Item 13: del.icio.us and social bookmarking

I like the concept of del.icio.us. I have so many sites bookmarked on my school computer. It's hard to remember what each title means and what all I have compiled in the list. Sometimes it's time consuming trying to locate the one address I'm searching for from a list of so many. It's also frustrating to work on another computer and not have those bookmarked sites available to use. Del. icio. us looks like a way to avoid some of those problems. I also like the tagging aspect - I have tried to organize my bookmarked sites into folders before, but deciding where to put those websites that fit into many catagories can be really frustrating. I looked at furl and ma.gnolia but they seem redundant if I'm also using del.icio.us.
One problem I encountered when searching and following other people's suggestions was finding linked addresses/webpages that came up as "not available". Still I found a couple of good presidential links (I'm thinking of the November election) and some interesting librarian related sites. We have Nettrekker as a online resource in HISD and I have found that to be a good resource for locating websites that are current and appropriate for school.

Item 12 - Blogging comments

I think the articles on commenting etiquette were very useful. I think making a positive comment is important. Everyone likes to receive some recognition for their efforts. I also liked the reference to Darth Vadar. Some things you just need to let slide. I enjoy looking at other people's blogs - I get so many good ideas from people sharing how they would use a tool or website. So many of the Library2Play bloggers are happy, positive bloggers. Do they edit their thoughts before they type? I feel like the old, crusty, crabapple when I compare some of my reactions/experiences to theirs. Still, the more I interact with the computer, the better I get with these basic technology skills. I'm a little concerned that it's already the second week in July and I'm only on item 12. I'm sooo slow.

Item 11: Library Thing

I found this site easy to use. I like just pulling up the book covers and additional information with just one or two words - very nice. I had a little more trouble copying my list of books I've been reading lately onto the blog site - but I think that's more my fault. I have very little experience working with blogs. I'm not sure how I would use this as an elementary school librarian - perhaps to offer lists/collections of books about a specific topic or theme? I do like being able to immediately link up with others who share your taste in reading - that's fun.

Item 10 - Online image generators

This was a lot of fun to play with. I made some cartoon cards http:\\comicstripsgenerator.com/
, some trading cards , and a magazine cover. Making the images is easier than figuring out how to save and and later locate them. I think students would have a lot of fun playing with these tools. I know they would enjoy using them to help demonstrate what they have learned in school. It's a very creative outlet for students to use. Coming up with just the right photograph is a challenge as well. I know this would work well with middle and high school students. It could be used with elementary school students, but it would take a lot more time and supervision by the instructor. I'm having trouble adding the hyperlinks but I did manage to finally add the pictures, so I think I will take a break and come back to this later.

Item #9 Library-related blogs

All of these sources, Technorati, School library blogs on Suprglu, and the Edublog award/winners were a little overwhelming. I read through several of the articles/blogs and while many were interesting, I didn't find just what I'm looking for yet. I went back to my RSS feed page and it was smothering to see how many articles were already added to that page. I don't like sorting through the masses to find the treasure. I don't think this will be a tool I employ with any regularity - at least not now. I guess once you find what you like and have your page tailored to meet those needs, this would be a very useful tool. I'm just not at that point yet.

Thing #8 RSS feeds

I added several news and entertainment feeds to my account. I also added some library-related blogs. I don't know how useful this will be to me right now since I didn't really find a news feed that I'm all that interested in. Same with the blogs I selected. I think if I knew how to better select what links I added I would be more likely to have use for this. I don't have a lot of free time to read things on my computer during the school day and I certainly don't go home and log on for more. I'm much more likely to watch the news on television, read the newspaper, or look at a magazine article in my free time - although I do concede that some of the blogs I have happened across are pretty interesting. Still, I don't stay online outside of work that much and I really do prefer to read the news and stories on a printed page.

Thing #7

There are certainly a lot of gadgets and tools offered by Google. I think I would most likely use the Igoogle (I started an Igoogle page) and the Google Earth. Landforms are a big part of the elementary social studies curriuculum and I often have teachers asking me for ideas or sources of landform pictures/images.