Mashups

Wow. I thought the 11 Flickr mashups were hilarious. I agree that most of the stuff is really useless. But some of it was interesting and probably fun if you had a few minutes to spare. Creating mashups without a purpose is really difficult. Unless I have a specific thing that I want to do with an application, it's hard to create a mashup. Very informative week, but not really my fav.

Podcasts

Well I don't know that I was impressed with some of the podcast sites, but I liked the Yahoo search. It was a little simpler and a little bit easier to read what each one was about and gave me a little bit more information. Podcasts are interesting but I haven't ever really had a need for one. (Although I would like to take some ASL through one...) I honestly didn't find one that I thought would be useful. I have liked the ones that we've had for Learning 2.0, but other than that, I'm not too interested.

Discover YouTube

I'm not a big YouTube fan. Yeah, some of the videos are funny/interesting/useful but I really don't surf YouTube. It's neat to be able to post your own stuff and maybe even get a little bit of YouTube fame, but I really don't have a YouTube "fascination". But I did find a pretty funny video. Makes you wonder how many people really need a better education (or need to pay more attention to the things going on around them...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp6_oFSh_ss

Yeah.

I used Google Docs to create this blog entry. I think that this is a really great application! I don't know that I think it's better than Word, but it could be useful for students who don't have a personal computer, who don't like to use the W drive on campus or who don't have their jump drives with them. It's a neat application.

Web-Based Applications 101

I really think that is a great service offered to students!! The availability, simplicity, and cost ($0) makes all of those applications even more useful. I personally think that the zotero.org application is one that would be really useful. Especially for those who are in more research based majors or jobs. The wiki application is nice for group work (like I've said before) and it is good that there is a place where you can get your own.

Get Your Hands Dirty in the Wiki Sandbox!

One thing that I like about the wiki is how easy it is. You don't have to know html or any other computer language to accomplish it. I think that it will explode and become a more popular and widespread application in the very near future.

Like I said in the previous post, I think that the library could offer a group work wiki for students to do group work. Maybe that can be something that is offered through the Studio.

Gettin' Wiki With It!

Okay, I really like this application! I think that it's a great tool for group work! I think that we might offer it (along with a link to that video that explains how to use it) to students from the library home page. They can do group work through it. I know that blackboard offers wikis but professers don't always make them available. It might help our patrons with group work and make things a little more streamlined. Just a suggestion.

Tagging part 2

I really liked the Encore tag clouds. I think it helps you think of other terms that are related, especially if you are narrowing down a topic, or not quite sure what to call the topic. I think that it could help a patron be a little more specific (or broad) with their search.



del.icio.us is an interesting tool. I don't use it now, but I can really see a good use for research purposes and teaching purposes. I think that teachers can set up a good network of sites that are useful and not necessarily have to find them all by themselves. They can also help students do the same for their particular topic for assignments.

Tagging Part 1

Well I guess I never really thought about the importance of tagging. There has to be a way to link information to a search. I never thought of tagging until I had to tag some photos in Facebook. And even then I didn't relate that to anything else. It makes sense now in a different way. My search in google vs. my search in the catalog gave me very different results. In google, there are so many more millions of records than in the catalog so I got so many more results. And in a subject search, it is so much more important to have the correct tag, or you don't find what you want.

I guess that tagging is a new name for an old process. Just much easier to access now. I don't know that most people would claim that libraries were the inventors of tagging, but I think that they are the same process.

Search Tools

I LOVE this application!! Rollyo is GREAT!! As a teacher I search for lesson ideas on the web all of the time! This will save me so much time and frustration! This is something I will really use!
http://rollyo.com/keaslers/k-5_lesson_plans/
This is my first search roll. Yay.

LibraryThing

This was an interesting lesson. I don't know that I fully understand the point of LibraryThing, but it was interesting. Once I read a little more about what it did, I got a little more into it. It was kind of fun thinking of my favorite books.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/keaslers

Feed Searches

I really don't like the searches that I tried. I was looking for some teacher blogs on Deafness and I only found one that was partially relevant. Maybe I didn't search for the right thing, or maybe there just aren't any in existance... Oh well. I'll keep trying.

RSS and Newsreader

I had never really heard of this until just recently. I don't really read blogs, but I think that this tool is pretty great. I subscribed to the google reader and it was easier than I thought it would be. Since we learned about Flickr, I have been addicted so I added some of the Flickr stuff to the reader and I think that will be helpful. This seems to be a really great tool, but I don't really have stuff to use it with.

More Flickr

While I don't completely understand the whole "mashing" concept, I thought that the Colr Pickr was really neat. If I were doing a collage (like above) I could search and do a specific color. Or if I were doing a mosaic (I couldn't quite get the other mosaic link to work), that would be a great tool!

Flickr

I have never used Flickr so I was excited to do something new. I really, really, REALLY, liked it!

For those of you who don't know me, you're about to learn a whole lot about me.

I love to take pictures!! I am not very good, but it doesn't matter because I still love to do it. I make collages out of them. I also love to travel and do so frequently. I have been to England a few times and have quite a few collages about my trips. So when I was browsing the Flickr site, I searched different England tags. I found this picture and I love it!! I love the city and the modern things in Europe, but I also love how old things can give a peace and a breath of fresh air (even if the air really smells like goats...) But this picture struck me, so I chose it for the blog

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andretna/783719703/

The thing that I like the best about Flickr (so far) is that you can view pictures in a slide show. I think that gives a really different spin on the online photo album (at least the ones that I have encountered).

Facebook

I have been a facebook user for a couple of years. I really like to use it because I can keep in touch with my friends, send invitations/reminders/suggestions for get-togethers, and share things with people (pictures, news, etc...) with the click of a few buttons.

Just like email made letter writing a thing of the past, Facebook is beginning to make email a thing of the past. More often than not, my friends will check their FB acounts once or twice a day and their email once or twice a week. It's usually the best way to get ahold of people.

Social Networking 101

I have a facebook account that I use to keep in touch with friends, but I guess I never saw it as a "networking" site. I didn't think about it in that manner, but I guess that's how I got my car fixed (a friend of a friend fixes cars). That's how my roomate got back in touch with her now husband (a friend of hers was a friend of his). It's interesting to see the way that a networking site can really change the way that people do things.

Wow. How would my grandmother react to this. If I need a roomate, a job, a date, or a group of people to go to Alaska with me, all I need to do is post and suddenly the entire world knows what I need. She would say that more personal means make more meaningful interactions, but sometimes it pays to have a wider social network. This is really interesting.

The Machine and Web 2.0

As I watched the YouTube video for the library 2.0 program, I really thought about the way that we process information now. Everything needs to be flashing and moving and basically done for us. If we have to search through a book to find information, it's a task instead of a privilage to discover something new. We want someone else to have done the work and spread it before us.

Now that I have gotten a little bit of the negativity out, I would like to say that I think it's amazing that there is so much information available to anyone who cares to look for it. It's no longer a daunting task to find things. Anyone can find what they are looking for and don't have to have a degree in computers to learn how to find it.

Emo Journal

Wow... I told myself I would never have a blog... too emo for me. So here it is. My emo journal