Thing #14

Technoratiseems like a great place to connect up and converse with others who have the same interest as you. When I searched "school library learning 2.0" , I really did not find much of a difference in the search results by searching blog posts or the blog directory. I never could figure out how to search by tags. When I seached popular, I found it interesting that under blogs by fans and blogs by authority had three of the same topics in the top 5 only they were not in the same order of importance and I found none of the five under the tags. I feel that tagging is a great way for organizing or getting access to other views quickly. I would love to view and converse with other Kindergarten teachers through blogging. I know we can always learn from others.

Thing @13

I started an account with del.icio.us and begin to do some social bookmarking. I will definitely have to play with it some more. I saw in the comments that someone said I wonder How we share but I was under the impression that the site automatically shares when you have a tag that is similar to other persons on the site. I will explore some more to see if this is right or is there some other way to share. I do like the site and will use it in the future.

Thing #12

I created a searchroll using some of the sample sites they offered. I really don't search the web enough to add my own personal sites by heart that I trust (as Rollyo put it.) I can see how this will be useful to add sites to my own personalized searchroll as I search different sites for lesson ideas. I seached a couple of the sample sites they gave and I really liked the recipes and food and dinning sites. I also searched the armchair scientist for kinder science lessons on plants and did not find it useful at all. I can not figure out how to post a link to the searchroll that I started. My profile name is rettus1964 and my personal searchroll is called educator teach ideas.

Thing # 11

This is another thing I would use. I know I would use it to look for recommendations for books of favorite authors or genres for pleasure or for my classroom library. I would like to slowly catalog all of my classroom library books so i could sort them by the units they would be useful in as well as to keep me from buying multiple books of the same title because I can't remember if I have purchased it. That alone would be worth the effort because it would save me money and time searching the school or public libraries for title that i own myself.

I did join a few of the groups. Two of them met my interests for sure. I like this site and even had their blogs feed added to my google reader account.

Thing #10

I really enjoyed playing with the image generators. I created a couple posted on my bog from http://www.imagechef.com/ . I picked out the image I wanted to play with--my first was a Houston license plate and then created my text and then it even gave me choices for what I wanted to do with it. I chose to post it to my blog. My second one was a picture of a fortune cookie being opened and my text of course created the fortune which I again posted to my blog.

I teach Kinder and I think it would be fun take pictures of my students and let them create a trading cardof what or who they would like to be when they grow up.(I would assisst in writing the text) or letting them put themselves on the front of a magazine cover with a positive title. I think it could be a great self image booster to see themselves in that way.

I LOVED Thing # 10 and will definitely be playing again in the future!

Thing #9

Which method for finding feeds did I find the easiest to use? I would have to say that I went with Google reader. As far as seach tools, I liked google blog search and bloglines. I found that the tools were a little frustrating because of the keyword concept. I am glad that Google Reder had several RSS feeds that it recommended. I found Mike Falick's feed interesting as well as Of life, Education, E-bay, Travel and Books. Personally outside of school I like the feeds I found on food and photography. I did not find other ways to find or locate newsfeeds other than having them suggested by others to try out. I think it would be interesting if we could create feeds of blogs for each grade level on the library resources page so that grade level teachers could blog about great things they have done or even things they would never do again and teachers could comment to each other or ask for advice from others.

Thing #8

What do I like about RSS and Newsreader?
Well I found it interesting that you could have all of your current interests that are posted come to you. I need to check if my hubby knows about this. He spends more time on the computer checking out current news and entertainment. Between teaching and taking care of my 2 1/2 year old I don't spend much time doing those kind of searches.

How do I think I will use this tech. in my personal or school life?
Well i created my Google reader account and added the Spring Branch pages that were suggested and will use those to stay more up to date on SB news I also added the one that shows current books and little insight to each of the books. I would like to find more sites geared toward elemenatry teachers and not specifically librarians (I know this whole libray2play was set up for librarians to begin with and teachers were invited to join in so i am not complaining) however if anyone can give me more sites to add to my reader dealing in elementary ed I would appreciate it. I also added some sites to my reader from Googles bundles. I enjoy sites on food and on photography so I am trying some of them out.

How can libraries use RSS and take advantage of this new technology? I am not sure about this since I do not run a library but I will think mo=re on it.

Well I am off to bed and will try to venture into Thing #9 tomorrow.

Thing # 7

Well, I tried a couple of Google Tools. I used the Google notebook to collect different pictures of landforms to share with my students while studying Landforms -- They loved the pictures and info that i found. I also used Google Earth to zoom in on differnt views of mountains, glaciers, and of course volcanos (which was their favorite.) My students as well as myself liked clicking on the little markers that show you actual pictures others have taken so we were actually able to view some eruptions of certain volcanos. I also like the tilting effect so that you can see it not only from above but have the ability to turn the picture so that it can be seen from the side and you can even turn the image all the way around to see it from all sides. Of course, I had to show them how we could zoom in and see our school.

Both items were really cool.

I recently leaned about something called a thumb drive that lets you take the chip from your digital camera and download your pics from any computer you happen to be working on. So i went out and bought myself one--only $10.00. This will now give me the chance to use some of the Photo albums online that we have learned about. I look forward to sharing photos of my son with my family but I have also learned to take my camera with me when I attend Proffessional development sessions so now I can share those photos of the ideas that were given with my team and others teachers in my school.

I will play around more with these different Google tools in the future when we get our new laptops at school. Well I am off to Thing#8.

Thing #6

I don't know that I would ever create my own mashup but playing with some of the ones already created was interesting.

Mashups are web applications that combine data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. Some examples I explored are: Mappr, Flickr Color Pickr, and Mosaic Maker.

I experimented with Mosaic Maker. The result was pretty cool. I actually asked the program to put pictures of specific landforms into a mosaic. My students would probably enjoy seeing the variety of photos given for each landform.

One application I explored that intrigued me was Bubblr. This application allows you to add cartoon speech bubbles to photos and displays them like a comic strip. It had some cute ones to view in their archive.

I really need to get with it and figure out how to transfer my photos from my camera to the computer and try some of these sites with my own photos.

Thing #4

Becuase of the trouble I had with Thing #3 I had a little trouble registering my blog as well. Again, my friendly librarian came to my rescue and now I am registered. YEA!!

Thing #3

I thought I set up my Blog by myself without any problem but then i hit a few little snags like it being titled as my first entry ( my easiest habit...) so i had to have my handy librarian came to my rescue but it turned out he wasn't real sure of things himself. But we went to his Blog and checked out his dashboard and figured things out so I think I am set now. At least I hope I am.

Thing#5 Flickr

Flickr looks like it is a great way to share and display photos for my friends and family to view.





I have two problems: 1. I don't have a clue how to transfer pictures from my digital camera to a computer and 2. Our computer at home was purchased in the year 2000 and I can not even find a place to put a memory chip or a memory stick into it.

As far as what I learned:

Tags are labels or keywords you add to photos to make them easier to find.

Groups are sets of people you want to share your photos with. (ex. family, friends, Library2play players, etc...

Libraries are sites that different libraries have set up to display what they have done or used Flickr for.

I need to solve my two problems before I can actually get into Flickr to use it for sharing photos of my son with our family and friends. I hope it is easier than it looks.