Thing 9

It is amazing the amount of information that is literally at the tip of your fingers. You can find an expert on anything & that is something you must keep in mind as you are blogging. You are not always assured of a person's identity. You have to be certain where the information & opinions are coming from. Always check the source.

In my beginning attempts at blogging I find that I prefer Google Reader & Google Blog Search. I am certain that it has to do with familiarity. These are very familiar in format & I found them easy to navigate. Looking at other suggested sites such as Topix & Technorati, I felt somewhat intimidated or perhaps overwhelmed is a better term& had a more difficult time wading through all of the information & figuring out what to do next or where I wanted to go.

The feeds that I have subscribed to are my favorite columns from School Library Journal; Non-Fiction Matters & Practically Paradise, The Top Shelf is another super blog, & Blue Skunk by library guru Dog Johnson. I also subscribed to the School Library Bogs on Superglu. I am seeing lots of repeat material in just a short amount of time with this one, so I will need to watch it to see if I might want to unsubscribe to something.

An interesting way to find new blogs to look at is to check the blogs you subscribe to for their favorite blogs. What's the saying...Birds of a feather flock together. I am still having to get the hang of it all.

Now I have to check it! When I do I am sure that it will lead me to great discoveries.

Thing 8

Finally, I feel successful. RSS feed readers was an easy task to complete. I am looking forward to using the feeds to help me keep up with my favorite topics & need to know information on the library. Adding feeds is simple and checking feeds is easy. I love that the first couple of lines are included so that you decide if you want to read further. I love being able to hit the highlights quickly. I feel like I will be able to spend a few moments to keep me up on the trends that I need to be on top of. Right now I have stayed with professional feeds, but in the future I want to add feeds on topics that I really enjoy.

I chose to use Google Reader. I like the idea of having my Alerts, RSS feeds & other things easily accessible. The fewer the passwords & addresses the better.

Thing 5.3

I am still having issues with Flickr uploading the image to my blog. I keep getting the entire Flickr page. I am sick of this one. I'll come back later. I have wasted HOURS on this one. I need to get some help. I even tried deleting & starting over on the entire post. It should be easier than this.

Thing 5

Flickr is way COOL! I can see a great use for it. Those that are in charge of the yearbook know what a challenge it can be to have enough pics of the students & school events. A school could set up an account and give the passwords to the teachers. Teachers could add their photos & tag them with the teachers name. Then the yearbook editor could hopefully have tons to choose from. You will have those who are not comfortable, but there are more Flicker useres than we are aware of. It would be a great way to introduce technology to teacher's. You would have to be sure that your photos are marked private.The day i created my flicker account was the day they chose to update the system so there were lots of hiccups in the system. Even with all of the slowness it was pretty easy to use. There were a few times that it bogged down & then I read about the problems

Thing 7

I never knew that Google had so many tools. There is so much that you can do to keep yourself informed on any topic imaginable. I set myself up on Google Alert. I am having myself alerted once a week about the news regarding ovarian cancer. As a survivor, I want to stay current on the advances in the treatment of this type of cancer. For school there are many possible uses. Alerts could be useful in science classes to track the most recent progress in different areas of studies. Librarians could use Alerts for news about favorite authors. Social Studies teachers could stay informed about current events.

I set myself up with my own personalized home page. I have set up music & joke updates. There is a daily nature photo that I will receive. I will continue to tweak the page until it has content that I really am completely interested in. There are some things that I would like to get rid of. This could really become a great source of information.

I can see a Google notebook as being a really useful tool. It could be a way to assemble articles
& ideas regarding education. You could have sections on classroom management, discipline, bulletin boards, research units, parent communication, learning centers. You could easily create a notebook for the library. You could have sections for Bluebonnet Books, Mockingbird Books, book promotion, collection development, research units, copy right issues, the list is endless. The beauty of it is that it is easily accessed & it eliminates the paper mess. Half of my daily battle is what to do with paper on my desk. I really would like to set a notebook up for myself & plan to do it soon.

Thing 5 Cont.

Well, Flickr is completely down now, so I am stuck. My Fancy Nancy photo isn't showing up. I will have to finish later. I don't know for sure what the source of my problems is but I have spent almost all of Saturday afternoon on this. If this is how every project goes then good-bye I-pod. I guess I will move on to something else. I probably should have earlier. As Churchill said "Nevuh, Nevuh give up."

Thing 4

Oh boy! I'm back. This fall has been insanely busy & I have put this on the back burner. BIG mistake. Oh well here I go.
A blog could be a great way to engage student's in reading & thinking. Once students have read a book they can reflect on what they read & how they felt about the book. They could recommend it to friends or tell people not to bother.
You could use a blog to post about events in the library or to give instructions for research similar to what we are doing. You could share pictures of classes & things going on in the library.
It could be a great way to introduce new materials or purchases in the libraryto teachers & students, you could highlight authors or link to websites.
I think it has more possiblities than a website because there could be many contributors.