week 6, thing 13 (del.icio.us)

I looked at the us.ef.ul article and the otter group's tutorial. I found the us.ef.ul article to be very helpful and easy to understand (although the article might be a little out of date since Yahoo accquired del.icio.us). I especially liked the information presented about the flat hierarchy. While I didn't find anything useful on the PLCMCL2 account, I can see how it would be useful for an organization or a group to share this information.
I set up my del.icio.us account and began searching. I found interesting articles, blogs and websites by looking at the popular tags and searching under random tags. I found this site to be interesting and helpful, and pretty easy to use (once you download the tools to your browser). It is something that I will definately use. While I don't have a lot of things bookmarked for work, I do at home. I find that I can never find what folder I put sites into and then I can only use them if I am on my home computer. Plus there are always sites that fit into multiple categories and with del.icio.us, I can add as many tags that I want.

week 5, thing 12 (rollyo)

Overall, I liked the concept of Rollyo. It really could be used to narrow searches and to identify only authoritative sources. There were many useful searchrolls already created by other users and I liked that you could see the specific sites that are being searched. I also found some new websites and blogs by looking at the searchrolls.
I created a searchroll for science fair projects which I will definately add sites to and use during the school year. I don't know if I would really use rollyo to search the entire web, I am kind of partial to Google. You will also find a search tool bar from rollyo on my blog.

week 5, thing 11 (Librarything)

I am not sure if I will use it or not for my personal library. I know I have more than 200 books at home and I am not sure if I want to pay for it. But there is a lot to like about Librarything and I am sure that I could find uses for librarything other than cataloging books. Book Suggester, Unsuggester, tags and subject heading lists could all be used for reader's advisory. The Zeitgeist had listings based on statistics and interesting groupings including authors who have Librarything accounts. I also found valuable information in the Librarything groups. In the Librarians who have Librarything accounts there were postings that related not only to books but librarianship. In regards to the cataloging of books, I liked that you could change the display style to include Dewey or LC numbers or a number of other categories.

If you are interesting in keeping track of what you read but do not necessarily own, you might want to try GoodReads.com. This site allows you to keep track of books you want to read and books that you have read. You can group things into categories and use tags. You can also review a book and see what others are reading. I use to have lots of lists and slips of paper of books to read or to use for storytime. Now it all together in one place.
Also you might want to check out shelfari it is similar to Librarything (and free)

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.

week 3, thing 6 (mashups)

Two mashups that I found were Fastr and Delivr.

Fastr is a game that uses Flickr images. The computer loads pictures with the same tag and the player recieves points based on how fast they guess the image. This game is a creative use of flickr images and is a bit addictive. Some of the tags were easy to guess, while others were more challenging. Delivr is a site that creates e-postcards with images from Flickr. The postcards are imbedded into the email so that the recipient doesn't have to go to a site to view the card. It is also nice because you could use your own images to create a birth announcement or any card or just use another image from flickr. So next time, I can't find a card on Hallmark.com, I can just create my own.

week 3, thing 5 (Exploring Flicker)

Lac Leman..., originally uploaded by ZbigD.

Lac Leman... (Lake Geneva)
I viewed this site, a long time ago. I am impressed by all the new features. Things I liked...

- Calendar view of this month
- Map of the World/ Geotagged
- Popular Tags

There were really a lot of ways to explore (other than just a search box). I also liked the Camera Finder. It offered Specs of digital cameras, and members reviews. Compared to other photo sites, I like the social aspect of this site. I found lots of great photos on the site, but many were copyright protected, so I couldn't import them. The one I choose is of Lake Geneva. I liked the colors and the dimension in this photograph.

Week 1, Thing 2 (Life-Long Learners)

I found the 7 1/2 habits tutorial helpful. The habits which I find easy are developing the plan and creating a learning toolbox. I usually have no problem setting up the goals, its just executing them!
Unless the activity is a scheduled class or an activity required for work, I find it difficult to set time aside. Something always seems to get in the way.
I think the learning contract will be more helpful than a list because it addresses obstacles that you may have and also allows you to break the project into managable task with individual deadlines.
I will try to use the learning contract to keep my next learning activity on track. Perhaps it will work...