One of my goals when I return to my classroom this year is to create a wiki. It has been a goal of mine prior to this weeks focus on wikis, so having the time to explore many librarians' wikis was a lot of fun. I really believe that a well prepared wiki can help bring the library to the classrooms in my school that use the mobile laptop labs.
I liked seeing that some wikis represent a teacher and his/her courses. Other wikis revolved around a unit of study. I most enjoyed surfing around wikis that librarians maintain to support the teachers and curriculum in their schools. I gathered great ideas for links and pages that would be helpful to the community served. For example: book lovers, MLA and APA citation support, SAT Prep, pathfinders, copyright friendly sources. I could have browsed for hours and hours, but the best part is I am turbo-charged to get my wiki started to make it an integral part of my library. I am sure it will change the way the library is perceived by the students, staff anf administration and most importantly, how it is used.
Lastly, I was really impressed with Wikipedia's sets of external links for library blogs and wikis. The list of links went on and on. Kind of ironic how Wikipedia houses so many resources for librarians and yet librarians' feelings towards Wikipedia runs from hot to cold.
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Friday, October 16, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Week #6 - Thing #14 - Technorati & Tags
This was my first experience with Technorati. It was an impressive search site. I like that you could filter your search by authority. This feature is a worthwhile one to share with students. It demonstrates that intelligent web users know the importance of using credible sources. I liked seeing the authority ranking of each site. While I was exploring the site I also decided to claim my blog for this class.
Searching by tag was my favorite way to search. I am beginning to get a clearer understanding of the scope of tagging. Searching a term like "technology" returned a great many results. Narrowing the tag term to "classroom_technology" helped me locate topics of more interest to me.
It is interesting to think of this method of cataloging along side the Cataloging and Classification course we're taking. Tagging has far fewer rules than the AACR2R, that's for sure. It is also a more natural way for information organization to take place.
Searching by tag was my favorite way to search. I am beginning to get a clearer understanding of the scope of tagging. Searching a term like "technology" returned a great many results. Narrowing the tag term to "classroom_technology" helped me locate topics of more interest to me.
It is interesting to think of this method of cataloging along side the Cataloging and Classification course we're taking. Tagging has far fewer rules than the AACR2R, that's for sure. It is also a more natural way for information organization to take place.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Week #4 - RSS Feeds
I too am amiss on what "thing" I am on. It's week four so I will stick with "thing 4".
Anyways, on to RSS feeds. The concept and implementation of RSS feeds is something I am very familiar with, but not something I have integrated into my daily life. I have a Google account and so therefore had a Google Reader that was going unused. Once I took the time to check it out I realized all the blogs I have been following for this class were already loaded in the reader. Google never ceases to amaze me. It was much easier to keep up with the blogs via the reader, but I felt that it was a little less personal since it was in the plain text format. I do enjoy interacting within each individual's blog. Within the reader I also felt less compelled to reply to each of the bloggers. Again, it seemed less personal. Although, I enjoy the ease and one stop shop quality of the reader I am not overly eager to begin using it in an everyday fashion, but I will try.
In an effort to collect some feeds, I located http://www.feedzilla.com/ . I can't imagine you wouldn't find a feed that would interest in you. I selected a feed on parenting, my favorite sports team and a bunch on libraries. I began looking for library feeds on School Library Journal and was overwhelmed by how many feeds they have. Tons and tons! (in case you are still looking for professional feeds)
Whew! I hope RSS's streamline the information I need and doesn't cause information overload!
Anyways, on to RSS feeds. The concept and implementation of RSS feeds is something I am very familiar with, but not something I have integrated into my daily life. I have a Google account and so therefore had a Google Reader that was going unused. Once I took the time to check it out I realized all the blogs I have been following for this class were already loaded in the reader. Google never ceases to amaze me. It was much easier to keep up with the blogs via the reader, but I felt that it was a little less personal since it was in the plain text format. I do enjoy interacting within each individual's blog. Within the reader I also felt less compelled to reply to each of the bloggers. Again, it seemed less personal. Although, I enjoy the ease and one stop shop quality of the reader I am not overly eager to begin using it in an everyday fashion, but I will try.
