Thing 12 - Digg, Mixx, etc.

I looked at all four social media sites. The one that presented their site the best was Mixx. The tutorial was very good. Being able to watch a video of the site was more informative than reading how the site works. If I were to join one, Mixx is the one I would join.

At this point in my career and life, I can't see that I would use this a lot. I think the opportunity is fantastic. I just can't see myself being that tied to my computer that I would look there very often.

If I was working in a reference library, I might see a good use for it. However, I think there are better sources for sharing resources. The social side of this seems much more personal than professional. There is nothing wrong with that, but I don't want the computer to be my way of interacting socially.

It is very easy to share stories to one of these sides. I did that from the New York Times to Digg. Someone else had already shared that same story. But the ease of use is amazing. 

So many of these 23 Things are all inter-related. The knowledge I have gained in just these first 12 Things is great. But I am also finding that I am spending way more time on the computer learning these than I will eventually do in my day to day life. After I have completed the 23 Things, I will go back and use all those that will support me in my teaching in my personal life.

This continues to be a great learning opportunity!

Thing 11 - Del.icio.us/Pagekeeper

There are a few of these things that I have used before and del.icio.us is one of them. This is a great tool for our media department to use to share professional bookmarks that will help us with our curriculum. We have always e-mailed these sites to each other and then bookmarked them on our own computers. Why not share them in one place?

I will see if everyone wants to try this. I have some started already. The nice thing is we can make our own del.icio.us site or I can share my list with just the sites that I have marked to share.

I am also going to start a Pagekeeper site for my own media classes. This will be very handy when I do research with different grade levels. There are so many times that the students need to type an entire URL in and that takes time and also allows for many spelling errors. If they simple log on to our Pagekeeper page, all the resources will be right there.

I have now set the Pagekeeper list. How simple!

I will be anxious to show the students as we continue doing our research. Their information is just a click away. Plus I do not have to bother the tech person at our building to make changes to the web site. This is a resource that I can control and make the changes to my own curriclum as I see fit.

I did not explore Furl as I already like del.icio.us and sometimes there are just too many options and I need to stick with these two from Thing 11. But how nice to see all the options that are out there that I did not know about. :)

Thing 10 - Wikis

I do enjoy the Common Craft videos. They explain things so easily. 

I tried setting up a wiki for our district media department last year. Only one other person even tried to log onto it and no one has ever expressed interest in it. It is hard to have much of a wiki conversation by yourself. I will perhaps try again now that I am doing the 23 Things. However, there are very few people in my district doing the 23 things, so it may be a bit of an uphill climb to get anyone else on board. (If there are folks from my district reading this, let me know and we can start up. :)

I do see it as a great collaboration tool. You just need the people to collaborate with.

I just sent an invitation from wikispaces to my department. I will see if they respond to joining the wiki this time or not. :) Time will tell.

Thing 9 - Google Docs

I started a story in Google Docs. I posted it to my blog. Others could go in and change it, add to it, etc. I am still trying to see how I could use this with my media center. I see it more as a tool that our department could use to write curriculum perhaps. But it may be to awkward. Accessing from my blog is easy so I like that.

I like the easy of use of Google Docs. I looked at Zoho Writer also and that was fine, but I think I prefer Google. You can do anything at Google. :)

I think the issue is getting everyone comfortable with finding the document and making the changes. With everyone's busy schedule, I think it will be difficult to get people on board to use this.

I think the way we can work on a document in such a global way is amazing. Our Founding Fathers would be blown away. This is when technology can be so powerful and yet the ease of use is pretty simple.

I will share my document with others and see if anyone wants to make changes. It would be fun to see those changes appear.

Thing 8 - E-Folio

I already have an e-folio account. This is an activity that we use at Hamline for one of the technology courses. I think many teachers have found value in having information about themselves and their professional activities posted here. This was one of the 23 things with which I was a bit familiar. :)

Thing 8 - Picture Trail

I just spent some time at Picture Trail. Sometimes, I don't even know what I have done, but I end up with a cool slide show. These sites are so user friendly with all kinds of choices to arrange and manage a slide show. I changed this quite a few times and the final product just changed each time on my blog. The communication of the computers behind the scenes still amazes me. I have imported so much html language and really don't even know how to write any html. There are so many untapped resources on the web and that is exactly what this 23 Things is going for me. It is showing me all these untapped resources. Now I just have to remember where they all are and use them. I can really see how having students or your classroom or your library have a blog is the way to go. You can show kids how to post these kinds of things and open up communication between home and school. I need to think how to do this so it is quick and easy. Creating a link from my school web site to a library blog would be so easy. I think I am on to something!!

Trip to North Carolina