Week 6, #14: Technorati

Technorati is the key to finding information in blogs--if you assume that finding information in blogs is a worthy activity. Yes, authority helps, but is authority a popularity contest or an accuracy measure? But that's a discussion for later.

When I searched initially, I included a quotation mark around my search string. Very librarian-like, right? I found nothing that way, in blogs or in blog posts. Removing the quotation marks changed the search, as it should. I guess sometimes you have to unlearn. I found 8 hits under blogs and 19 hits under blog posts. I expected to find more so I will need to review what I did and see what else I could/should have done.

I have used the ping aspect to add my blog to the technorati rolls, and added the HTML code for the tag. This is an interesting aspect of student blogging. If you had a blog for your class, say a book discussion blog, would you consider tagging it? My initial reaction is no for privacy reasons. If a student had a personal blog, he/she might want to tag it for technorati, but depending on the age of the student, that would definitely require plenty of parental dicussion.

The idea of having students use technorati to review election blogs is a great idea. Students could comment on the factual content, the structure of the argument presented, a comparison to traditional editorials, etc. Then they could create their own blogs. However, the blogs I saw doing a general search were very diverse. The teacher might want to use Technorati to find a list of blogs, or preapprove student blogs to keep the focus workable.

Looking at the top 100 blogs I was not surprised to see Huffington as number one. This blog has come closer to legitmizing blogging than any other blog. Another "unsurprise" is the number of technology blogs in the top 20. Tech geeks who blog would be the most likely to read technology blogs. I wonder how many of our computer teachers have their students read blogs?

Tagging is a mixed topic for me. The librarian in me likes the idea of search terms but the librarian in me (I can't help it!) feels frustrated by the lack of a controlled vocabulary. I wouldn't be surprised to see a controlled vocab in the future. After all, isn't that what is happening when the software shows you commonly used tags?

I did a search on Technorati and then put the same info into Google. If I did a general search with one or two search terms, the blog didn't appear. If I put very specific info in the google search, the blog did appear. Conclusion? Google can find the same info IF you already know the story, but otherwise not.

[School Library Learning 2.0]

Yummy, Or Delicious or something like that

If you have been seeing this message for over a day...." What? It could take more than a day to import bookmarks? Other than that first scare, Del.icious.us was a useful site. I imported my bookmarks, added the popular tags and added the delicious (I just can't keep typing those periods)button to my browser.

I've tried Delicious in the past but didn't have the time/motivation to stick with it. The biggest use for me personally is to have my bookmarks available whenever/wherever I go. Having school bookmarks at home would simplify life (without the hassle of exporting/importing.

I could use delicious to prepare bookmarks for a class or assignment. I would create an account for the assignment or class, then add what I wanted. Students could also add, or maybe I should have them create all the bookmarks from the beginning.

Tagging could get students thinking critically about searching and word use.

I'm going to have to simmer these ideas & think of the drawbacks or concerns.

Week 5, # 12: This Could Be the Golden Snitch

Granted that title is pretty extreme but for librarians Rollyo is a tool with potential. For HS students, this is too good to be true--the best sources searched with one click. The sites were selected by the teachers so no argument on the quality of the source. Pretty magical.

At first, I wasn't impressed. The "sponsored links" gave me pause for concern. It reminded me of those early free Geocities sites. Searching by domain is already easy so that wasn't an advantage.

I created my first searchroll on sites I like to use to find the best airfare. All the sites are great in their own way, and about 20% of the flights they list are unique to that site. It really pays to check them all. But I realized that this type of searchroll wasn't practical. It just gave me links to the sites in general when I wanted flight comparison. Kayak and Vayama already do that. Bad design on my part.

Then the obvious hit me. I often provide my students with a list of links suitable for a specific assignment, such as a research paper on American authors. Creating a searchroll for that assignment, I then tried it with Jimmy Santiago Baca. Whew. Great sites filled the page. Confession: My first thought was--this is great. My second thought was--this makes it too easy for my kids. Every now and then that thought pops in my head, but I'm kicking it around.

Next I'm going to make a genealogy searchroll.

