Thing # 19 Web 2.0 Awards

Have you ever wanted to be on the "cutting edge" of things? Do you ever feel like you are "behind the times" and your students are more "hip" than you are? Don't feel bad, there is hope. Web 2.0 Awards at http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/short is here to help. It is an awesome site with website awards (1st, 2nd, & 3rd place, and honorable mention) for different categories ranging from bookmarking to gaming to social networking. The websites are nominated and voted upon. It is a great launchpad for leaping into the technical savvy world that our students dwell in. If you are looking for specific types of websites for your classroom such as a place to get images for students to use and really don't know anything other than "googling" this is a great place to go. You will find flickr listed under photos and digital imaging and a couple of other websites that are similar in content.

Give Web 2.0 Awards a try and you will soon be understanding some of the "cutting edge" websites that many of your students and colleagues are utilizing.

last minute thought:
Need to slow down all those twitters for a few days while on vacation? Just hit the snooze button. http://twittersnooze.com/

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 #8- RSS

I have been wondering for the longest how RSS worked and now I finally do! Should I be the "gatekeeper of knowlege" or the "tour guide" pointing out all the fabulous things along the way? Now my evil twin has the keys hidden, but guess what, the door is open so who needs the keys anyway? LOL. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndicaton". What it does is it keeps you updated with information that YOU want. Using a reader such as Google Reader, you can select what information you want updates on. You can receive the lastest blog entry from Neil Gaiman or keep up with the latest celebrity info by following Entertainment Weekly updates. The subscriptions that you choose are sent to your reader homepage.
There are so many different ways that a teacher/librarian could use this technology at school. By following fellow librarians and "those in the know" you are able to be on the cutting edge and not left in the dark ages. There was an instant earlier this year when I was following Critical Thinking on Twitter and the CEO announced that they were having a 99cent-$1.99 sale on many of their gifted and talented products. They were giving their Twitter followers an advantage by posting it 12 hours before it was open to the public. I purchased 13 books for less than $25 (shipping and handling included). Yes, membership has its priviledges.
If students were studying a specific current event, the teacher could have a RSS feed that only picks ups that topic and when new information is posted, voila! And the teacher and students save time by not searching the Internet everyday for new information. What a fabulous tool!