Thing 11 Tagging & De.li.cious

De.li.cious is a very interesting place that I could easily spend hours on with no problem. I did notice some of what I saw seemed inappropriate for elementary students to view, but I found some very good things at the teacher tube site that I either want to use myself or share with staff in my buildings. I want to spend much more time following other peoples tags to see where they will lead me. I also found an article about consolidating email accounts into your gmail account. I just may try to do that to consolidate my email into one location. I will come back to de.li.cious again and again.

Thing 10 Wikis

This was a fun exploration of sites. I found several wikis I want to explore further, but for today I settled for adding a comment on the 23 things on a stick wiki. I was impressed with how quick and easy it was to do my addition. I am going to explore if we can use wikis with our network and students. I can see it as a great up to the minute list of good books for students to check when searching for a book to read.

Thing 9 Online collaboration tools

I have used Google docs for a couple of school related things many of us were working on. It was very nice to log in, see what the other people had written and be able to add my thoughts to theirs and record my own concerns for others to see. It was easy to use once I figured the system out. I liked it. I also just tried the Zoho document writing one also. It was easy to start my document, and add names of people who could have access. Either one would be a great way for students or staff to collaborate on a writing assignment without everyone having to be in the same place at the same time. I will definitely show both of these to my staff and students.

Thing 8 Sharing presentations

I tried Zoho show and found I had to put my jpg photos into power point format for Zoho to be able to access them. I was just looking to do something quick. I found creating the power pount first was time consuming. I had figured I could create the slideshow as I went in Zoho. Any power point presentations I have created to this point, I have saved on two flash drives and that seems to work for me. I am uncomfortable putting my things on the web for all to see. But I mght think about trying it. I can see some benefits (your flash drive quits working, or you forgot to grab it/them).

More of Thing 6 Image generator / jigsaw puzzle

Mr. Bear
Originally uploaded by kvandanacker

Our carved bear in our front yard is quite the talk of the neighborhood

Thing 7 Online communication tools

I use email daily in my elementary schools, communicating with staff. Elementary students do not have email accounts, but they would be a very useful way to communicate with students about library materials (overdues, books or other materials they are waiting for that have come in).

I have used instant messaging a couple of times personally, talking to friends on line. It was OK, sometimes it seemed to be on the slow side. But I will contuine to use it. It just isn't my first choice.

I use SMS on my cell phone quite often again for personal things. It's a great way for family to send me messages, without the annoying ringing of a phone. It also allows me to send a message if I need to without disturbing other peoples meetings or appointments. I am sure many high school libraries use this method to communicate with students and staff. Elementary students are generally not allowed phones in school.

A fellow librarian and I talked about setting a chat session, but we have gotten so busy it hasn't happened.

I recently tried participating in a webinar. Before the presentation started I had great audio. As the presentation started I lost the audio and couldn't figure out how to get it back, so finally just exited the webinar.