Week 5: Play Thing 11: Explore Web 2.0

So many new tools to discover. I used the award-winning short list and discovered LuLu where the business is buying and selling numerous kinds of content. The creator retains "editorial and copyright control" of their work. The site clearly states that copyright is enforced. Many services were listed as free, such as press releases, some marketing tools, podcasts featuring authors, monthly newsletters. Additional features included marketing tools for a fee and services offered by third-party vendors.

Creating and sharing content of a book, calendar, video, or other content offers an exciting dimension to the publishing community of you and me. Online retailers can also purchase. I'm curious if publishing by demand might make access of materials for libraries more affordable. I found a title by David Warlick on Classroom Blogging available.

Week 5: Play week Thing 10: Online image generator

The online image generator would be a great tool to personalize a blog. I definitely visualize the opportunity to create promotional items for library programming to advertise new materials, special events. These features would have high interest by students. Read to Live was created at ImageChef.com.

My motivational poster was created with one of my photographs and online image generator at BigHugeLabs.com

Week 4: RSS & Newsreaders Thing: 9

I set up my account with RSS feeds for some of the award winning library blogs as well as others that interested me. I used GoogleBlog search, Technorati, Blog Pulse and Topic.net. I liked the view interface of Topic.net and the ability to enter a city, state and locate information quickly with that tool. I can't say that one is more confusing than another. I liked Feedster and will read about using the Feedwidget feature where content style can be matched to your blog. My blogline is http://www.bloglines.com/public/learningtrek/

Week 4: RSS & Newsreaders Thing: 8

After reading about RSS feeds I can see why this feature is so helpful to stay current about important updates and lessen the time it takes to access the information. I used bloglines but need to reread the instructions for access to the five subscriptions that I chose.

I setup the bloglines account with five RSS feeds. I chose Alan November's, Joyce Valenza's from SLJ, CNN Education, Unshelved, and Will Richardson's weblogg-ed. Later this week I will evaluate the five that I've chosen and reassess their value to my personal and professional growth. The process was a learning curve that I was interested in achieving.

Week 3: Technology created Thing 7

Using my Digital camera and sharing images is easier than ever! I want to make sure how I share and with whom. Awareness of privacy laws, third party usage, protecting logins, and ethics require me to work diligently to learn about and share the new technology policies as well as possiblities.

Week 3: Photos & Flickr Thing: 5

I spent some time exploring Flickr and its features. I'm not sure how the "tags" work. I thought they might be similar to keywords to identify and search photos. I will try the spacing to locate what I've shared. I uploaded a photo that I took at school to experiment with for the thing.

I have been using Picasa all year at school with my school images. Most of my images include students so I use them for in library public relations for promoting library programming events. I also use the slideshow of images as a screensaver on my laptop so when giving lessons it reverts to students in the library.

On to mashups web hybrid aplications. And smugmug too.

Week 2: Blogging Thing 3: Set up

I'm already talking about sharing what I will have learned with my teaching partners this fall. I'm just delayed in starting this summer. Hopefully, I can contribute and learn from others efforts too. This was easy to establish and I enjoyed exploring the avatar resources on the web. I am going to use an email to try to download the avatar image I created in Yahoo! to my blog later today.