Thing 12 - Social Media

Ok, I have "reddit", but I don't know that I can "digg" it because it don't have enough time in my day to "mixx" "newsvine" with my subscription to the Star Tribune. Seriously, I went to all four sites and poked around, read some articles, and watched some videos. It was interesting to see the ways that a Website can massage the distribution of articles (most recent, most popular, etc.), but I don't know that it would drive my reading selections, although it might influence them on occasion. I was amused and sometimes confounded by what people found worthy of posting to the Internet, especially in terms of video. 

I did post two Washington Post stories that I read, one to del.icio.us and one to Digg. 

Of the four sites, I liked newsvine best, probably because after a casual browsing, it seemed to have the most articles, etc. that I actually felt like reading. I also like its layout and its code of honor.

To sum it up, I see these sites more as productivity detractors than enhancers. I prefer to make my own reading decisions and I don't feel the need to vote on anything. I did put newsvine on my del.icio.us account and am moving on to Thing 13.

Thing 11 - Tagging and del.icio.us

What can I say? Tagging and del.icio.us didn't do so much for me, although I will readily admit that it can be very useful to have a bookmark source on the Web rather than on an individual computer. So, I did create an account and did some exploring of other people's bookmarks. I found a couple of nice websites on photography and design through that exploration and discovered that there is at least one other person from my school on del.icio.us (she had also bookmarked our school website)

The one library account that I like was the one that was organized by Dewey. 

All of the teachers in our school are required to have Web pages and most of them post links to those.

Thing 10 - Wikis

I love the concept of wiki's. There is something about the idea of people writing collaboratively and synergisitcally that really appeals to me. Realistically, I probably would have difficulty giving up control over any wiki I started, except to a small group. I think that you have to have a belief in the basic goodness and intelligence of people to unabashedly embrace the concept.
I have a son who reads Wikipedia the way that I used to read the encyclopedia, and in my own perusals I have not come across much that I thought was misleading or incorrect. People tell me that Wikipedia is the place to go for articles on technology and the Internet. All that being said, I once saw a student deliberately vandalizing an article on minerals that he should have been getting information from, so I know that that kind of activity also happens. Rather than a banning of Wikipedia, I would rather see teachers (and media specialists) emphasizing the need for a variety of resources in a variety of formats when students are involved in research.
I would like to see the students and larger community in our district do a town history or school history wiki. The public library could get involved along with the nursing home. Another possibility would be something like the Princeton Review wiki. Students could post book reviews under genre sections or grade level sections.
I really enjoyed the Albany County Public Library wiki--not because I would like to do one like that, but because I was impressed by how useful it appeared to be and by how well documented their training procedures seemed to be. I also visited the Blogging Libraries wiki. Of the six wiki's that I clicked on, 3 were current, 2 were not available, and 2 had no recent posts. It would be nice to have some sort of rating system, or at least a date when the last post was made so that you would know which blogs were likely to be interesting to you. Otherwise, it seemed like kind of a waste of time.
I edited the 23 Things on a Stick wiki. It was easy to edit, and I enjoyed reading the previous edits, but it might have benefited from having some sort of organizational format developed before the editing began.

Thing 9 - Online Collaboration Tools

I have a request in to get permission to edit the Declaration of Independence, but the person who grants requests is out until 7/3. Therefore, I am on to Thing 10 in the meantime and will edit this post after Independence Day. How fitting!

I do think that these tools might be of some use to teachers who are working in site committees and need to either come up with or edit documentation. I also have a couple of teachers who have groups of students who do some complex projects. This might be an option for them, too.

Thing 8

Thing 8 - Share Your Creations

Above is a cube that I made on PictureTrail. I am amazed at how many photo sharing sites there are on the web. I use Shutterfly sometimes because I make photo books on occasion, but I don't post many photos on the web.

I first tried to post by just copying and pasting the code into my blog but that didn't seem to work, so I went back and found that I could autopost to Blogger which worked very easily. One of the things that I really liked is that when I changed the cube in picturetrail, the changes were automatically reflected on my blog. Cool! Now that I know it works, I'll go back and play and little more.

I did find the ads somewhat irritating, even though you could skip them. While I understand that they bring in revenue that keeps the site free for users, I guess maybe I don't want to use them all that badly.

Thing 7 - Web 2.0 Communication Tools

I have used e-mail for many years. I have three accounts: an official school account, an official home account, and a yahoo account that I use when I want to remain more anonymous. I use the school account frequently to talk to teachers, administrators, vendors, colleagues, etc., but not often with students. I find that e-mail is more effective than a telephone call in many cases. 

I IM very little and never with school personnel or students. I did have a very positive experience recently though, IMing through a home computer router problem with tech support. 

Texting is not my thing, but it is my son's preferred method of communication on his cell phone, so 0n occasion I text him just to prove that I can do it. Our students are not allowed to have cell phones, so texting is not something that would come to my library any time soon. Interestingly enough, I just learned that texting requires much less signal than an actual phone call, so if I'm ever lost in the woods, I hope that I remember to text because the message will be much more likely to get through!

I have attended several Minitex webinars and have found the information to be useful. I really do like being with other people when possible, but the webinars are more practical than driving somewhere. I also went to the OPAL archives and listened to a YALSA Teen Tech Week presentation about using videography with teens. We have 3 0r 4 teachers who assign video projects and many students use the video cameras that can be checked out through the library. I do many 7-minute tutorials on video shots and video editing for kids.