week 5, thing 10 (online generators)

I tried a bunch of online generators and here are the results.
fd's Flickr Toys at BIG HUGE Labs
here is the motivation poster I created by using a photo of my branch that I uploaded to flickr. I found most of the toys easy to use on this site.




Pyzam.com
The generator Blog had lots of fun links. One of the links for a scratch game sent me to pyzam.com on this site, I found this generator that would wish visitors to your blog/site, a happy day and would automatically change each day

Get your own Happy Anyday Greeting!




Meez.com



While Meez.com was easy to use and offered lots of options, it took a really long time to set up an account and also often took a long time to process the changes that you made to the avatar. I found exporting to be pretty simple too.

Another generator that might interest you...













If you like Captain Underpants, here is a name generator available at scholastic
Just enter in your name and Professor Poopypants will assign you a silly name.

week 4, thing #9 (MERLIN and other feeds)

I visited MERLIN, I found the calendar of statewide trainings and the learning links useful. Overall, there wasn't that much content on the site. I visited Feedster and created a widget. I don't know how useful this site really is, since search results usually included a lot of irrelevant content not really related to the search terms. I found Syndix8.com difficult to navigate. Of all the suggested sites, I really liked Topix.net. It linked you to a variety of news sources from the town of your choice. I thought it was better than the local news feature on Yahoo news. And lastly, Technorati. On this site, I liked that you could make a watch list for subject matter, I guess this is similar to Feedster's widget though. I would have to say that Bloglines.com was by far may favorite site for RSS feeds. It is easy to navigate, the site is organized and clean. And all of the feeds are together and easy to access. But it is not without its flaws. When I originally selected my RSS feeds, I thought that I would be able to go to one source for all of my news and blogs, but I have found that not all RSS feeds are updated on a regular basis. Feeds for Yahoo News and some sections of the NYT (like book reviews) didn't update regularly, so I have returned to visiting those websites.

week 4, thing 8 (RSS Feeds)

I have had a Bloglines account for sometime now, but really don't use it on a regular basis. Since it had been so long since I choose my feeds, I decided to delete most of them and start over. I found a great selection of blogs related to librarianship and the arts. I also found out that I could add the blogs of friends and many of the news or magazine sites that I visit daily. I found it pretty easy to choose subscriptions, but was a little annoyed that when you subscribed to a blog, you were not returned to your search but to the homepage.

week 3, thing 7 (technology)

A few weeks ago, I attended the ALA conference in DC. In the exhibition hall, I attended a demo of a new service from Scholastic called Bookflix. Bookflix offers storybook videos and non-fiction e-books for pre-K to 2nd grade. Parents and children can view a storybook video of books such as Click, Clack Moo: Cows that Type and then read or listen to a non-fiction title such as Let's Visit a Dairy Farm. This service offers a great selection of classic books paired with non-fiction titles. The read along function highlights the words as the children reads and also allows the child to read definitions of words along the way. In addition to reading and listening to the books, Bookflix offers educational games that reinforce reading comprehension and internet resources for learning more about the subject (when using the internet resources the child never leaves Bookflix). This program is available via subscription similar to a database and can also be accessed remotely. I think Bookflix would be great tool to promote early literacy and great for older children to improve their reading. Parents are always asking for ways to improve their children's reading and Bookflix would be a great tool and also an activity that parents and children can do together.