Thing #19 - Web 2.0 Awards List

This is a great tool for narrowing down some of the best websites out there depending on the category you're looking for and provides a spring board or starting point when you're not really sure where to begin. I chose to look at some of the sites that won under the music category and was a little sad to see that Pandora only won second place. But I checked out the first place winner Last.fm and it seems comparable and like a really cool music site. This was a neat resource that I will most likely use personally and when I become a librarian in the future.

Thing #20 - YouTube, TeacherTube, and Zamzar

While searching YouTube and TeacherTube, I was able to find a video about the future of libraries and a video on Shakespeare. These sites can be very useful by providing a plethora of a visuals on a wide variety of topics. TeacherTube is great for educators and school librarians who work in districts where YouTube is blocked. I was not familiar with TeacherTube until this experiment but plan to incorporate it into my classroom more in the coming school year.

Thing #23 - Summarize Your Thoughts of this Program

While time consuming and causing several migraines and severe cramps in my neck from staring at the computer so long, I have really learned a lot from participating in this experiment. Some of my favorite exercises were Thing #10 and Thing #11, the online image generator and Library Thing. This program has affected my learning goals because I'm curious to further explore some of the tools I have briefly learned about while doing this program. There are a lot of things that I will take away from this program and try to incorporate into my classroom and later on in my library such as use of social bookmarking via the Delicious website. I would improve upon this program by lessening the amount of exercises because the steps within each are somewhat tedious and there are a lot of extraneous sites to look at a read through before posting your comments. I probably wouldn't participate in a future program based on time limitations. I would describe this experience in one word as informational. It definitely has been an interesting technology experience!

Thing #15 - Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and the Future of Libraries

Library 2.0 to means a library that is fully capable of pushing its users towards being 21st century learning by fully embracing technology and all that it has to offer, especially in the world of education. Blogger Michael Stephens says it best in his post Into a New World of Librarianship that some of the most important traits of Librarian 2.0 are librarians that "plan for their users, embrace Web 2.0 tools, and controls technolust" among a few others. My favorite point that Stephens make is technolust, which is avoiding the purchase of technology just for the sake of having technology. It is best to select technology in the same manner in which we select books and other resources and that is carefully using the proper selection tools.

Thing #14 - Technorati and How Tags Work

In my search for "School Library Learning 2.0" on the Technorati website, I wasn't able to come up with any search results. However, I think the Technorati site has a lot of potential and could be very useful in the library, especially for helping our students work towards becoming 21st century learners. The product manager for Technorati, Liz Dunn states that the site "is bringing together the unwashed masses" and thus allowing people to search for information from people like them who will most likely give their honest opinion of the topic and/or item being discussed. Essentially sites like Technorati would be appealing to students because they could get information from people who think like they do and have similar interests and a variety of abilities. Tagging is also a useful 2.0 tool because it makes searching for topics and sites so much easier by linking them together based on a tag word. It is also much simpler to click several tags to get to information that is already filtered for you versus having to delve through site after site until you find one with the information you're looking for.

Thing #13 - Tagging and Discover Delicious

At first the whole concept of social bookmarking seemed a little bit weird, but the Common Craft video and the Delicious tutorial podcast helped clarify the whole concept a lot. Social bookmarking and sites like Delicious offer a quick and easy way to gather information and make it available for our students and other members of our campus. The potential for using sites like these in the library is virtually endless and all dependent upon the amount of information available and the number of tags you can create for each site. It is an ideal Web 2.0 tool because it can be accessed from anywhere and not just on a single computer. Libraries can take advantage of social bookmarking sites to help students with projects, research on colleges and/or careers, assistance with test preparation, and help in collaborating with teachers in all subjects for various assignments and projects.

Thing #12 - Creating Community Through Commenting

For me personally, commenting in the world of technology always seems to be the most difficult part of belonging to an online community or participating in an online class. Since I've been taking my graduate classes, one thing I have learned to do better is comment in an online forum. Most professors will give you guidelines for commenting but it should be common sense that if you're not commenting in a social networking forum such as a friend's status on Facebook, that the comment should be of substance. One point about commenting that I liked was from Vicki Davis' Cool Cat Teacher Blog was to "write a meaningful comment" and that "if you don't care, then don't comment" (Davis 2006). While in a classroom setting, we may not have this choice but when participating in any other online blog community this rings entirely true. It is best not to waste your time or the time of other readers and the blog owner. Another point about commenting that I agreed with was from Meredith Farkas' Information Wants to Be Free blog where she discusses sharing regardless of how important you may or may not feel about what you have to say. She writes that "sharing will encourage others to share and when there’s a culture of sharing, when we’re all sharing knowledge, we will all benefit" (Farkas 2008) which goes along with a popular saying in education that "on our worst day, we are some kid's best hope." Simply stated what we have to say can and often does have meaning regardless of our personal opinion on our own thoughts and comments.

Thing #11 - LibraryThing

This site is really neat. Setting up my account and adding books to my collection was extremely easy. I found it similar to the GoodReads site but I like the layout a lot better, especially how you can view the covers of the books in a collection, which comes in handy since I'm a very visual persona and like to look at cover art. This site would be extremely useful in the library as it could be used to set up a variety of collections online for students and staff to view. It could be a way of starting a book club or creating a collection of titles for certain classes and collaborative lessons. It could also be good for personal use to share titles with friends, family, and other librarians and also to catalog your personal collection at home.