Here's my searchroll:

Search American Authors now by typing the author's name in the box that says SEARCH, moving the pull down box on the next line to American Authors, and clicking the word GO:

Select...American AuthorsSearch The Web

Week 5, #11 Hall of Fame

Exploring the Web 2.0 Hall of Fame was, in simple words, fun. There were many sites that were relevant to my personal interests as well as to my professional interests.

Because I've been learning genealogical research, I started with My Heritage. I wanted to compare it to the databases I have learned. Although it would take days to explore this site to its farthest reaches, I can already see that it focuses on sites that are not likely to be found in the large pay-for-use database Ancestry.com. Most of the info is either more current than Ancestry.com (such as phone directories)or a bit off the beaten path (local basketball results from a Jamaican newspaper. But a search engine is not a social network site. I wondered what made this Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 aspect is the ability to contact each other and share data. Family trees can be public or private. In this way, My Heritage is similar to the free Family Trees portion of Ancestry.com. The first six member trees were private --not so social :) -- although you can email to be allowed to view the site. Sometimes you end at a pay site, such as in the obituaries. The message board gave me no hits. The free message board at ancestry.com provides 20+ hits. The social networking aspect seemed to include younger people, more hipsters than Ancestry. Overall, it's a site worth exploring but not up to the quality of the leader Ancestry. Still, as a free site, you could use it with oral history projects, immigration projects, etc.

I love the SEOmoz short list version of the award winners. That should be posted for students and distributed to faculty. Here are some of the other programs I tried from the short list: Twitter (can't feel the enthusiasm other people do; my Twitter circle must be too small & I don't have phone internet); Craig's List (giving newspapers a run for the $$; good for apt hunting if you want to avoid the agencies); Google Docs (many school applications, esp. for group projects); Wikispaces (I've been using that for a while actually); Yahoo Answers (makes Wikipedia look scholarly); Del.i.cio.us (I want to try this more when I have time; great for those who move from lab to lab; may get obsolete if one-to-one laptop program gets prevalent; do I really want everyone to know my bookmarks); YouTube (another old fav; I get tons of great tutorials here for kids/staff); Google Maps and Yahoo maps are pretty standard stuff now.

Next to explore: LibraryThing (I've tried it but need more time) and GoodReads.

Of everything on the chart, I think Craig's List, YouTube and Google Docs are the most well known. Kids are addicted to YouTube. It connects them with their culture, but could be seen as so much more if students were pushed into using it for serious endeavors. I think Google Docs is the application we should teach, but often don't. The wiki programs are the ones most often used at my school.

Week 5, # 10: Do You See What I See?

Image Generators are an easy way to manipulate photos, especially for classroom labs that don't have access to Photoshop. Using an image generator is also faster when you don't have the time to teach a photo editor, even when you have access.

I created the above phone photo using a picture of the Colleseum from our recent vacation (Yup, I've used our vacation in just about every exercise) in the program ImageChef. ImageChef was one of the easiest programs to use that I've tried for quite a while. What impressed me more was the ease of placing the photo directly into Blogger.

The library photo below was also created with Image Chef. I had some problems with the embedding code Image Chef provided. Blogger told me I had to add an end tag, which I had forgotten how to do. I figured it out. Generally, I don't like flashing graphics but having one now and then might be OK.


ImageChef.com Poetry Blender

In HONOR of the return of Mulder and Scully, I used Comic Strip Generator to make an Alien cartoon. This program has many school applications: teaching satire, interpreting characters, analyzing history, mocking the principal (maybe not). Is school supposed to be this much fun?


Made with free image tools @ TXT2PIC.com

Weeek 4, # 9: A Few of My (Not So) Favorite Things

I tried several of the sites listed here: Technorati (which is revered by tons of techie people I know), Syndica8, Moreover, Topix, BlogPulse, Google Alerts, Bloglines search and Google Blog search.

My favorite would have to be Google Alerts. For the past 4 days, I've had Google Alerts feeding me info via email on articles on the Isle of Capri (Italy). I prefer this type of topic searching to the broader site searching on services such as Bloglines. I did find myself listed in a few blogs (presentation summaries) that I hadn't seen before. It took me by surprise.

