Technorati

Who knew there was a place dedicated to search for blogs?! I sure didn't. 


When I went to Technorati's blog directory, I didn't know what to expect. 


There are major categories and within those big categories, there are sub-categories. For example, entertainment, business, sports, politics, autos, technology, living, green, and science are represented someway. The categories that are well represented are entertainment, business, politics, technology, and living. The categories that are lacking compared to those categories are sports, autos, green, and science.


I searched the blogs for "books." I got 11 results out of the 1193066 blogs on the site. I was surprised that I only got that many results. When I searched blog posts for "books" I got 1129 results about books.  It is interesting to see the difference of searching the blogs versus the blog posts. I think it depends on how the blogs define themselves and the tags on the blog posts give more results.

Diigo

I have heard of Diigo, but never used it. I think it would be beneficial to use to have a way to keep your favorite websites together. Also, it is a good resource of how to keep your research together when you are writing a paper or designing a learning module.

I looked through this Diigo group about elearning 2.0 and social software. It has a lot of links to social media, cloud software, computer issues, and learning processes. Some comments and questions are though provoking from the links on this group. I think this certain group would benefit educators or people that want to know more about social software on the Internet.

Rollyo

Well, I tried to create a Rollyo: Roll Your Own Search Engine. I registered, set up a search engine for this blog. Here is a screenshot of what I did:

I made a Rollyo with sites for learning and reference. It is just a simple one with a few websites for educational purposes. I think Rollyo would be beneficial for media specialists or educators that want their students to search only sites they think would give the students the best results. It's neat to create your very own searchroll that will only search what you want it to. Pretty cool.

LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a pretty neat tool to use for anyone to use. It's fun to pick and choose the books to link to your profile. I had a great time searching for my favorite books and adding them to my collection. I could have stayed on the site for a long time putting all sorts of books into my collection.

For librarians, it would be a good way to separate books into different topics and have the collections ready for students. For example, one collection could be about the Civil War and another about Photosynthesis. It would be an easy way to teach kids how to find books. LibraryThing is a cool technology to use for anyone.

Generated Image

I made up a newspaper article image via here. It was fun to input the information and have it generated for me.

Skype Me!

Skype is a neat way to stay in contact with your loved ones, but it is also a great way to bring in guest speakers or chat with another colleague. Skype is fun to play around with and especially for me, since I am far from my hometown, it is a great way to see my parents and talk to them.

Perhaps a cool idea would be to have people that cannot make it into the library for story time or reading time and use Skype for them to see and hear the kids. I also think that Skype would be beneficial for a kid if they are stuck at home with a contagious disease, but can still learn. Skype would alleviate the contagious disease but also let the kid learn!

I think back to when I was growing up, and instant messaging was all the rage. Now it is video calling via Skype or another video conferencing program. Skype would be a great way to include those that are not usually included in a lesson. You can also employ the instant messaging with Skype. It is pretty cool.

Another point for Skype is that you can call phones from the program (if you pay a subscription fee).

So, download Skype and get calling.

Wiki What?

Wikis are a great way to get information out to the public in a way that most people can understand. Wikis are also a way to collaborate and combine ideas with multiple people. It is great to have a space where a group of people can come together and work on a single project.

I am using a wiki for one of my courses and so far, it's been great. I really enjoy being able to design, edit, delete, add, etc. to the wiki. We've been collaborating and editing our wiki. We are learning as we go along and now I know even more about wikis than I did before.

It is an easy way to start a site for a topic to get out information. I think it's pretty neat that libraries can use wikis as a way to have a web presence. And the best part, if you don't have a lot of money, it's FREE! I know that you can buy packages that allow you to do more with the wiki, but just for a small library, a free wiki would be a great start.

I also think that wikis are a good starting point to any research question or if you just want some background on a topic. Most of the time I search Wikipedia to get a base for the topic, I rarely use Wikipedia in academic papers, but it's a good place to start. It's hard to trust Wikipedia unless it has reliable sources.

I found a Harry Potter wiki that looks pretty awesome. It has a lot of information regarding all things Harry Potter. Enjoy!