Thing #8: RSS feeds

Who has been keeping these things a secret?! How much fun is it to have the news and blogs you want to keep up with in one place? So much fun! I love it!

In my own life, I am going to subscribe to my brother's blog so I don't have to keep checking to see if he's added anything. He has such dry humor. I love to see his take on life now that he's over 30 too! I have also added some librarian blogs and ... and an American Idol "news" feed. I do need a little bit of gossip, plus how else am I going to know what my fifth graders are talking about on Thursdays?

For use by a librarian, I would think an RSS link on the library website would be great. Especially great if teachers have students blogging book reviews or hot topics. What a great way to share what's going on at school!

Thing #7: Google

Who knew that Google had so much to offer! I played with the iGoogle tools and had lots of fun setting up my own webpage. I loved the "To Do" list! I may even be able to convince my husband that this should become our homepage! That way if I don't want to know what Brittany Spears is getting into trouble about today, it won't come up on my screen! Plus, I think my husband will really like the comics that can be added to the page. He's a fan of "Calvin and Hobbes" and misses seeing them in the paper every day. A daily dose of the funnies is good for the soul, I say! Also, I can add the food for my soul by having the daily Bible verse added. The best thing is that we can add or subtract things depending on what we are interested in at the time. When March Maddness is happening, we can get college basketball info, but when it's over we can take it off until next year. But by far the coolest thing about my igoogle page is that the theme picture changes with the time of day!

I also set a Google Alert so I can keep up with the "American Idol" buzz that I miss by going to night class! This feature I can see being used by high school students who are researching a current event. News articles can be sent straight to their email and eliminate searching endlessly for applicable items.

I will have to spend more time playing with the other features another time. Who knows what else I will find to use creatively with my students!

Thing #6 : mashups

Wow! There's a plethora of crazy stuff people are dreaming up out there! And it's really cool to play with them all. Although, I have to admit, I had a tough time getting the mosaic to work at first. So I took a deep breath, walked away from the darn computer, and came back after lunch to a much more cooperative computer. Click here to see the mosaic I made of my niece emily .

I think there are many possibilities to using mashups in the library and beyond! The fun tools in Flickr had so many ways that students could use their creativity to illustrate something for an assignment. And Flickr will even supply them with the photos to use, so not having the right picture or a digital camera can not be used as an excuse! I love it! For example, through the tags and groups a student could find pictures to illustrate the parts of a story including emotions portayed by main characters and the theme of the book. They could put it into a "pocket album" or create a trading card for each story element. And who wouldn't love to make a magazine cover to illustrate some personal achievement or even design one about a country of study or an event in history. The ideas just keep coming!

The only thing I would need to do would be to play with and make sure I know what I'm doing before I let the students loose. (Even though some students may be able to figure it out faster than I can right now!) These tools would definitely put some creativity back into the technological projects students are producing these days.