Topix seemed to have potential to be a localized, more personal Ebsco Host type search interface. It pulled from a wide variety of local sources so provided more perspectives than simply doing a search on our small local newspaper. However, the comments with the articles were, to be blunt, inane. One obituary on a local paster had a reader comment posted from a woman whose husband left her for another woman and later committed suicide--all with first and last names for all the people involved. As far as I could see, the comment had no connection to the article. This happened several times. Topix also encouraged readers to apply to be an editor, a position which allows one to edit the stories, ala Wikipedia. If the editing is anything like the commenting, articles would have no credibility. I think Yahoo's "Local" feature did a better job of gathering mainstream stories on my region from the news sources than did Topix because the comment section in Topix is distracting. I will say that Topix was able to pinpoint the small town news better. Yahoo found news from the larger city 15 miles away

And speaking of credibility.... An issue we should consider is the credibility of Web 2.0 information, especially now that Google has begun to include blogs in its search results.

Would I use any of these with my students? So far these wouldn't be top priority lessons. D

Week 4, #8: RSS Aggregators and Thoreau

Let's start with the fact that I really don't like Thoreau. Sorry. Any guy who has time to sit and watch ants for I can't remember how long doesn't mesh with my Type A personality. But still, when chaos threatens to consume me, I have only 2 options: 1. Eat a large bag of BBQ chips; 2. Repeat the manta, "Simplify, simplify, simplify."

In theory RSS Aggregators should simplify life for me. I choose the sites or areas that I like/need to read. The software advises me when new articles arrive. The problem is that I am a kid in a candy shop. I want to subscribe to many sites, thus getting many articles. Suddenly the software that was supposed to help me simplify is putting me in information overload.

The solution would seem to be to minimize the number of sites. However, if I didn't want to subscribe to many sites, why would I need an RSS Aggregator? I could use my bookmarks, or even Live Bookmarks from Firefox, if I only wanted to see a few sites. At the risk of seeming shallow, I browse the general news by using Yahoo as my home page. I bookmark a few of my favorite sites and visit those. I don't even look at My Yahoo any more.

I tried Google Reader a few years ago. At first I was really excited at having articles delivered to my screen. Soon I wasn't opening the page--for weeks.

What I really need to do is spend more time learning tags, or programs such as FeedRinse. I need to look at Moreover too. The potential of APML could help me better use RSS feeds. The tutorial included for this lesson demonstrated Feedster, which seems to be defunct now??? I'm going to spend the rest of my lesson time on that function. It seems to me that previously I set up screens/filters in Google Reader. That appears to be part of the next lesson so I'll hold off on that, but that' where my interest lies.

I like Google Alert and want to see what use I can make of it, combined with RSS feeds.

RSS feeds have other advantages, however. I like looking at the top 100 lists to see what is popular. RSS feeds are great for a website creator to develop an audience. I see RSS as much more valuable for the business than the consumer. If I am a small town newspaper, I would put an RSS link on my page in hopes that people would automatically view my updates daily, or even hourly, and thus drive up my usage and advertising rates.

How are others using RSS feeds in the classroom? I read an article by Will Richardson on using RSS feeds in the classroom. He mentioned that you could subscribe to the blogs of your students (where they post assignments for you) and then the RSS feed would keep you apprised of their current work. Another use might be having the share function in Google Reader send relevant materials to your students, especially in a class like current events.

Obviously I need to spend more time refining my skills to see an application of the RSS feed to my teaching, not just my learning.

I'm pretty sure Thoreau would disapprove of the Internet in general, but after a few nights in jail for not using it, he might concede to trying RSS feeds.

Week 3, # 7: Technology Post

Does this sound like anyone you know: "I'm not thinking the way I used to think. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do."

It certainly sounds like me. A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly by Nicholas Carr entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"(http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google) expounds on the notion that we have become "power skimmers" because of nature of the Internet media. Carr provides personal anecdotes from friends who agree that they no longer read longer pieces of literature. Text messaging has reinforced this emphasis on communicating in the briefest manner possible.The article also reviews how earlier technologies, even the typewriter, impacted communication-both writing and reading. Carr concedes that the research hasn't been done yet to explain why/if the Internet is impacting reading. But, he explains, the real question is this: Does the new Internet-type reading change the way we think?

