Thing # 13

I enjoyed creating a Ma.nolia account and listing my favorite bookmarks.There have been times at school or other places that I wished I could access my bookmarks from home. Now I can! It was interesting to see other people who also had bookmarked sites that I had. I can see setting up bookmarks for school research on a special account. This way students and teachers could access the bookmarks in the library, computer lab, and classrooms not to mention at their own homes.Kind of like a Hotlist. I also liked FURL. This could be very helpful in keeping up with an article found that needs to be referred back to. This can be done easily by installing Furl on the toolbar. Could be very beneficial in research. I also like the highlighting capabilities and the option of emailing parts of an article to someone else.

Thing # 12

I was already well aware of MySpace and Facebook and how they work as I have children who use them all the time.I think it is very important for educators and parents to be aware of the social networking sites as most young people today have accounts with them. It is important not only to be aware of these sites' existence but also how they are used. I enjoyed looking around at the Ning sites and I think this networking tool can be very imformative for educators in keeping up with the latest trends and what other teachers and librarians are doing in their schools and libraries.We are truly a global society and online networking is just a part of the world now. I do believe that MySpace and Facebook should be left for personal time. Ning sites are job related so I think it is perfectly acceptable to be browsing there. Although I know that MySpace and Facebook can have very legitimate blogs and messages they are definitely more social and can be abused by students and teachers alike while at school.

Thing # 11

Library Thing is a cool device for keeping up with one's own personal library. It certainly is easy to catalog! Cataloging in library school should have been this easy. The message boards are fun and intersting to read. It is intersting to see who is reading what I am.

Thing # 10

This is the most fun I have had in this 23 process. I absolutely love these image generators. Most of the time I had to save the images to my hard drive and then add the images as a page element. The smiley face image was a little tricky at first to save because I had to activate the smiley face program on my computer. One picture I wanted to use from my hard drive would never cooperate with me. I tried numerous times but never got it to go. I finally decided the size of the picture must have been the problem. I finally decided on another picture that worked just fine. Yes, I could have worked on cropping it, but cropping would have taken away from the picture. I needed the the entire shot.The license plate image was the easiest because the Image Chef generator has a button to select to send the image directly to your blog.

I can see using these generators to make personalized signs, book marks, and buttons for our libraries. I think I will try some of these images on my library site and the school site which I also maintain. The problem I see is tearing myself away from playing with the generators and getting back to work! I stayed up until almost 2 am playing last night!

Thing # 9

Wow, RSS and all of the feeds available are fantastic, but frankly very overwhelming.
It's very hard to decide which feeds to choose, which are best for one's needs and interests. We obviously can't possilby read them all. I'm sure the list of feeds chosen will change as our needs change.
I found the Google Blog Search the easiest to use. I guess this is because I am very famliar with Google. I added the MISD News links to my news feed. Feedster was not working any of the times I tried to access it. I really enjoyed Topix the best. I set it to Mesquite and now I can have up to the minute news on Mesquite. I added the Top Stories feed to my news list. I found Syndic8.com very overwhelming and confusing as a new blogger. I liked the way Technorati was set up with topic tabs at the top of the page. I think the most unusual bit of info I picked up on my journey through the feeds was under the "life" tab of Technorati. Chocolate laptop makes computing tasty!

As far as ussefulness for us as librarians,I found the School Library Blogs on Suprglu a good tool. We can keep up with what is going on all over the country in our field.

To sum up my experience with this execise,I would say blogging and understanding RSS and feeds is a definite work in progress. It will change constantly and require us as librarians to stay up on the latest news the best we can. As I said earlier, I am feeling rather overwhelmed at the moment, but hopefully as I play with this new technolgy my comfort zone is going to improve.

Thing # 8

RSS and newsreaders now allow my Favorite websites to come to me instead of me going to them. I don't have to waste time gong there if there is nothing new for the day.
I will definiltey use RSS in my personal life as well as in my school life to help me make the most of my online time.
Libraries can use this technology to set up feeds to teachers and students. Teachers have very little extra time, so setting up educational feeds for teachers on a school site could be very helpful. What a great way to keep students involved in the library program by providing them with appropriate feeds on subjects they are intersted in and linking them to sites they may actually not know about. This could be particularly helpful in keeping students and teachers aware of the latest current events they might be interested in.

Thing # 7

Google definitley has it all. Lots of fun playing on Google with all of its options and gadgets. I just wish my email address could get verified by Google. I click and click on the option to get my email verified, but it just doesn't work. At least I can sign in although there have been times it would not let me do that. Would be nice if there was a live person to talk to but as my husband says, it would be impossible to get through to the person. Guess I could try changing my sign in email but I'm afraid things would really get messed up and I would never get into my blog again.

I have used Google alerts at home for a long time. My family and I have also been using Google Earth for some time. That truely is a cool feature. The indiviualized Google homepage is neat as well as the Notebooks. What did we ever do without Google?