In an effort to collect some feeds, I located http://www.feedzilla.com/ . I can't imagine you wouldn't find a feed that would interest in you. I selected a feed on parenting, my favorite sports team and a bunch on libraries. I began looking for library feeds on School Library Journal and was overwhelmed by how many feeds they have. Tons and tons! (in case you are still looking for professional feeds)
Whew! I hope RSS's streamline the information I need and doesn't cause information overload!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Had to try it
After today's Tapped In session I had to give SmileBox a try especially because I am completely obsessed with taking pics of my new baby boy.
SmileBox was easy to use and the basic membership allowed for all that I needed to create a slideshow. I could have spent hours, but was able to create a nice product very easily and quickly. I was a little disappointed to not be able to import my pics from Shutterfly where I have a photo library. I am beginning to see that Shutterfly is not as accessible as say Flickr when it comes to photo sharing. Shutterfly was not even included in the top 10 evaluated photo share sites in the link we had to read. Perhaps I should consider another photo storage site if I plan on doing more mashups like this one. Which may be the case, because it's so easy and fun.
Here's a looksee at my little guy.
SmileBox was easy to use and the basic membership allowed for all that I needed to create a slideshow. I could have spent hours, but was able to create a nice product very easily and quickly. I was a little disappointed to not be able to import my pics from Shutterfly where I have a photo library. I am beginning to see that Shutterfly is not as accessible as say Flickr when it comes to photo sharing. Shutterfly was not even included in the top 10 evaluated photo share sites in the link we had to read. Perhaps I should consider another photo storage site if I plan on doing more mashups like this one. Which may be the case, because it's so easy and fun.
Here's a looksee at my little guy.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Week #3 - Mashups
This week I was glad to finally learn about mashups. I have heard of the term, but never knew exactly what it was until now. I explored a few examples of mashups mainly via Flickr and all its services. I have used Flickr for photo sharing, but more recently switched to Shutterfly. Revisiting Flickr enabled me to see all its capabilities ie: photostream, the commons, picture links and much more. It's use of tags is much like Delicious and is a very user friendly system for organization and retrieval.
I attempted to apply my new understanding of mashups by creating a trading card. I met a library from Penn State who had an awesome superhero-like trading card and thought it would be fun to generate one for myself. Unfortunately the layout was too simple for my taste and didn't seem jazzy enough to intrique a teenager.
So I went to plan B. I created a movie poster of a book I recently read for this summer's Teen Lit course. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers was a realistic portrayal of
an African American young man in Vietnam during the war. Myers's story was stirring and vivid. Making the movie poster was easy, fun and I thought a new way of getting students to share reading experiences with classmates. Technically speaking making the poster was easy. The trickiest part was locating and finalizing an image. I did this by doing a tag search of Flickr's common. I saved the image I liked and added it to my photostream. This took a little trial and error,but now that I know the path it will be easy to repeat. Mashups are not that complex after all!
I attempted to apply my new understanding of mashups by creating a trading card. I met a library from Penn State who had an awesome superhero-like trading card and thought it would be fun to generate one for myself. Unfortunately the layout was too simple for my taste and didn't seem jazzy enough to intrique a teenager.
So I went to plan B. I created a movie poster of a book I recently read for this summer's Teen Lit course. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers was a realistic portrayal of
an African American young man in Vietnam during the war. Myers's story was stirring and vivid. Making the movie poster was easy, fun and I thought a new way of getting students to share reading experiences with classmates. Technically speaking making the poster was easy. The trickiest part was locating and finalizing an image. I did this by doing a tag search of Flickr's common. I saved the image I liked and added it to my photostream. This took a little trial and error,but now that I know the path it will be easy to repeat. Mashups are not that complex after all!
Friday, September 4, 2009
My First Avatar
In the spirit of 23 things and doing something new, I have created my first avatar. It was fun! I could have spent hours tweeking it to be just right, but new mommies need to manage their time more wisely. This process was very similar to creating Wii Miis on the Wii gaming system I have. My husband and I have a habit of creating a Mii for everyone who visits our how. Yes, we started this practice long before our son arrived. We can kinda be big kids ourselves sometimes. Hey, technology is fun, especially when you can make likenesses of yourselves.
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