"Prepare us for the future, not your past," say the students

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CIh7FWv4UA

Thing #8 RSS Route

Subscribing to RSS feeds is like subscribing to magazines, but much cheaper and they don't pile up around the house. I subscribed to recommendations such as 2 Cents Worth, Goddess of YA Literature, Blue Skunk, etc. I also subscribed to Quotes of the Day. I shared some of the quotes on my blog that I found thought-provoking. Quotes are quick ways to expose students to a variety of voices in literature and media. Almost daily, my students write quick-writes in response to a topic related to our current unit. Quotes of the Day can provide food for thought for students before they write. Another application I believe will be helpful to me is accessing feeds that relate to topics in my graduate classes, especially those that ask us to research other sources. I will need to focus my reading or else I will be following the RSS route down too many lanes until I end up miles from my original destination.

Thing #7 Google Greats

Google has some of the most useful tools. My favorite Google applications are Google Docs, Calendar, and Scholar Search. I have used Google Docs before and encouraged my students to use it. It is great for when you are working on a document at home and then want to access that document at school from another computer. Flash drives are amazing, but they can get misplaced (ask my son). Google Docs does not have to be attached to a lanyard; it is available at the touch of a computer keyboard.
Today, I put my graduate classes into my Google Calendar. With so many different activities happening with my three jobs and three teenagers, and now with two graduate classes, a calendar just might keep me sane. Or at least let me know where I will be when I go insane.
I was able to search on Google scholar for G. Hartzell, and I can see that I will be able to use this application to search for other important authors related to my library science classes.

Thing #6 Bashful Bookr

I was so thrilled to find Bookr. I immediately set out creating my own book with beautiful pictures. Just as I was about to put my finishing touches on the last pages, my book disappeared! So, I decided to try again. After recreating the first book, I was about to publish, and then, my book disappeared again! This was a hard lesson to learn. I assumed I had as much time as I needed to create my masterpiece, but there must be a timeout built in. I felt so disappointed that I was not able to finish and publish my bookr.
I played around with some other toys and found the color pickr to be just amazing. Not sure what to do with it as far as using it, but it was fun to look at on the webpage. My experiences with mashups and third party sites taught me that I have so much more to learn!

Golden opportunities

Fisher
Originally uploaded by -- brian cameron --

So many books, so little time!

Originally uploaded by aptronym

Thing #5 Fun with Flickr

Participatory learning: what a great concept! I had fun exploring Flickr with the mindset of a future librarian. I can imagine a variety of applications: posters featuring themes, fliers promoting programs, newsletters presenting ideas. I found many pictures of libraries and their celebrations, and believe a library webpage would be more interesting if it contained more photos with a focus. I think the idea of using Picnik to edit photos is wonderful. I definitely plan to use this tool to "pic" the best photos to post. Choosing favorites as I searched was helpful since it gave me a group of photos to examine closer once I had them all in one place. I chose to group and tag photos of shelves filled with books. My favorite mantra when I walk into a bookstore or library is "So many books, so little time."