Thing #13 Tagging and del.icio.us

This is a really cool tool. I used to have an "ikeepbookmarks" account, but del.icio.us is much easier to use and has the "tag" feature. This would be great for teachers creating research projects. They can have students access an account and use whatever tag they have assigned to that project. Also, the students can find other sites and tag them as well. I could also have tags for a collection of sites or articles for teachers on separate topics. Teachers can use it by tagging all their favorite sites and having easy access to them from home or at school or in a computer lab where students can access them, too.

Thing #12 Commenting, part 2

Some of the blogs I signed up for when we did the Thing on RSS feeds were about Oklahoma.

One, I found one was a little too political for me so I opted out of subscribing, but I believe it is important to read about politics and the political beliefs of candidates so one can be an informed voter, as well as a participant in the political process. Also, blogs are an important part of the political process these days so I would like to find one with a broader audience.

Another was about goings on in the part of Oklahoma where my hometown is located. Blogging is a faster way of letting people know about community events, especially in rural towns where the paper only comes out once a week or not at all and/or doesn't have a web presence.

Thing #12 Commenting

There are many useful articles on the "art of commenting" and making your comments useful and participatory. Also, there's etiquette involved. I didn't know you could keep track of your own comments or that comments brought more readership to your own blog so that was enlightening. One tip was to not require registration for leaving comments because that is a barrier. I think that is true, but a lot of people are just making sure inappropriate comments don't appear on their blogs, which is responsible, especially if you are dealing with a school blog read by students. What do you think? (Ask questions; it invites more comments!)

Thing #11 Library Thing

It is easy to add books to your library after joining Library Thing. I just typed in the name of favorite authors and then clicked on all the titles I had read. What is hard to do is to add favorite authors to your profile. In the instructions under "how to add," it says to do a search for your favorite author and add it from their author page. I found two different author pages, but could not see where on the page there is a link or whatever to add it to your profile as a favorite author. Also, I was reading reviews on a recent book I read and wanted to add a tag. I read the tags listed for the book, but couldn't find where to add one. When I click on tags in the top menu, it just tells me I haven't posted any tags. Well, I know that! How do I?

However, I think this would be a great resource to recommend to students to help them find other books they might enjoy. But, since it is a blog, it will be blocked by our district and they could only use it from home. Same for this blog...

There are groups for librarians and those reading young adult fiction. The ya group I found didn't seem too organized and were reading old ya books, not any from our state's current list, which was disappointing.

Thing #10 Image generators

I liked Image Chef and it was easy to post it to the blog because you just click a button for blogger! You can create your own jersey in whatever sport you want, make it whatever color you want, etc, so you could use it to create a graphic to go with your school's sport of the season in school colors. Of course, I put my name on my jersey, but I used OU QB Sam Bradford's number. You could also use it to create your own logo for a book club or your own graphics for different sections of your web site.

Thing #9

So I searched some blogs and added some to my reader. Actually, I already had a reader set up with Yahoo in our My Yahoo! page, but I didn't know that's what it was. We customized our headlines from their selected line-up when we set it up, but now because I know what RSS is, I set up RSS feeds to our favorite news sources in Oklahoma, where we are from so we can keep up with what's going on back home. I also scanned through some blogs and added a few of those. We didn't have any RSS feeds for blogs and there aren't really too many that I want on there all the time, but I did add five like the assignment asked. However, I will probably remove most of them unless I just get addicted like so many people I read about when learning about blogs... Blah, Blah, Blah!

Thing #8

RSS feeds are a way to have news come to you automatically rather than searching for it or checking your favorite web site for updates. The RSS explained video was a great illustration. I've always wondered what they were, but didn't really "get it." Thanks.