Thing #13 Social Bookmarking

One thing that I have discovered throughout this 23 things experiment…RSS feeds, google reader, ect…..I NEVER have to buy another cookbook as long as these tools are around. When I followed the link from library2play to Delicious, check out what I found (and this does look truly delicious) Snickerdoodle Pie!

Okay, back to the serious business now (sigh).

Social bookmarking looks like it could be VERY useful in a classroom situation. If you have a group of students working and researching together, they can use the social bookmarking to share website amongst themselves on their topic. I am concerned about the ease as to which they can get to inappropriate content. Is there a particular one that provides tools with making private groups and the students are limited as to what they can access? Or would it take constant policing to make sure that students were only looking at appropriate places? Libraries and classroom teachers can take advantage of the bookmarking sites by being able to share with the students places of interests to visit when doing units of study. The adult can bookmark with a certain tag, and inform the students what tag to search for to complete their internet research. The students can use the tags to research at school and at home, and aren’t dependent on using ONE computer. If the faculty is involved in a particular study (such as improving reading strategies), then the librarian can provide tags for blogs, wikis and websites that can help further their learning!

I also like the fact that with my varied interests, I can easily organize these topics, and find things with a click of a tag!

Thing #12 Creating Community With Commenting

This Thing goes with “to be a friend, you must first be a friend…” Two points that were made that I thought were important: 1) Respond with a meaningful comment. Just telling the blogger that you thought that was a good post---well, why did you like it? What made it resonate with you? It’s like asking one of my students what they liked about the field trip and they respond with “It was fun”. Uh, okay. Doesn’t help too much with making the next trip better! Same thing with blogging. What did you like about the post, so that I can write other meaningful posts? (On the other hand, at the least, you know SOMEONE was looking at your blog…). 2) Edublogger Etiquette: When to respond, when do you leave it alone? At this point in my learning, it’s like leaving a comment on a blog, respond if you have something meaningful to say! If someone leaves a comment that you find especially helpful/meaningful, respond back. If the commenter has asked a question, and it is a question that can be answered (and no one else has responded) then it would seem rude to not give a reply.
Here are the five blogs I visited and made comments:
Get in Gear
Hummingbird Library
Librarian Letty
Donna
Vanessa
I have a friend that moved and started her own blog so that her friends around the world could keep up with her, and I commented on a story she had posted. She is living in “A Whole New World”. Another blog that I keep up with and comment on is from a former church member that is a dentist. Her blog is titled “Through the Fire”. An additional blog that I have discovered through a teammate’s blog (she did this 23 thing project over the summer) is A Second Grade Teacher’s Blog. The author of this blog is very techno-savvy, and I commented on a cute Web 2.0 project she developed stemming from the book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs".

Thing # 11 LibraryThing

Library Thing could be useful to me in several ways. Number 1, I COULD go and put in all of my classroom library books so I would quit buying double copies of books I already have. Also, when I am at home working on lesson plans and there is a suggestion for using a particular book, I wouldn’t have to wait until I am at school the next day to see if I already have it on my shelf, or if I need to find a copy. That would have to be a summer project, I think. Looking through some of the groups, I came across a couple that grabbed my attention: Name that book and Children’s Fiction. My book collection is as eclectic as my music collection, so I’ll have to keep looking for a group for me.

Another feature that I liked discovering is the recommendations tab. It posts books that I may want to try out based on books that are already in my library. There is a “why” tab, and when you click on it, it connects books from your library to the recommendation. It isn’t always a good match, though. An example? Pure Desire: Breaking Free From Sexual Struggles was a recommendation from my books Living with Fred and Escape from Fred, which are books about a PK (preacher’s kid) that lives in Fred, Texas (near the golden triangle of Texas---Beaumont area). Interesting “match”, I think I’ll decline.

Thing # 10 Online Image Generators

Yea!!  I loved the smiley signs that you can customize!  I made a "George Washington" smiley to post on the Wiki that I am making for 5th graders studying the American Revolution, and I also made one to announce the date of Frostwood Elementary's 50th birthday celebration.  Image Chef was very easy to use as well.  (See the street sign and the turkey).  I did not like the so-called Kid Friendly Image Generators.  I had no problem with getting the text onto the frame, but gave up trying to get a photo on there.  I can see using these things to add oomph to Wikis, blogs and even the grade level newsletter.  Actually, anything that you make on the computer can benefit---slide shows, word documents...

