Week 6: Thing 14

I searched the Technorati web site for "School Library Learning 2.0" and found 1 hit in posts and 0 in blogs. Still not sure if I did something wrong, but when I did the same search in Google with 1,060,000 hits, Bing with 25,800,00 hits and Yahoo with 11,500,110 hits, I realized that the searching system was very different, much more specific and must rely more on specific tags. I also looked at the link for the top 100 blogs (the popularity link wasn't working) and looked at the top 10 along with their tags. I wasn't surprised to see that many of the blogs had to do with technology and celebrities. Some had no tags, some had an extensive list. I had never looked at any blogs like that and was curious about the Huffington Post and Gizmoto (because it's been in the news recently). I think tagging is important to know about if you are promoting, following or researching blogs. Personally, I don't think I would use this, as I am not following, using or searching for any information in blogs at this time.

Week 6: Thing 13

I viewed the Delicious tutorial and explored the website using the SJLibraryLearning2 account. I saw lots of useful sites covering all aspects of libraries and technology. I searched some of the tags and found some really useful articles. I would like to go back and really explore and read some of these bookmarked websites that were set up for this exercise. I think they would really help and inspire me to begin incorporating more of these tools in my library- and improving my program in many areas!! I really can see the usefulness of this website, both in researching a topic, for professional development or personal topics, and also in creating your own account to save and categorize those useful websites that you have found. I thought that the tagging both in searching on a topic and in providing related tags, was really helpful. I haven't done this yet, but would really like to go back and set up a Delicious account and begin to organize and use more specific websites. Since I really don't usually bookmark websites anyway, I kind of feel like I would be starting from scratch. As with all of these tools, we just really need to make the time to learn about them and use them.

Week 5 Thing 12

Wow, it's been while since I've posted to this blog and time to finish the Web 2.0 tutorial! This activity included exploring Rollyo which I found a little overwhelming, but think it would be useful if you spent a lot of time searching websites that you used a lot. I did find the examples helpful and chose some of the travel sites to explore and created my own Rollyo search tool with a few of them. I thought Wordle was a lot of fun! Just pasting information and seeing how it created the "word cloud" was great! I think it would be a fun activity to do with students. I also tried the Traveler IQ challenge and found that I am not good at this at all- but think students might have a lot of fun with it!

Week 5: Thing 11

I explored the Web 2.0 awards list by browsing the topics and winners and was surprised to see that I had heard of many of them. I was already familiar with Craigslist and use it regularly. I decided to try a couple that I had heard of, but not used. I explored Yelp to look at reviews of restaurants and wineries in Petaluma where I live and think that would be very useful if you are visiting a new area and just trying to find new places to go near where you live. I had heard of Google Maps, but hadn't used it. I typed in Petaluma and was surprised to see my address pop up with a photo of my house!! I clicked on the photo and could then move the picture around to see up and down my street. That was really amazing!!! I will soon try out Pandora, as my husband and daughter love it. I know we will also be exploring many of the other sites in the upcoming activities. I think the Web 2.0 awards list is great- easy to use and very helpful.

Week 5: Thing 10

I explored the Flickr Toys again and Comic Strip Generator, but really liked the Image Chef. I created this image, just to test it out, but think it would be a lot of fun to play with.

Week 4: Thing 9

For this activity I looked at the Edublog Awards and really liked the best library blog- Hey Jude. I'd like to go back and explore that a little further- just not sure if I want to add it to my Google Reader yet- feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment with all of these blogs and newsfeeds. I tried out the various blog search tools and am not sure when I would really need to use them. I did remember reading about the Casa Grande High School Library blog in the SLJ and searched for that using Google Reader and Technorati, but found it easier using a regular Google search. As I become more familiar with blogs or need to find something I might use these, but right now it seems like there is more than enough for me to explore without searching for more!! This activity did make me want to set up a blog for my library as a way to share photos and library projects and activities and I hope to get started on this soon.

Week 4: Thing 8

I set up a Google Reader account and then subscribed to the New York Times Book Review. I have checked this a few times and found it a little overwhelming. I also added the subscribe button in the Google Reader to my bookmarks bar which made adding other subscriptions very easy. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to get in this format and how much information I would need to manage, but I did subscribe to the 5 newsfeeds for this activity. In addition to the NYTimes site I added Unshelved, the library comic strip and the blogs of the other members of my team. This was very easy to do. I also went through a tutorial to give me a little more background on RSS feeds and why they are useful. I am sure I will be much more aware of them now and will probably add more as needed.