Thing #14- Technorati and Tags

http://www.technorati.com/ is a website that keeps up with all the blogs out there in the mighty blogosphere and determines authority based upon how many hits the blog has gotten. You can view what are the top blogs and even the top topics of the moment. It even has a section for following twitter posts called Twitterati. "Twittorati tracks the tweets from the highest authority bloggers, starting with the entire Technorati Top 100 and soon including many more of the web's most influential voices." You can see the latest tweets and blogs from the these writers all in one spot instead of following links. You could use this in the classroom to follow specific topics and get the blogs on that topic all on one page. :)

Thing #12- Blogging

To be an effective blogger you need to be an effective communicator. Comments play an important role in communication. According to Vicki Davis' Cool Cat Teacher Blog there are several things you need to keep in mind when commenting:

• Write a meaningful comment. As teachers, we are used to putting a happy face sticker on things and moving on to the next item on our agenda. Explain what it is about the commentary that resonates with you and if nothing does, don't comment.
• If you have written about it, hperlink to it. You give the blog credibility as well as "giving yourself credibility as one who participates and truly cares about your topic and doesn't just have selfish aims."
• If you have a blog, comment about yourself. It personalizes it as well as creates possible traffic for your own blog.
• Use a comment tracking service. Vicki Davis recommentds CoComment. You are able to track comments you have made on various sites and see if the author of the site has responded. CoComment will also create tag clouds for your comments.
• Don't be afraid to comment. It doesn't matter if you are a newbie or an old pro, we all have something valuable to contribute to the conversation.
• Teach commenting and remember the power of words. Students need to be taought the proper way to comment. To paraphrase Thumper as he was talking to Bambi, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Consider how you would feel if someone wrote that particular comment to you. The web is full of bad examples of adults doing the wrong thing. (Just look at some of the comments regarding the death of Michael Jackson.) We need to instill proper netiquette in ourselves and in our students.

There are ways to get people to comment on your blogs:

• Ask questions
• Be open ended
• Invite comments
• Interact with comments left
• Make it easy to comment
• See

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/10/12/10-techniques-to-get-more-comments-on-your-blog/ for additional ways.

Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Blog: http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-to-comment-like-king-or-queen.html

Thing #9-Useful Library Blogs

I began my search among the millions of blogs at Google Blog Search entering Library2Play in the search box. I was immediately "greeted" with blog updates from many of my classmates. Angie was the first one I saw. :) When I went to Blogline and entered the same search term, I didn't see anything that related to our class. There was a post by someone with library in their name who was basically writing about the death of her baby brother. There were not any relevant hits on the first several pages of the search. At that point I gave up looking, it seemed not worth my time to search any more.

There are several wonderful librarians out there blogging away enlightening the minds of many. I went to Edublogs' award winners and typed in librarians and a "slew" of bloggers popped up. Many of them we have discussed in class such as Doug Johnson (The Blue Skunk) and Joyce Valencia from SLJ. I tried Syndic8.com but the layout just drove me away. There is so much potential for blogging in the classroom. Thanks to all my classmates who created blog lessons for our midterm.

Thing #3 Creating a blog

Creating a blog is not as scary as it seems. It took more time to dress up my avatar than it did to set up the avatar. I did find a great widget to add to place books that I have read or want to show. http://www.shelfari.com/ I will definitely be putting lots of books on my shelf. It is easiest to go to shelfari and insert the widget from there.