Thing #7 - Web 2. 0 Communication Tools

I've been using IM since the early days of ICQ. It was a lot cheaper for a poor college student to chat online with their college friends during breaks than it was to call long distance. We still talk once in a while using AIM.

There are so many good things that you can do with IM. I like the idea of a virtual reference desk. Or how about live chat troubleshooting for your computer (if you still have another computer to get to the Internet)? You don't have to juggle the phone and the keyboard. You can chat up a person sitting in a lab four buildings away from their desk and pick their brains for answers to your questions or problems.

There are also bad things you can do with IM. The fact that it isn't secure against hacking and viruses irritates me. Also, I worked for a boss a few years back that used the IM program as a spy tool. If you weren't logged on to it, that boss assumed you were not at work. It also takes a degree of anonymity on the Internet.

As for webinars, if they are well done, they are an excellent tool for information distribution. With $4 a gallon gasoline, who wants to run to the Twin Cities for a two-hour training session that's all done in Powerpoint anyway? I did not attend one of the Minitex or OPAL webinars today, but I've done other webinars in the past so I'm familiar with how they work.

Thing #6 - Online Image Generators

I'm on a roll now. I continue to be amazed by how easy Big Huge Labs is to use. My students would really like the projects they could create with just a few clicks of the mouse and a picture or two.

The trading card would be really cool for students new to the building to collect. They'd get to know all the teachers and staff within the first few days of school. You could also do trading cards for Maud Hart Lovelace books or most wanted books! These tools make it so easy to generate the graphics that it's no longer a tedious chore using Photoshop or one of its cousins.

As for copyright and licensing issues...the Energizer Bunny you see in all these is a perfect example. I took the pictures of the balloon, so technically I can use the picture for whatever I want, right? Except if I want to make money off them, do I now have to get permission from the copyright owner of the bunny? Do I need to get a license? If I find this on the Internet, from whom do I get permission from to use it? Do I get permission at all? Intellectual property rights are a real source of contention and debate, especially in the computer age when it's so easy to copy and paste.

Thing #5 - More Flickr Fun

This is more like it. I like when the tools work and some cool things happen. I especially had a blast at Big Huge Labs, making posters and magazine covers. This is a very inexpensive and easy way for students to design and create their own magazine covers for a publications or English class. And the speller tool could make some really cool looking title graphics for web pages or posters for the library. This is my magazine cover made using Big Huge Labs website, linked to my Flickr account.




Here's another example, also from Big Huge Labs:

This was made using the motivator poster template. You know those inspiring ones like "Perseverance" or "Sportsmanship"?


I thought when I took this picture last summer that it was perfect for this. Now the poster backs me up. I might actually have this made into a full-size poster for my wall at home!


I'm still not comfortable sharing my photos with the whole wide world, but tools like these make it a little easier to appease the perfectionist in me.

Thing #4 - Flickr

Okay, now I'm getting annoyed. Flickr sounded so-o-o-o easy, but it's been a real pain right in the you-know-where! After finally getting two photos uploaded to my new Flickr account (after two days), I get blocked by my school's firewall when I attempt to link the Flickr page with my blog. Aargh! I can say that I definitely won't be using this any time soon for my library. Too much hassle! It would be nice to have a place for family and friends to share photos, but for right now I don't think it's the right thing for me. I don't like having my "art" out there for the whole world to see and critique.

Uploading this picture in Blogger was actually much easier than Flickr. This picture was taken August 2007 at 40th Avenue West in Duluth, MN. It is CN 406 leading a string of empty ore jennies up the hill.

Thing #3 -- RSS

Wow! The name is right...it's really simple -- to subscribe to feeds at least. In seconds, I had BBC World News, ESPN and Digg added to my subscriptions list using Google Reader. I'm still experiencing validation difficulties with Bloglines, so I'm going with Google for this too. The search function in Google is extremely easy and they package like subjects together to save even more time.

With all the information out there, it's nice to be able to go to one place and see what's changed instead of going to every single site to see if something's changed -- especially the more static sites. I'm sure I'll be searching the web finding more feeds that fit into my needs.

Thing #2 -- Attempt 2

I'm spoiled. Used to be, if you needed to know something, you had to go to the library and look it up there. Now, you leap into cyberspace and type whatever you're searching for into Google or Ask and voila! Hundreds and thousands of articles appear on the screen in front of you. On one hand, it makes it SO easy to find information. On the other hand, there is so much information that it makes it difficult sometimes to figure out the good information from the bad information.

But now I'm finding that I am so behind on all things computer. I've learned just what I need to know to get by, but there are so many new, exciting things out there! My students think it's so cool that I have an avatar -- they even offered suggestions to improve it! If they think that's cool, just wait until I make my own trading card.

I guess what I want out of 23 Things is to catch up to the leading edge of technology again, make it cool to hang out in a library again and show that there is more to life than YouTube and Google.

Thing 2 - Attempt #1

I live two miles out of town and I might as well live on the back side of the moon as far as internet connection speed is concerned. For you poor souls out there still on dial-up, you know my dilemma far too well. I attempted to work on my 23 Things on a Stick -- with the snow there's nothing else to do. Talk about a lesson in futility! These new tools are nice if you have the bandwidth and speed to actually use them =( Even this blogger program takes three to five minutes to load. Guess I'll just have to find time at work to do this. Fiber spoils one very fast, even if it doesn't run at full fiber speed!