jimned.region14.net/webs/lcross/home.htm





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Thing #9 Useful library related blogs and feeds

"Twitterature"--this is a new term that I ran across while checking out Technorati. There is a book by this name in which two college students are trying to take great literature and pare it down to 140 characters--thus Twitterature. I did not really like Technorati--it was too busy and I just didn't have time to figure it out.

I liked Syndic8.com because it showed categories like the 10 most popular or 10 most visited. This lead me to add a feed to Teen Reads to my blog.

I plan to access the Atomic Learning tutorials later to help me with this "feed" concept. I am reluctant to add more online "reading" to my schedule right now since I barely have time to keep up with my emails!

Thing #8 RSS feeds and readers

I had subscribed to an RSS feed before but had kind of forgotten about it.
So I started at the beginning. I created a Google Reader and now have 5 RSS feeds. One thing I am researching is interactive lessons and activities for our teachers who have interactive whiteboards. The first thing I discovered was that eInstruction is starting a new teacher community for our Interwrite boards and Workspace software on June 28th. I might not have known about that as quickly without the RSS feed. I also joined 4 library blogs. This will help keep me posted on several topics at one location. I can see this being extremely useful to all teachers trying to keep up with a topic. This is a concept that we definitely need to show our teachers in staff development in the fall. I bookmarked my Google Reader site to make it easy to get to because my brain is overwhelmed right now with all of the new stuff I'm trying to do!

Thing #7 Google Docs and More

I created this Google presentation in about 5 min. It contains a video from the Google site that shows how easy it is to create a Google presentation. Click on the blue tab to Start Presentation once you go to this link:
http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=ddshxpdm_0dw9tk8f7

I also read about Google Education Edition for schools (email, calendars, etc.) I don't think we will change over to that, but there was an interesting explanation about seamless integration with Outlook using Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. Does anyone use any Google apps at your school?

Last year I creatd an iGoogle page and it was fun for a while, but I didn't have time to keep up with all of the gadgets that I put on mine. I haven't used it in quite a while.

Thing #4 Registering

It bothers me not to have a Thing #4 post so I just created this one to say that I have officially registered and intend to finish 23 Things this summer.

Thing #6 Mashups

I created a mosaic of birds that was very colorful using the mosaic mashup. I wanted to use the picture here but I could not get the accompanying code to copy over correctly so that I could give credit for the pictures. I really liked the way this mashup let you choose a layout and then just enter a Flickr tag to gather in the photos. This would be a great way for our 6th grade students to create an unusual graphic for their "animals" project. I also created a trading card, which I'm including in this post. It was fun to choose my icons.

Thing #5 Flickr & Creative Commons

This photo of a cocker spaniel puppy sleeping on a book is from the Creative Commons section of Flickr.

It is from the section that only requires recognizing the source; in this case Paul Keleher: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pkeleher/1127378375/

I just love cocker spaniels--especially puppies, and we have a black and white one named Buster. Since this one is sleeping on a book, it makes it appropriate for my blog.

Thing #3 Create a blog with an avatar

Seems like the hardest part of creating a blog was trying to decide what to call it. I can't remember if I've seen the word "techbrarian" anywhere else but it is a word that I think describes those of us who are involved in both technology and libraries. So I decided to do a blog where people who use technology and like books could share thoughts about either or both of those things. Creating the avatar was fun. I didn't have any trouble with the face or the attire, but it took me a while to find the background that I wanted--a computer lab. At first, the only school-related setting I could find was a school cafeteria--definitely not the place I want to be.

Thing #2--Habits of Lifelong Learners Revised ed.

I just read about the 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners, and it was easy for me to pick out which one is the hardest for me--playing! All of the others sounded just like me, but if I have to pick the easiest one for me I would say that it is teaching and mentoring others. I created this blog for librarians that like to use technology and/or for technology people who like to read books. I'm kind of in the middle on this topic, but the two people I work most closely with are a librarian who is becoming more technological and a tech specialist who loves to read. I hope to continue being a lifetime learner through the use of both books and technology.

Thing #1 Read a Blog

I have read blogs before but I have never done one myself. I think this is one of those things that you just have to learn by doing.