Thing 19

I really wanted to look at One Sentence, but it's BLOCKED. There were a few others I tried that were also BLOCKED. I hate when things are BLOCKED. Especially when they are useful and are not all something that should be BLOCKED.

[Stepping off of soapbox.]

So I ended up, completely by accident, exploring fuzzmail. With fuzzmail you basically type and email in the box and fuzzmail records your typing and your recipient gets to see the whole thing. It's kind of weird because you get to see all the typos and all the mistakes. They say that it makes email better because it records the emotion and makes email more personal (they use the example of love letters, personal as opposed to business, etc.). I was thinking about it for Creative Writing (which is also why I wanted to look at One Sentence). We could talk about adding emotion to writing and use fuzzmail as an example of one way to do that.

When the email plays, it looks like a video and you can do really interesting things with it. You could use it as a way to present information--if it would record longer, it cut one of my emails off. fuzzmail may be on to something--this could make writing a completely different experience. It would be great to expand the time frame and turn it into a word processor that shows your revisions in real time when you press play. This could be a valuable learning experience for some students.

Thing 18

I've used Google Docs before and Open Office was on my computer when I received it (way to go, SBISD!). I like that you can share your documents with other people and collaborate with them in Google Docs, but I wasn't particularly thrilled with the formatting. It seemed like I could never get it the way that I liked it. Not that Microsoft Office is much better. I like that I can save things to Google Docs and edit them form any computer. Many of my students use Google Docs and some of them were using it to collaborate of the project they were working on this week.

I haven't really worked very much with Open Office, but I'm not sure why. I guess I'm sticking with what I know. The advantages of working with free online tools are that they are FREE! And just as good, for the most part. I'm having a difficult time thinking of disadvantages. I love free online tools!

Thing 17

The Sandbox Wiki was interesting. I liked that I could leave comments and read other people comments, but I'm not sure what I could use it for in the school setting other than the things I mentioned in my previous post.

I think wikis are great as collaboration tools for both students and teachers/librarians. I would have liked to have my students use wikis on the project they are almost finished with.

Thing 16

I can see several uses for wikis in the classroom and in the library. I have considered creating a book review wiki for my students to post to. I also think it's neat the professionals can collaborate on wikis. Several of the wikis that I saw did this.

I like the idea of using wikis as a collaborative note-taking site. My students are currently working on a research project, and I think it would have been great if they had collaborated with their groups using a wiki.

I'm still thinking that book reviews would be a great idea in my classroom or in a library--I'd just have to figure out a way to keep people from abusing the wiki.

Thing 15

I completely agree that libraries have to change. As the place to find information, libraries must keep up with how information is accessed and communicated. Web 2.0 is where we are headed and libraries must head in that general direction as well.

As Rick Anderson said in Away from the "icebergs," we must steer clear of the things we do that stand in the way of progress. We can't keep doing things just because that's how we have always done them.

Library patrons are going to want more from us--and we can't do that unless we understand Library 2.0 and have the access that we need.

Thing 14

When I searched for "School Library Learning 2.0" in keywords, I got 1,294 hits, but when I did the same search in tags I got only three hits. That was interesting, and I think the searches would be good for different things. sometimes it's overwhelming to get thousands of hits, and it would be nice to get just three hits when you are looking for something very specific.

"Ambien" is the top search? Really? How mundane. "Emma Watson"? Yes, I'm surprised. There are some things that are top searches that I have no clue what they are. I wanted to look at the most popular blog in the world, "Boing Boing," but it is BLOCKED. I'll have to remember to check it out when I get home.

I'm still not sure how Technorati can help me in my teaching. I have considered that it would be helpful to search fro some up-to-the-minute information on a specific topic for my students. The trick is making sure that the information is accurate.

I still love tagging. I love the idea of making my own categories and finding things that other people have tagged using the same categories that I think of. I think this will make searches more meaningful.

Thing 13

I really didn't think that I was going to care about del.icio.us at all. But after watching that video on Common Craft, I think del.icio.us is seriously cool. I will be using this all the time. I can't wait to go through all my bookmarks and add them to del.icio.us and tag them. I'm always looking at my bookmarks and trying to remember which web site I liked for that assignment or for that book (which knitting pattern I like for socks or afghans). This is going to make my life so much easier--both personally and professionally, but especially professionally. This 23 Things business is adding so much more nerdiness to my life--I love it.

I'm also thinking about how I could use this tool with my students. Any ideas?