Week 7, Thing 16

I love the idea of using a wiki to create subject pathfinders. I've used traditional pathfinders with students before, but having them create their own and allowing others to add to them would be a great collaborative activity. It would also be interesting to try using them between faculty members in the same department or between schools. For example, our social studies department could work together virtually to pool their resources for the Civil War unit that's coming up in the spring.

I'm also interested in using a wiki format for our Reading Olympics team. As students read the books, they can revise/edit the book summaries, add questions, etc. Much easier than trying to get them to meet after school!

Week 6, Thing 14

Who knew there were so many blogs? And that so many of them deal with celebrities? Female celebrities in particular. Hm. I'm still trying to sort out the authority thing on Technorati- as best I can tell, the more blogs that link to your blog, the more authority you have.

Anyway, on to tagging. I tried doing a blog search, post search and tag search for "School Library Learning 2.0". I found 16 blogs, 47 posts and 9 tags. Seems like an odd assortment. I'm still trying to figure out how some of the posts came up under that search, as there doesn't seem to be any connection between the subject of the post and the search term (posts about China, Hunter S. Thompson, and the weather in Tacoma?) Guess it just shows that if I were going to actually blog for anyone other than myself, I would need to get better at tagging so people could find what they want.

Truthfully, I can't see myself ever using Technorati. Perhaps if I were an avid blog reader, it might be useful. I suppose I could direct students to it to find more info on a topic they were interested in, but it would probably be better for older students with more experience sorting fact from opinion.

Week 6, no thing, just a rant

Okay, I know I keep going on and on about our filters here, but I just have to relate this story so you can understand why I'm so frustrated that I'm ready to throw my computer across the room some days. Today while I was in the middle of editing a post, the web filter blocked me. From a site that I was working in at the time. A site that I had access to only minutes before. And then when I tried to go back to the PSLA blog, it did it again - blocked me from the PLSA site. I didn't just get a warning - I got totally blocked. So our filter is changing it's mind, from minute to minute, about what I have access to, based on criteria that I can't figure out. Why is it that I can see a page one second, and in the next, nope, sorry, you can't look at that any more? And then a few minutes later - hey, just kidding, here you go! And it's not just these sites, or just me. It's happening to teachers across the board, on all different kinds of sites. If it's going to be blocked, then BLOCK IT. ALL THE TIME.
Okay, I'm done now. End of rant. I promise.

Week 6, Thing something or other

I went ahead and created a delicious account for myself. What an ordeal. While I can access the main page of delicious at work, I couldn't set up an account due to some technical (read: filter) issues. However, I can't access my bookmarks at work from home even when I use our VPN. And I'm scatterbrained enough that remembering to export my favorites while at work so that I could set up the account from home took a while. However, it's all set up and pretty now. I'm loving that I have access to my bookmarks wherever I go, because it was seriously annoying when I'd go to work on something at home and forget that I couldn't remember that great site that I had . The ability to share them would be great for collaborative planning with teachers IF WE HAD THE ABILITY TO ACCESS THIS AT WORK. Providing students with the ability to work more effectively in research groups by sharing their bookmarks is intriguing, but again, it would have to be done AT HOME. Can you sense the frustration I'm feeling here?

Week 4, Things 8 & 9

A little frustration this week trying to set up a bloglines account. I never received a confirmation email (despite repeatedly checking my email account and returning to bloglines to request that a new confirmation be sent), so I couldn't get the account up and running. I moved over to google reader, which is easy enough to set up (and which I'm sure means that the next time I check, the confirmation from bloglines will be sitting in my inbox). I now have feeds coming in from YALSA, AASL, and SLJ as well as some news and weather sites. I think the SLJ book news feed could be helpful - I might be able to stay more on top of all of the new books coming out if I don't have to wait to find the time to read through all of the issues of the magazine that pile up around my desk. However, part of me thinks that I just won't find the time to read the feed either. It will wind up sitting around waiting for me to find a spare moment just like the print version does.