Thing #19: Web 2.0 Awards List

This is exhausting! And I am falling into the researchers trap (or paradise depending on your perspective!) I started with Craigslist just because I had heard of it before. I found myself fascinated with the things people were discussion in the forums section. The home page itself is daunting, but well-organized. But Oodle on the other hand was much more attractive. I was able to follow a thread to find help for my Mom in dealing with the feral cats that are inhabit ting her property in Grimes County. I was able to narrow my searches geographically in both of these directories. As far using these tools in school, I imagine I could use them to focus on field trip possibilities, events and services such as puppet shows and such. This is not a tool I would put in the hands of elementary school children, but certainly something the teachers might find helpful.
I could see students having a great time with My Heritage! Simply building a family tree would not only be fun but help them see their relationships in a graphic manner. This would foster communication as they can add birth and death dates and relationships! I created my own family tree and family website. It needs a lot of work still, but I created this in under 30 minutes!
I will be sharing Colorblender with all my art teacher friends (as well as with my scrapbook friends and home dec friends, etc...) This is a great way to preview a color scheme. Plus it is just plain fun! The students would love it. It is easy and free! When my third graders get ready to put together their history fair visuals, I will introduce them to this site!
Susan's blog mentioned that this activity opened a Pandora's box for her! (I SO agree!) Well, I was hooked on Pandora music when I opened the site and it was playing a Peter, Paul and Mary song. I was able to find MY kind of music and it was fairly easy and fun. The students will love this.
Now I think Yahoo Pipes is just what I need to help filter all this "stuff" I am getting as a result of this course. I can tell it what I want and it will give me only specified content from the sites to which I have subscribed. This looks like one I can use! As students do research, they could narrow their "feeds" to only those topics that relate to their topic/theme. This one is in my basket!

Thing #17: Rollyo

This is exactly what I have been wanting and needing! I have created document after document of search links for teachers and students only to have them lost and difficult to edit! Rollyo makes this a much more dynamic and easily update-able tool! I created a Search Engine for our third grade History Fair researchers. So far, I only have 2 sites on it, but will add to it before I actually "roll" it out with the students! It was easy and Bruce Goodner's video was INVALUABLE, in making this not only understandable, but very simple to do! Thanks Bruce!

Thing #9 Useful library-Related Blogs & News Feeds

I have spent most of today exploring these links and searching for blogs. I fell repeatedly into the "trap" that ensnares researchers everywhere--TMI! There is so much out there, I found myself getting side-tracked by all the interesting posts on the blogs I was scanning. This was frustrating since I wanted to keep going following links! On the other hand, I found really cool stuff I had been wanting to find anyway!
Easiest: google blog search. I did like the way that Syndic8 listed the results. I believe the way you title your blog can really get you a lot of hits--I found myself drawn to those that were creatively titled!
I did not spend much time wiht Topix. Frankly, I just was not excited about news feeds today! But I did find it easy to use with listings in chronological order.
I had the most trouble with Suprglu. It was just confusing to me. I used Technorati to find a number of blogs on my hobby--scrapbooking.
I still have not quite figured out how to use the RSS feed link.
on my tool bar. Maybe someone could help me with that.
One method that I used to locate blogs, was to use the links to similar blogs that I found on many of the blog sites. I need to add a blog roll on my own blog here. I also want to add a page (or a different blog) on my hobby. I need to get faster at all of this, since once school starts again, I won't have all this extra time! C'est la biblioteque!