Thing #12: Creating Community Through Commenting

While reading about commenting on blogs, I found it very interesting that sometimes I do not post the comment that I wrote on a blog. I realized while reading "How to comment like a king (or Queen!)" from Cool Cat's blog. I read the blog, write the comment and I just never hit post. Once I have made one comment on a particular blog I keep posting on that particular blog, it is kind of breaking the ice for me.

The other point that I liked while reading about commenting was to ask questions on a blog to encourage posts. It made me realize that for the most part I write the blog as if I was keeping a journal, seems as if I am setting it up so that people won't comment. I should work on this but keep not promises.

My two most recent posts on blogs (that are not Library2Play) where on a mommy's blog and on a blog about horses. Both blogs interest me because I have a personal connections with them, I am a FTM who likes to read about mommy's who have kids about my son's age, I find things in common and some tips there. I also like horses and I came across a blog about horses used for therapy, which I am very familiar with and therefore felt compelled to comment.

Thing #11: LibraryThing

It was nice to play with LibraryThing. It seems like it is a great to keep a track of the books you have, read, or want to read. I have to admit to have so many books stored and simply forget that I have them. LibraryThing is a great tool to keep a catalog of those books I have or want. It was very easy to create and account and add books to LibraryThing. It was super easy to navigate and it was cool how when you go to the groups tab, some of the groups are related to the books that are in your list. I visited some groups and found one that I really liked and will be re-reading some of the books on my list as one of the group's activities. It reminds me of a book study only that I will be rereading some of my favorite books. I really liked the concept.

Thing #10: Online Image Generator

It was nice to have some fun creating images using online image generators. Not only was it fun but easy. I can easily see my students using the happy face generator (http://www.happyfacegenerator.com/) to create images describing different feelings. While on my journey using the comic strip generator (http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/), I found that there are a lot of images that ae related to topics that I teach. I think this will provide students with a fun way to create comics about topics in all content areas.

Thing #9 - Useful Library-Related Blogs and News Feeds

Which Search tool was the easiest for you?

I found that off course Google Blog Search was by far the easiest. I liked Edublogs' award winners because it was categorized. Finally, Technorati was super easy to search and find information.

Which was more confusing?

I found Topix.net to be a bit confusing. The layout seems to simple but I personally did not like it. All the searches I ran either return nothing or not enough.

What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?

I liked that I found some magazines that I currently subscribe to have feeds (never had I bothered to looked at their sites to see if they had RSS feeds. Also on Technorati I found an useful feed for iPad applications.

THING #8 - RSS Feeds and Readers

What do you like about RSS readers?

I decided to setup the RSS reader using Google Reader. I liked how easy it was to setup. I really liked how you can keep track of blogs, news, information that you recurrently read and how it tracks whether it is a new item or not. I search and follow a lot of information online and I think this tool is going to help a lot.

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life?

I now for sure that I will use this in my personal life to follow news, blogs, and all of the information that I normally follow online. I think it will save time and will be easier to read the stuff I normally do.

How can libraries/teachers/administrators use readers or take advantage of this new technology?

There is a wealth of information online that can be very beneficial for teachers to read and use. I thing it you set up this new technology to follow educational sites you can easily benefit from reading those sites and it seems like the reader will save lots of time that is so valuable and appreciated when you are a teacher.

THING #7 - Google

I am a Google type of person. I've used Google for so many years and not only the search engine. I have to admit the only search engine I use is Google, and quite a bit of it. I had never come across Google Scholar, which now I will certainly use a lot more. iGoogle was an application that I had not seen before. I like that it gives you your "own" home page. I can certainly see myself setting up an iGoogle home page for the classroom and have my students help set it up. google earth is one of my personal favorites. I stopped asking for directions and landmarks since I discovered Google Earth. It is really cool to zoom in and see where you are going. I have used tis application in the classroom when teaching my students about countries, states, cities; It is a concept that is hard for some of my students to understand and zooming in and out between continents, countries, states, and cities makes a connection for some of my students. The last Google application that I want to mention is Picasa. I am not a scrap booking type of person plus my husband and I have family all over the world. We find that uploading and managing our pictures on Picasa allows us to share more of our lives with our families and friends plus it keeps our memories somewhat organized (sorry no link to this one, set as private).

THING #6 - Mashups and 3rd party sites

I spend a lot of time playing with the mashups and other 3rd party sites. Definitely a lot of classroom application using those sites. I particularly liked Bookr the best. I can see my students creating different books in all content areas, great to use as a center. Mosaic maker seems like it would be fun to use in the classroom for different projects as well.

THING #5 - Flickr

I have to admit that I had come across Flickr many time but never bothered to check it out. After taking the tour and looking at some of the pictures I liked what I found on Flickr. It is a great resource to use in the classroom to bring different images to students on a lot of different topics.