Thing #10 - Online Image Generator

The online image generators are just plain fun and the ones I tried out were very easy to use. I used an existing photo from New Year's Eve and created a picture within a picture using the Dumpr website. I thought the name of the site was interesting and decided to check it out and see what it could do. Although I awas already familiar with Wordle, I had never actually used the website so decided to try it out and make one using Bicycling Magazine's RSS feed. Click the link to check out my Cycling Theme Wordle and oops! I accidentally spelled "wordle" wrong in my title. The last online image generator site that I explored was Comic Strip Generator, by doing a search for some of there pre-existing strips. This site was really easy and fun to use. All of these sites would be useful in the library for several different types of things such as creating bookmarks, promoting titles, or generating brochures with book reviews.

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

Since recently learning about RSS feeds this experiment provided more tools to help me in finding reliable RSS feeds and sources of information on the web. The easiest search tool was Technorati. I liked the layout and it was easy to navigate and simply click on topics that took me to a list of various blogs on the topic. I also liked Topix.net because it immediately identified my location and provided up to date news information for my area of town. The most confusing were Atomic Learning since it required you to setup an account and seemed more on the business side of things (selling and promoting products) and Syndic8 which had a boring layout and required more searching versus providing easy links. The most useful thing I discovered was the Gadgets Channel on Technorati which provided links to lots of technology blogs about current and future products in the technology market.

Thing #8 - RSS Feeds and Readers

Let me just start by saying "I love Lee LeFever!!!." The Common Craft "In Plain English" videos are great and I'm a dork who likes the little cut-outs. So I finally know what RSS stands for and what RSS feeds actually are now. I signed up for Google Reader and it was a piece of cake to search for and add subscriptions. I like the all-in-one concept and email style setup of an RSS feed and the fact that everything you need is right there with one click and automatically updated. This technology would be great for me personally to be able to keep up with things that I'm interested in like cycling and currently what is going on with the Tour de France. At school it would be useful by finding blogs related to my subject matter and creating a public page for my students. Libraries could use the RSS feed technology to create public pages with tons of information for almost every subject and it would be perfect for setting up a current events feed for history classes. Check out some of my favorite items in Google Reader from the feed on the left.

Thing #7 -Cool Google Tools

The two Google tools I chose to explore for this "thing" were Google Calendar and Google Docs. While I do have an email account through Google, I rarely use the site for anything other than a quick initial search for things. Last semester I briefly learned about Google Docs but it wasn't until this semester that I actually used the tool. Google Docs would be a great way for me as a librarian to communicate with teachers and administrators about happenings in the library and also a good tool when preparing a collaborative lesson with a teacher. Google Calendar would be very helpful when scheduling classes and research time in the library by allowing it to be public, teachers could access it and see what is going on and when in the library. It was very easy to create and make public. Please click here to view my Google calendar!

Thing #6 - Mashups and 3rd Party Sites

These sites were really neat and gave lots of ideas and possibilities for their use in the library. Mappr is cool because you could create a map and find postcard images using Flickr's Creative Commons section to map where your students, teachers, or staff have been during summer vacation. The Mosaic Maker and the FD Toy's Trading Card Maker would be great tools to help promote titles in your library by putting a spin on the book trailer concept. I especially liked the Flickr Color Picker because it produced some very beautiful images according to almost every color on the color palette and would be great way to collaborate with an art teacher.

Thing #5: Flickr

Prior to beginning the 23 Things Experiment, I was familiar with the Flickr website since 2005. A friend of mine told me about the site and was hosting his photos there. After revisiting the site for this blog post, it has developed a lot in the last five years. The most interesting aspect of the site is the Creative Commons and the fact that it is a great website for librarians and teachers to find usable photos. It is also a great way to find others that have similar photography interests.

Thing #3: The Blog Experience - Getting Started

So I previously created a blog for another class in my graduate program but that was last summer and I had to learn it all over again. It seems easy but in fact, it teaches something that we all tend to forget from time to time and that is to: READ DIRECTIONS!!! Once I went back and looked at all of the information and step-by-step instructions, I was able to easily tweak my blog and set it up to my liking. The most difficult and time consuming portion of the whole setup experience was creating my avatar...so many choices and decisions for a little icon of yourself, crazy but lots of fun!!!

Thing #2: Hardest Habits

Some of the habits listed that I find are the hardest for me as a lifelong learner are:

Habit 1 - Begin with the end in mind

- I have trouble setting concrete goals and often like to jump right into things in order to complete them. This is something that I am constantly working on and forcing myself to stick to. Things tend to run much smooth when there is a goal in sight.

Habit 7 1/2 - Play

- As an adult, it is hard to simply find the time to relax and play. Between work, graduate school, relationships, and spending time with my mother and grandmother it is often hard to make time for myself because I am just too tired. This is definitely a habit that I want to work on improving.

Thing #2: Easiest Habits

Some of the habits listed that I find are the easiest for me as a lifelong learner are:

Habit 6 - Use technology to your advantage

- This is the easiest habit for me because I find it difficult NOT to be connected. I am constantly using my iPhone to look up information, find maps, look up a song, check my email, calendars, etc. I also love that I can do a search to troubleshoot anything before having to turn to other resources!

Habit 2 - Accept responsibility for your own learning

- This is also easy because of how I was raised, that nothing is free and you must work hard and earn the things you want in life. My parents also taught me that learning and getting a good education were key components in being successful.

Thing #2: 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Learners

After watching this video, I am a little more motivated to complete the 23 Things activities and get more information on how to utilize Learning 2.0 resources. I will discuss the habits I find the easiest and the hardest in my next posts.