Thing #14 Technorati and How Tags Work

Searching for tags rather than blogs or posts really narrowed the results which works for me!

Technorati ranks blogs by looking at which blogs link to other blogs. Liz Dunn, the product manager of the Technorati web site, said that the blogs in the Top 100 belong to crazy people who sit at their computers and post a thousand times a day, then link to each other. She went on to say that opinions of the unwashed masses were more helpful than the published reviews or news reported by professionals who are paid to critique things. These comments make me want to proceed with caution in using blogs to get information. We should certainly continue to teach our students how to evaluate web sites and now blogs when they are gathering information.

The millions of people who blog and whose blogs are tracked by Technorati are obviously on to something. Tantek Celik said that people are connecting directly with people and we are living on levels we have never lived before. I prefer face-to-face contact when connecting with people. Blogs, like email, lack tone and statements can be misunderstood.

My thoughts about the value of tagging:
Joshua Schachter, who launched del.icio.us, says that tagging is something we do for ourselves to help find information. Sites such as del.icio.us and ma.gnolia are good for helping one find the websites that are saved there. Publishers tag content to draw readers in, which is completely different.

I added 25 of my favorite web sites to del.icio.us, but in spite of the tags, it is difficult to find particular sites that I am looking for. The site is very busy and cluttered in its appearance. At this point, I prefer having my favorites filed in folders that I created.

Thing #13 Tagging and del.icio.us

I have been using an online bookmarking site for years because it is so convenient to access favorites or bookmarks from any computer anywhere. The ones explored in this lesson, del.icio.us, furl, and ma.gnolia, are an improvement because of the ability to tag and locate sites that others have found or sites that you saved and forgot where you put them! (This is happening to me more and more.)

As time allows I am going to move my saved sites to ma.gnolia. I prefer this site over del.icio.us because of its appearance, ease of creating tags, and the fact that the star rating is built in. I hope my choice doesn't limit me because it seems that del.icio.us is by far the most popular social bookmarking site at this time.

I plan to provide sites for my students on ma.nolia or whichever site they can access at school. In the past I have created Word documents with active links to sites I found on various research topics. I then put the documents in the resource folder for the library which is found on the "share drive". The students have to click on five items to get to the desired document, then open the links. Very time-consuming and not attractive to teenagers who want everything to be immediate. I think they will like going to a social bookmarking site. Another advantage is that they can access this from home. They cannot get to the "share" drive from their homes.

We librarians are always emailing each other with good web sites. It is then up to the individual to save it in some way that she or he can find it again. Sharing through bookmarking sites will be so much more useful and time-saving.

After reading about tags and looking at the various sites, I think I understand where RDA (Resource Description and Access) is headed. As I learn more about RDA, I understand that our cataloging will be moving away from Library of Congress Subject Headings and we will be using more natural language. Hmmmm. Sounds a lot like tags in del.icio.us and the other sites!

Thing #12 Commenting

1. Vicki Davis says that commenting on blogs indicates that you think that particular topic is important. Blog writers will continute to write and provide information about topics that the readers respond to. I hadn't thought of comments in this way and can now see what a useful tool comments can be.

Another point that I think is important is to invite comments on your own blog by asking questions and inviting comments. That's simply a technique of good conversation. A newbie would certainly feel more willing to post a comment if asked.

2. I have left comments on four of my "classmates" blogs so far.

3. I found a blog called "4 Reluctant Entertainers". This one is perfect for me. I posted a comment on the topic of letting go of perfectionism. Her advice was to let the kids set the table. The table will be beautiful in its own way and your guests will be comfortable.

Another blog I found was Reel Movie News. I must confess that I love films and own over 200 videos and DVDs. Now I must catalog them!

Thing #11 LibraryThing

I LOVE LibraryThing. I know what I will be doing after I finish this course on web 2.0. I have always wanted to organize the books in my house and thought I would have to create a spread sheet or something. Now all I have to do is enter the titles in LibraryThing and the books are instantly cataloged. I may offer to do this for my sister's book collection, too. I did find a group with similar interests and am anxious to join. I may lurk for a while before posting anything...

LibraryThing lets one keep track of what one has read or is currently reading. I like that because I can't remember the titles of books I have read. It must have something to do with my age!

Thing #10 Online Image Generators

Newspaper headline created with Image Chef.

I created the magazine cover with Big Huge Labs located at http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/. This image maker isn't as easy to use as Image Chef, but with determination and a few "do-overs" I finally got it.

I had a lot of fun exploring these resources. My favorite was Image Chef. I created the sign above and the newspaper headline on Image Chef located at http://www.imagechef.com/

There were so many images and ways to use them. I found name tags, warning signs, smiley faces, greeting cards, and more. I would like to use some of the signs to promote new books in the library. Trading cards would work for this purpose, too. It would be fun to display magazine covers of our faculty and administrators. I may create trading cards for my co-librarian, library assistant, and myself to give to the teachers since they can't seem to tell us apart!

Thing #9 - Useful Library Blogs and News Feeds

I am suffering from information overload at this point. However, this exercise led me to a blog called Zen Habits that had great ideas for organizing your information! The following link leads to even more:
Information Overload

The method of finding good blogs that I prefer is looking at other people's blog rolls. Thanks for the article from Cool Cat Teacher about creating a circle of the wise. Edublog Award Winners was a great way to find good blogs with good blog rolls. I found some great feeds by using School Library Blogs on Suprglu. These sites were easiest to use because they narrowed down the searches to education and library blogs.