I'm fascinated with Carr's explanation of reading as being non-instinctive, and thus easily lost. Carr intrigues me with his idea that today's Internet encourages us to think efficiently but not reflectively. He claims that the business world wants us to move quickly from page to even shorter page, thus putting their ads in our vision. The traditional media, he insists, has no choice but to bend to the way of the Internet. Carr includes many examples of how reading and thinking were impacted throughout history. He also quotes famous people from antiquity to the 20th century on the impending doom on society because of changes in our we process knowledge. This gave the article a feeling of perspective and history.

Carr concludes that our society will lose it's richness if we allow this to continue: "In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, ...we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas ...If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture."

Because I believe that Carr is correct in his assessment of our changing reading and writing, I see the librarian's role as the "balancer." We need to show our students that reading is as cool as I-Life. We need to work with our teaching staff to have them require that students read deeply and broadly within each content area. I'm as addicted to technology, particularly the Internet, as anyone I know, but I'd give up the Internet before I'd give up books. Luckily, I don't have to make the choice. If our students aren't taught to read deeply, the choice will be taken from them.

These ideas are not too surprising coming from a person who entitled her blog Live to Read. I'd love to hear what others think about the article.

#6, Week 3: A Mashup

Remember the first time you ever saw a "customimzed" magazine, one with someone's personal picture on the cover? It seemed so cool and almost convincing. For that one second, you thought your friend was really on a magazine. (I guess you have to be of a certain age to remember this.) Now anyone can make a magazine cover. I chose to use our pictures from a vacation last week to Italy to create my own retirement magazine.

Other than just for fun, I'm not sure why I would use this mashup rather than Publisher, etc, but perhaps that's because I have creation programs on all of my computers, school and home.

I'm going to explore the other mashups to see how I might use them. I'm thinking of a project in which I make playing cards--some with book covers, some with characters from the books. Students would have to make sets matching the books and the characters. Or cards with books and actors. Which actor would best be suited to playing the main role?

I've seen a number of people using Flickr for writing prompts, an idea I enjoy. One of my personal favorite mashups is the use of Google/Yahoo maps in other applications, such as a library's contact page on the Internet.

Off to learn more Web 2.0

#5, Week 3: Flickr is Our Hero

Flickr was extraordinarily easy, at least in the basic mode. I can see how easy it would be to use this to share photos with family or to share info about the library. Random thoughts: This is a good way to "archive offsite" photos you would never want to lose in the event of a personal disaster such as a fire or flood. The idea that "someone" else holds my pictures makes me pause. Programs such as Flickr are very popular with my friends, especially those with children. I'm looking forward to trying some advanced features.

I chose to upload a photo that shows one of the students' favorite days in the library: Guitar Hero Tournament Day. As one of our celebrations during School Library Month, we have a Guitar Hero challenge. Earlier we select the five best players in the school. We set up two supersize screens with 5-channel sound. In one area, students can challenge one of our Guitar Hero Masters. In the other area, students can play against anyone. To participate, students pay a nominal fee, thus raising money for the library.

I'm pretty sure that if I think hard enough I'll find a way to relate Guitar Hero to reading and research. Until then, all I can say is that we do it because it is fun.

Tech question: Did most of you upload your photo from Flickr or from your hard drive?

#3, Week 2: Why I Love Being a Librarian --and learning to make lemonade

Today's Top Five Reasons I Love Being a Librarian

5. I work surrounded by computers, books and potential readers.

4. Kids think I'm a genius when I say, "Assassinations? Go to 364.1." The easiest thing can make you look great.

3. Teachers think I'm a genius when I say, "I can fix that for you. Restart the computer and everything will be fine." Another easy statement with big results.

2. My fellow librarians are the most dedicated, enthusiastic educators I have ever met.

1. Professional development includes creating my own avatar. How cool is that? I think this training program will be useful and fascinating.

Reviewing the 7 & 1/2 Habits online tutorial reminded me that professional development will have challenges, that everything won't work the first time, that lemonade can be made from those life lemons. Seeing problems as challenges will be the most difficult habit for me to develop. Maybe it's that half full/half empty glass syndrome. I think my aversion to problems is exacerbated by never having enough time, even if I am "off" for the summer. So now I'm going to think of myself as the librarian who is learning to make lemonade.