Thing 14 - Library Thing

In January of 2007, I set up a Library Thing account. I entered two books and thought little more about it. Since that time, I have visited occasionally, but found no compelling reason to use this resource. Even at this point I have little interest in creating a record of my personal library. However, I noticed that some are, instead, entering books they are reading. To me, this has more appeal. Whether or not it is a efficient use of time is still a question for me. I am most interested in the Amazon bookmarklet, allowing one to add a book viewed in Amazon to your Library Thing account with a click. This might be a useful way to prioritize books to add to your reading list. I was also pleased to find the Local tab, allowing one to see what book events and authors are in the area. I may be missing something, but it seems that new circulation systems are providing many of the services and benefits of Library Thing; personal lists, reviews and recommendations.

Thing 13 - Online Productivity Tools

Well, my new iGoogle page is full of wonderful widgets. Truly, time must be forgotten while one prepares to be productive using online tools. The options are limitless! My new Google Calendar is prominently displayed on my iGoogle home page with a ToDo List, LabPixies Calculator, local weather, Mapquest and Yellow Pages. I have fussed over tabs for Minneapolis, News, Cooking, Technology, Entertainment and Books, adding and removing a variety of options on each page. I am delighted with the ease with which one can add a new topic and have a wide selection of choices immediately. Though i thought the to-do lists were over the top, a convenient list of the top priorities on homepage doesn't seem like such an imposition. The Google Calendar went together with ease. I started with a family calendar to coordinate the lives of my college student and work-wandering husband. It seems like this would be a great calendar to use for sharing our library volunteer schedule.

I chose to use Google products for this Thing; one less account and login to establish, as well as program compatibility. I have heard very good things about the Google suite of products and had planned to explore them further.

I was also pleased to learn about the online file converter, Zamzar. I look forward to sharing this with student who prepare documents at home in Works, just to get to school and discover they can't open them. I ahve a file converter on my computer with which to convert files: teaching them to convert files online will be much better.

Thing 12 - Do You Digg?

Though intriguing, I fear I would find social media sites to be a consumer of time better spent. As I looked through the selections I found Digg be more appealing to me in it's organization. However, I noted that Mixx included a category for books in the entertainment section. Upon further exploration, the selections labeled books held little relevance for me. I believe I can more quickly skim through my carefully selected RSS feeds and find the articles and information in which I am most interested. though I have not used these sites, I do monitor "most popular" lists of many news sites.

Thing 10 - Wikis

Wikis are in my future! We're thinking about a wiki in our building to support teachers using technology. It will be a collaborative gathering place for tutorials, tips and resources. This will be fun. There is also an art teacher in the building who is interested in collecting student feedback on artwork. A wiki may be the way to go. (I mentioned this in my post on the 23 things on a stick wiki.) It was interesting to see the variety of wikis. The St. Joseph County Public Library subject guides were very interesting and really a variation of what many of us currently offer on our library websites - subject based resources. However, I keep only current subjects in the curriculum on my webpage. This would be much more efficient. Though editing was restricted to library staff, patrons could submit requests and comments. It was also interesting to see that the Book Lovers wiki had moved on to online reviews in their library catalog. I've added some of these wikis to my Delicious account. (You'll remember that I completed Thing 11 earlier in the process.) A resource like PBwiki that is designed for use by educators is great.

Wikipedia is allowed by some teachers in our middle school; others prefer not to have students use it in their research. I have taken the position that it is important for students to understand how information is edited in Wikipedia and why they must be careful. I encourage students to find information in more than one source and to pursue discrepancies. Wikipedia often has very useful links and intertwines with associated articles. We need to teach our kids to use it wisely.

Thing 9 - Online Collaboration Tools

In our district, our technology committee has used Google Docs for meeting minutes and many shared documents. It worked well after resolving a login glitch. I like the option to get an email update whenever changes are made to these documents. It has made collaborative development of documents much easier. Additionally, it gave easy access to community members on the committee who would not have access to the district network where documents were formerly stored. I also have a Zoho account, as we have considered Zoho Writer, in particular, for student use. Although most students manage transfer of documents between home and school, occasionally there are problems. We believe that online access to documents may work more effectively for some students.

An Extra Thing

I do not want to lose track of the presentation, 101 Free Learning Tools, which I found at the Slideshare website so here is the link - http://www.slideshare.net/zaid/101-free-learning-tools-presentation/ What a resource!

Thing 8 - Sharing Your Creations

Next day...
While browsing other blogs, I found someone who successfully embedded their Zoho presentation. Back to the drawing board. This time I switched over to the Edit Html page and it worked. Duh.




Really... I hate to share my creations. I am sure there are others like me, who just aren't the sharing kind. Sure, I share with students in the library; I share with colleagues; I share with friends, but to share with the world? Oh, no. However, in the interest of progress with 23 Things and my desire to analyze the options available to kids in the educational setting, I have a link below to my brief book presentation created on Zoho. It must be public (UGH) to "share" the link. It appears that it can be embedded into my blog, but early attempts failed.

http://show.zoho.com/View.do?P_ID=283823000000004017&P_STIME=0&TP=true&displayall=true&THEME=colorful_chords&USER=gabrielsons&DOC=Summer%20Books%202008



It finally sunk in. Last year, a young and enthusiastic Web 2.0 colleague at school brought Zoho to my attention. We were talking about word processing. I understood, but lacked enthusiasm. Today, as I looked at Zoho Show, I got it. Students experiencing difficulty with transfer of documents between home and school, due to version or system incompatibilities, m ayuse online document resources. I tried Zoho Show and it worked!! It was easy to login (I had my login), easy to create and save a new presentation. My colleague has moved on to another online resource called Buzzword. We'll have to compare the two and decide what will work best for students. There is an art research project coming up soon; we may be on a roll before the end of the month!