Week 5: Play Week

#10. Play around with with an online image generator.
#11. Explore any site from the Web 2.0 awards list, play with it and write a blog post about your findings.
#12. Roll your own search tool with Rollyo.

This week I enjoyed using http://www.imagechef.com/ to fool around and change the text on images. I wish I had more time to play, it becomes addicting! I probably would not use this site with my middle school students; I think it might be asking for trouble. The web 2.0 awards list is amazing, I have never heard of many of the sites. I spent some time on Ning http://www.ning.com/ it’s a place that you can create your own social network. I’m still not exactly sure how it is different from My Space, I need to explore the site a bit more. It did have some library and web 2.0 sites/pages; I’m not sure what to call them? I created a Rollyo search for citation generators, it was pretty simple to do and embed into my blog.

Week 4

# 8 Read and learn about RSS feeds and set up your own bloglines account.
#9 Locate a few useful library related blogs.

This week I created a Google Reader account and subscribed to about 10 newsfeeds. I have the Google Reader on my personalized Google home page so that I can see what news comes in each day. I think I’m getting a little carried away adding so many news feeds; I’m going to try to be a bit more selective with subscriptions. It’s amazing how much great information is out there, I just wish I had more time to read everything! I am enjoying having news delivered to me instead of having to do so much searching myself. There are some amazing people out there that are constantly sharing new ideas, stories, and their thoughts about Web 2.0 and libraries. We are lucky to have those dedicated people willing to share their knowledge with the rest of us!
I can see newsfeeds being used with students that are reasearching certain topics or current events. I am going to explore this option with some high school students this next week and see how it works. I will post the outcomes... Hopefully everything won't be blocked!

Week 3

#5 Explore Flickr
#6 Explore Flickr mashups & 3rd party sites.
#7 Create a blog post about anything technology related that interests you this week.

This week I’ve spent a lot of time exploring Flickr and Flickr Toys. I have put some thought about how I might use these resources in the library. Flickr toys let’s you create magazine covers and movie posters. I created a magazine cover with students reading on the cover, they loved this. I used the movie poster creator and put book pictures and titles instead of movie titles. Flickr toys also has something that makes it really easy to create your own motivational posters. I used it and put a quote about reading and then added a picture from Read across America. As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed learning and playing with Flickr. I would love to hear what other library media teachers are doing with the program.

Read across America

I Love to Read!

This is a picture of my son a few years ago. I just love this picture, I hope he will always be a reader.

Week 2

#3 Set up your own blog.

#4 Register your blog.

Creating a blog on blogger was very simple. I have used blogger with my students only somewhat successfully. Not all of my students have an email account which makes it difficult to respond to posts. If anybody knows a way around this, please share!
I have used Wordpress a little, but I found blogger much easier. The other difficulty I have had trying to blog at school is that many sites are blocked.
There was an interesting article in Techlearning on blogging that really made me look at the way blogs are used in schools. I am including a link to the article.
http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604374