Week 7 Post 16 Wikis & Post 17

This was an interesting exploration of a variety of Wikis, that showed me some creative ways wikis could be used in a classroom, a library or in a business like a Visitor's Bureau or even City Government. I have used Wikipedia on many occasions and I am happy with the results. In my explorations I noticed several of the sites had not been edited in many years and that some of the links did not work. An example is in the SJCPL Subject Guide, at St. Joseph County Library one main link "Ask A Librarian" does not exist? I did like St. Joseph's links to Twitter and Facebook on the wiki.
If I was a librarian the wiki, Library Success certainly would be an excellent resource for Libraries and librarians. I was impressed with the Library Bloggers Wiki which I found to be a great resource of information. While exploring worldlibrary.org I ran across a site with free ebooks to download.
The site:
worldlibrary.net-/ebooks/giveaway/mp3
I examined the Princeton Book Lovers Wiki and found it worth looking at.

I think if I was still teaching 7th Grade I would have my class do a wiki about our town, Fairbanks, that would include everything our young people would be interested in. This would include where to shop, eat, hike, get jobs, join clubs, and classes of interest. There would be a link for reviews of books, movies, TV shows, music and anything else the class could suggest. It would be ongoing, changing and updating for the year.

For the Raven About 2.0 Wiki I added a comment using the idea of my class selecting a magazine or publication to put their picture on the cover with a small bio description which would help students get to know each other. I posted it as a guest on that Wiki with my first name, last intial and date.

Week 6, Posts 13,14 and 15

Tagging and Del.cio.us are both new to me. The idea of looking at other people's bookmarks can be helpful using Del.cio.us if you are doing research or just have too much time to waste and you are really bored. Tagging, I found interesting because you can find things you are interested in very quickly and filter out what you don't want. I am on Facebook and often it refers to someone tagged in a photo so it can be used to organize pictures too.

Technorati follows blogs closely and can be a time-saver when you look at tags and the blogs they match up with. I used Technorati to check out Classroom Technology in blogs, posts and tags. Each brought up different sites to look out and I found the weblogged the most comprehensive and interesting. In posts when investigating Classroom Technology it was amazing to find the Illinois Institute in order to promote technology was giving each first year student a new IPAD!!! Another aspect was using Twittorati, which was similar to Twitter and would connect with the top current 100 Tweets. I tried to look up Raven About Web 2.0 but nothing came up either on blogs or posts. I really felt uncomfortable to join and give my information to these sites.

Week 5 #10#12 Image Generator

Firstly, I will reiterate my lack of desire to sign up for anymore applications. I looked at several apps under image generator and I used Big Huge Map-Maker to show all the places in the world I have visited and this was fun. When I went to copy the Http:// is would not work correctly. I also used the Magazine Picture Maker and put my face on a Travel Magazine and was not able to save it on my blog. This was fun and I enjoyed looking at all the Award Categories in Ning. Several of them I have used before.

Week 5 #11 Ning
I have used Flickr to make my photo album with pictures from the West Coast of Africa. I also looked at travel sites including Kayak which helped as a Search Engine and was one I am familiar with. You tube can be very revealing and I liked the award winning family tree site "My Heritage".

Week 5 #12 Voice Thread
This was new to me and lots of fun. I could see Middle School students loving this application. I actually went through the Voice Doodle Thread and tried different ways to apply this and it was interesting.

I will try to insert link for mapmaker:

Travel with Tanya
Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com

When I copy the link this is what happened so I need help from out facilitator!

Week 4 RSS and Newsfeeds#8

I actually looked at the information for RSS feeds and News feeds a couple of weeks ago and set up my blog line with around 15 different RSS feeds. I found it rather complicated to begin with and wondered how many teachers would actually have the time to explore all the different feeds you can subscribe too! I looked into the library sites and found a few articles of interest. Tonight I tried to add Fox News feed to my RSS Reader, Blog line and found I needed to explore another site "Google Reader" to add a link. Interesting assignment but I have set up a I-GOOGLE Account with G-Mail for my husband and on his home page I have added all the sites he likes so all he needs to do is click on them and his information is there. (This was simple compared to exploring the sites on our assignment.) It was interesting but I didn't like setting up more accounts with log-in names and passwords. On to our next challenge and I am sure it will be challenging and for my skill level very time consuming??? Is anybody else finding the assignments take more time than anticipated? The lack of feedback is discouraging someone like me who really has no familiarity with Web 2.0.

Week 3 Part 5,6,7

Today I looked at Flickr for the first time and found it confusing but somewhat of interest. I am a world traveler so anytime I can learn more about photo technology and mapping I am willing to explore. I like to make my own photo-books and I am currently having major issues trying to upload photos to snap-fish or another public printing site. I also have an IPOD Touch that I co-ordinate with I-Tunes to upload photos, applications and music. I find the I-Tune site extremely user-friendly and easily accessed from my iBook. My first experience with Flickr was not user-friendly except to view other people's pictures but I will talk to some of our classmates and see whether to go back and study the site more in depth.
I went back and created an account and tried to upload a picture of myself on one of my wonderful trips, Venice Italy but I don't know how to put it on my blog. I need help and I am not sure I would every use Flickr to any extent. The picture is out there but how do I put it to use?

Week 2 Exercise 3

I did it!!! This is my first post on my blog and after multiple attempts I found I have succeeded it setting up my blog. I hope it becomes more user-friendly as I learn more navigational tricks? I promise I will become more innovative in the future.