Thing # 12

After reading the Edublogger etiquette, I agreed with the point that never responding to your reader's comments is seen as "elitist." The first reader I will respond to is Grendel, who has been making pleasant comments about my posts. I will search out others for commenting as well.



The Blue skunk blog discusses "trolls." This is a new one for me, so had to look it up and found out that it is someone who participates in various online activities with the purpose of baiting and throwing out controversial material. We see a lot of this, especially in chatrooms. I read "Dear Abby" online most every day and sometimes scan the reader's comments. Sometimes they get into fisticuffs over their opinions of Abby's responses, and the problems of the letter writers themselves. Anonymity can bring out the worst in people sometimes. Being anonymous and saying nasty things to other people gives them a power they do not have in their everyday lives.



As a child, I owned a lovely set of Breyer model horses. These have been made for years and are incredibly beautifully made. The older ones are collectors items now. There is a blog: http://board.horsechannel.com/Topic240522-4-1.aspx where people discuss horses, and Breyer horses as well.



Flipping houses: there is a blog for this too: http://flippinghouses.blogspot.com/. The TV shows on cable for this are entertaining to me. Our poor neighbor, who sells RV products for his living, has seen his business go south with the price of gasoline. He is looking into flipping houses. I wish him luck and will watch his progress with interest. He has already started with the house next door to us ...

Thing # 11

I enjoyed messing with this cataloging tool. It is quick and easy, user friendly, and non-librarians should be able to use and understand it for their various purposes.

It is almost like the combination of a vendor, Amazon.com and a cataloging database.

It would prove useful for personal collections and libraries, or small libraries. A person could use it as a "want to own or purchase" list as they collect titles and reviews on books which interest them.

It would have been nice to see the full MARC record more readily. You have to dig a little to get to it, not that many people really want to see that stuff ...

I chose three titles from LC and two from Amazon. While in Amazon, I did discover that my favorite fiction author has a new title out that I have not heard of.

The "tags to add" feature would serve especially well for specialized and/or private libraries.

Thing # 10

Being a map lover, and a Google map user, I was immediately drawn to Big Huge Labs mapmaker and did a map of my world travels, mainly Europe.

I also played with and enjoyed the comic strip generator. Results appear above, with link below.

http://buy4cheap.brinkster.net/signs/comic-strip/creator.asp?title=CHANGE+THIS+TITLE%21&text=I+assure+you+..+everything+you+have+heard+about+me+is+untrue%21%21&tag=July+9%2C+2008&fontsize=11&font=comic&color=black&move=-1&move2=&cartoon=mouse-hunt-exterminator&time=1434&cartoons.x=77&cartoons.y=12

I was also interested in Kid-Friendly image generator, but had problems uploading an image into a poster. I did not succeed. I want to revisit this and learn it so as to share with the kids at school.

These image generators could be used in art classes or classroom centers. They could enhance projects, especially in middle and high school.

I could not resist including this image I succeeded in adding to the blog. I am working summer school at a high school right now and it so reminds me of the darlings ....

Thing # 9

As I was sifting through the preliminaries for this one, I was struck by one blogger's comments that most bloggers fall into one of two categories: egotists or conversationalists. I have certainly encountered both kinds on this journey.

Blogline seemed to be the easiest method of finding feeds with its ability to search only feeds if you wish. It featured several other specialized and handy options in addition to "just feeds."

Google wins again with the easiest search tool: Google blogsearch. It's just friendly and reliable. There's a reason Google is up near the top and stays there. I will have to check out the price of its stock.

Technorati, to me, was the most confusing:
- too much debris on the home page
-reminded me of a too crowded web page, not a good search tool.

Will probably never return to that one.

There's much to be said for simplicity that gets the job done. I think most users appreciate that too.

Combining most useful feeds and most unusual would be Syndic8. I found it to be extremely well organized. It has a feed tagging system that allows users to add their own tags to a feed, highly useful for sharing and organizing.

I also liked Kary Boan's flipchart repository. Anything that saves teachers time and makes them more efficient rates high in my opinion.

Thing #8

RSS was interesting. What I liked was its handiness and ease of use. It lends itself to being customized to everyone's interests and/or needs. Google has made it easy and quick to set up, important for people in a hurry (such as educators).

I can see teachers using RSS feeds to stay up to date on new ideas in websites they use to teach and develop their lesson plans.

I will further be pursuing some of my own personal interests in a couple of blogs I added to my Google Reader site. One of those blogs brings together people who have an interest in Tudor history. People post questions (some of them bizarre, but all interesting) about the various Tudors, and they are answered. Another blog I added was the Happy pet blog.

Librarians using RSS can collaborate with teachers with the goal of students setting up their own feeds on current projects or ongoing subjects of study such as history or science, or just purely personal interest (astronomy, origami ...). Feeds can be an efficient way of teaching research and encouraging students to pursue their interests, both personal and academic.

Thing # 7

Of all the "things" I have looked at so far, this is the one I have enjoyed the most. I am a big Google fan and was pleased to have all these dimensions added onto the site. I will definitely be returning to use most if not all of them.

I created a Google alert on the city of San Antonio where I grew up. I will be most interested to receive news about goings-on there.

I started creating a homepage on Igoogle, but without much success. Much of the problem came from the fact that I am using a dial-up connection. Also, I chose humor as one of my tabs/categories and the choices offered under that tab were rather crude, so I quickly lost interest in that.

I did some searches under Google scholar, but missed having the "instant access" to something that interested me.

Being a Google map fan, I went with much interest to Google earth and was thrilled to see that galaxies can be explored. My 4th and 5th graders are gonna love this.

I can see Google docs being highly useful for the kids at my school with poor spelling and composition skills.

Thing # 6

I approached Mappr with a lot of zeal since I browse a lot in google maps, but was a bit disappointed. It seemed weak and somewhat random. The idea is great, but much more extensive indexing and control is needed before it might really be viable. I do like the idea of a GPS device on cameras that give exact location, but how feasible would this be? A recent and fascinating addition to google maps is the street view option now available. I can spend hours there ...

The mosaic maker is interesting and attractive. At my elementary school, I could see kinder students using it to make images of farm animals in their farm unit, or homes in their homes and communities unit ...

By far the most interesting to me is all that is offered in Big Huge Labs. Here, the possibilities are limitless, from elementary up to high school. I especially liked the magazine cover maker. I can just see that being used in a fifth grade class when they are studying their American history. How much more interesting to make a magazine cover of George Washington or John Adams than a poster. It allows the students to get far more creative with their projects. This site is a great training ground for students interested in entering the field of graphic design. Art and photography students in high school and college have limitless possibilities in this site. If I were still an art student, the first thing I would go for would be the Warholizer.