As much as I love Google Tools, I did not like Google Blog Search. I just could not find articles or links that appealed to me. Maybe I need to improve my search terms, but the results I got were useless to me.

Topix.net results were overwhelming. Gotta work with that one for a while to improve my results.

I liked Technorati. I was able to go to Blogs, then Topics, and find great links to all kinds of topics that interested me. There were some on Web 2.0!

Thing #8 RSS

I have known about Real Simple Syndication for quite a while, but I resisted using it. I thought I was pretty efficient with my favorites and the links on my iGoogle page. Wrong! My new Google Reader account is amazing! I added 5 blogs, two web sites, and two bundles found on Google Reader. I already have 119 new items that I need to look over. Will I be able to keep up?

In my personal life,it will be a real time saver not to go to a web site and find nothing new (especially when my computer takes a very long time to open web sites and articles.) I will be able to glance at my Google Reader and see if there is anything I want to read. If not, then I'll move on.

As another participant in Library2Play suggested, I could make a folder for classes coming to the library for research. I think the Environmental Science students could benefit from the most current and topical articles when doing their research. I usually do preresearch and find credible web sites for the students and give them the URLs or create links that I put on the "share drive" for them, but having a folder on a reader set up that they could access from school or home would work beautifully.

I put a link to Shared Items on my blog.

Thing #7

I love Google and all the tools it has to offer. I created an iGoogle page for my home page. I put the time and date on it, breaking news, links to strange things found on Google Earth, and live weather. The live weather works for me better than a Google alert.

Earth Google is a wonderful tool. I asked the technology department in my school district to put a link to it on the same page with our databases and other useful links. They refused saying that the free version was too outdated to be of use to our students. The free version was updated as recently as six months ago, and that's good enough for me, but our students cannot download it to the computers. What a shame. It is so exciting when you add buildings and tilt the image to view the earth from different angles. There are built-in tours to famous places, too. (I moved recently and use Earth Google to find restaurants and ATM machines.)

I will definitely suggest Google Scholar to my high school students. After I show them the excellent databases and explain to them that the Internet is great for some things, but not for scholarly research such as literary criticisms on American literature, they go to the computers and immediately go to Yahoo. Now I can show them Google Scholar to use as a starting point. That will be a win-win situation.

I plan to use Google Calendar with an extra-curricular club that I sponsor. It will be great for sharing meeting dates and the schedule for our activities. I do have a calendar on the school's web page, but with Google Calendar I can email the students. They would prefer texting, but I'm not there yet!

Google Docs will be so useful with my library staff. There are three of us in the library and we always email documents as attachments to each other for proofreading and editing. Google Docs will be so much better since we can all work on the documents and the version each one of us sees will be current. I hope that we can use this tool at work, but we are restricted from using so many tools on the Internet. For example, I keep my bookmarks/favorites on a website called ikeepbookmarks.com, but I cannot access it at work.

Google Advanced Search is wonderful. All the boolean search formulas are built in. You can enter phrases without adding quotation marks, enter words that you don't want searched, select returns only from .mil if that's what you want, and look specifically for PowerPoint presentations if needed. At the bottom of the Advanced Search page is a link to universities. This is so helpful to high school students beginning their college search. It's also good for finding course schedules and alumni news. The counselors will like this one. The U.S. Government link has government news stories, White House news, and information about the American Forces. Good for history, government, current events.

Thing 6

I spent most of the afternoon exploring Flickr, Big Huge Labs, and all the tools they have to offer. That is a LOT of information to absorb. I'm exhausted!

I have some ideas for using Mappr or Map Maker with the World Geography classes, Flickr Color Pickr with the art classes, Magazine Cover with the journalism classes, Trip Planner would be great for the LOTE (Languages other than English) classes, and, as other have suggested, creating trading cards of the library staff.

I put together a mosaic of my daughter and pictures of her year in Berlin. Clockwise from the top right: the Berliner Dome, the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin wall, and my daughter and her friend.

Thing #5

I did a search for "Germany" thinking that I would find images for the students who research the Holocaust. We also work with the students taking German. When I found this image protesting the censorship of flickr in Germany, I couldn't resist downloading it. I do a big display during banned books week and try to educate about censorship during the whole school year.

This picture was posted on flickr by "Quasimondo". It was posted with the Attribution/No Derivative Works license.

Thing #3

I just set up my blog and avatar. What fun! I learned more than three things this afternoon and can hardly wait to share with my daughters. I remember the day many years ago when my then five-year-old showed me the difference between the computer and the monitor. I have come a long way since then!

I have looked at some other blogs and read their comments. Great sites! Some of you have even finished all 23 things and I am just starting. Whew!

Thing #2

Of the 7 1/2 habits of highly successful life-long learners, number 7 1/2, "Play, be curious, read", is the easiest for me. I am curious about everything; I read books, newspapers, signs, cereal boxes, instruction manuals, you-name-it; and I love to play. The hardest is to find the time to learn about all the things I want to learn about. I guess that would fit under habit number 2. Or would it be number 3? Lack of time is a problem!