Thing #9: Library-Related Blogs

Over the river and through the woods, around the blogs we go....

WOW.   The Circle of the Wise article was helpful with guiding me through the woods.  While looking at blogs/sites, I kept in mind about the upbeatness of them all.  I did have to chose one that I found, that while not necessarily upbeat, I could relate to the voice in which it was written, even though I don't teach older students.  Mr.Teacher
I really liked Edublogs' award winners.  There was a nice list of the "best", divided into categories, and from that, I added Teachers at Risk and Doug Pete.  In teachers at risk, the blog writer teaches high school students, but writes about having a web2.0 classroom.  The second blog contains links to all kinds of web resources.  Sadly, the website that wasn't  available for searching was  School Library Blogs on Superglu.  I'll check back on that one at a later date to see if it is back running. 
A blog to go to for fun:  http://icanhascheezburger.com/  This one has cute captions to go with mostly cat pictures.  Good for a laugh when you are suffering from insomnia.

The search blog that raised my eyebrows was Syndic8.com.  While some prefer that straightforward look, yikes!  It looked non-friendly to me.  I didn't stick around too long on that site. 

Oh, and my pack of schnauzers were not happy with the voice on the Technorati Tutorial.

Thing #8: RSS Feeds

After exploring this for an afternoon, I decided I really didn't do too much out of my little comfort zone on the WWW!  I have my 2 or 3 sites that I shop from, the one local news channel website that I read from, and not a whole lot of everything else.  Blame it on the Library Resources page?  I use that an awful lot for lesson planning.  (Not to mention, I really don't like sitting in front of the computer screen for long periods of time usually...oh, wait, I just did mention it).  I liked how there is the "search" function to start getting some ideas of what I wanted to put on my Google Reader.  That was a good starting point for me.  Not that I needed anymore places to find recipes from, I added a couple of food feeds, and I found an interesting site for Elementary teachers.  Why did that catch my attention?  The article titled "Top 8 Reasons why Non-Teachers Can Never Really Understand Our Job".  (There are also helpful articles, such as using Hershey Chocolate bars for fractions...apparently the person who wrote this doesn't teach in Texas with the food of minimal nutrition issues!)  Google Reader even automatically put in the blogs that I follow on Blogger! 
I'll have to catch my hubby at the computer sometime and see how many of his Mustang websites he visits can be added to a Google Reader account.  This might be a great tool to help him keep up with all the Mustang cars and parts being sold and traded!
I can see librarians/educators/administration using this to help keep up with various classroom blogs easily.  I know quite a few of the teachers on my campus are setting up wikis to use for thier classrooms this year---can you put a Wiki on an RSS feed?  Or is that a completely different animal?

Thing #7: Google Tools

Wow!  This could be a serious procrastination place to play!  Since I have things tied to my email, I won't publicly publish things, but I'll see how I can share some of the things I did.  I created an igoogle page with a peacful scene of a Japanese village, and discovered that my igoogle page and blogger page OUGHT to have been set up with the same email address.  I can't be on both at the same time unless I open separate windows.  One thing I did was make a gadget for "Pizza Group Cruise"...which countsdown the time until I go on a cruise with a group of friends in January.  3 months, 18 days to go!  This could be a fun way for the kids to see countdowns for upcoming activities, or use it as a "this is how many days you have left to study for that big test", or some major project that is due (hmmmm...like 23 things needs to be done by?).  I also went to check out the tool that shows the phases of the moon.  I'll be teaching about the movement of Earth and objects in space soon, and thought that would be a fun addition for the kids to look at.  Unfortunately, it seems to have some bugs-- complaints such as it being 2 days behind, or not showing up at all, so I'll go back and check on it when we get closer to that unit of study.  I liked the idea of a todo list gadget as well.  Older students working on a group project could make use of this feature, and I am guessing that the teacher could use it to keep tabs on the group's progress.  I typed "learn english" in the search box, and LOTS of gadgets popped up!  I'll be searching through those to see if any are 2nd grade appropriate--I seem to average 2 or 3 new students from Korea each year.  :)