Thing #12 - Rollyo

Okay, I see now. I have read many postings about Rollyo and like so many others; I did not quite get it at first. However, now I think I do. If you typically go to several sites to look up specific types of information, then you could create a Rollyo search engine designed specifically to search your several designated web sites all at once.

For example, if I was doing research on multimedia and I had discovered that almost all my answers were found at 7 different sites, then I could create a Rollyo search engine to search those seven sites. So, the next time I wanted to look up anything about multimedia, I could just search once.

Or another example would be if I wanted to find videos. I could create a Rollyo search engine to search all the many sites that have videos.

Or if I had found 27 sites about World War II I could create a Rollyo search engine to search those 27 sites all at once for anything I might want to know about World War II.

Or maybe I could create a search engine containing all the museums I could find.

The ideas go on forever.

Thing #11 – LibraryThing

I created an account at LibraryThing. I added 16 of my all time favorite books by Science Fiction Author, Isaac Asimov (I can’t believe he has been dead for 16 years). Even though I checked out the “Suggestions” tab and found some books that I might like to read based on what books the social network folks read that also read my favorite Asimov books, the act of re-reading my Asimov titles made me want to re-read them again instead of any new ones.

I also joined a group and am watching a group. One of the most recent posts in one of the groups was titled “I want to be a Librarian because I love books”. The writer explains that loving books is not enough to be a good Librarian—a sentiment to which I agree.

The ideas I have heard of using LibraryThing in education include setting up third graders with an account and having them add and review every book they read. If they continue that activity through 12th grade think of the rich history and journal of part of their life that will exist.

Here is another use of LibraryThing. Groups of folks are entering book collections from famous people from the past. See this blog posting “Dead People’s Books”. The idea for schools is that by looking at what books famous people read, we get an idea of who they might be like today in tastes and attitudes. Just another idea for a social networking tool that happens to transcend time.

Thing #10

Image generators are fun and easy. It has been inspiring reading many others’ experiences with them. They are great ways for students to summarize almost any topic they are studying. Brevity is always appreciated (IMHO).

Here are a few that were created during a time of testy technology torture.

This one I think is from ImageChef.

This may also be from ImageChef.

The one above is particularly apropos because when I tried to upload two more guess what I got?

Oh well, better to stop now than to write something I will regret.

Update:

From Happy Face Generator

And from Comic Strip Generator:

Thing #9

I tried several blog search tools. I had not used the Bloglines Search tool before. It was easy to use. The results were plentiful, but there was no quality control. I really liked the Edublog’s award winners because I assumed the results were quality and there was a small enough number that I felt I could check all I wanted. I did in fact find a site to put in my blog roll. I did not bother with any of the news feed search because I don’t care that much to know the news.

Thing #8

What do you like about RSS and newsreaders? I like the efficiency or the magic of the information I choose coming to me in one place rather than me having to go to many places to check on the information I want.

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life? I am intrigued by the “share” possibilities. The Librarian Philosopher’s “Library 2.0 news” RSS feeds shared contains more information about the Library 2.0 world than any one person could possible assimilate. At A Library By Any Other Name there is a great RSS feed shared about books, books, and more books called “Check Out Blog Posts About All Things Books!”. I could see each department chair finding the ten best blogs or news feeds or association feeds about their subject and put them into a reader for all the other teachers in that department to read in order to stay current in their fields. Maybe the other teachers make suggestions as to which feeds to add to the reader.

How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology? To extend the example above, the librarian could take all the shared feeds from the department chairs and post them on one blog or web page so that anyone interested in staying current in any subject could go to one page.

Thing #7

Google Alerts push information to the user (by user defined criteria) as opposed to having to pull information from say a web page. An alert would be the opposite of browsing. I suspect creating the right search string would be critical. Students could create alerts for a class project until the completion, then move on to another subject.

Google Calendar looks really good. I have too many calendars now to add another one, but I will be thinking about how to consolidate some into a Google Calendar. I wonder if you can print a weeks worth of calendar activities in a one-page summary to carry around. I like the reminders being able to be sent to a cell phone.

iGoogle is a great way to have lots of selected information pushed to one web page. Students could create tabs for classes and have information relevant to that class pushed to that tabbed page. Google Alerts could be sent to a Gmail account and displayed on an iGoogle page.

Google Notebook—I wonder if I can create a page that only I can see. If so, it would be great to have all my accounts web pages, blogs, usernames, and passwords at one location that only I could see with just one password.

Picasa is like Flickr in managing photos. How would one decide which to use?

Google Scholar is a useful tool that might warrant being linked next to your online subscription databases. I read one blogger whose students used Google Scholar a lot and many of the articles were to be found in JSTOR so she bought JSTOR to meet the needs of her students.

Google Advanced Search is particularly useful for finding PowerPoints on a subject. I suspect it would be useful for finding JPEGs Excel documents etc…

Google Earth, from all I have heard, is wonderful. One downside is having to download software. That brings up firewall and space on hard drive issues.

Thing #6

Flickr has a lot of extra fd's Toys that have unlimited uses in education. I have spent time looking at them and found too many to count. As many others I have made a few Trading Cards. Others have posted about suing trading cards for biographies, presidents, literature characters, etc. What about elements from the elemental chart, or geometry proofs.

Here are mine: