Thing # 14 Technorati

For thing number 14, I was forced to look at Technorati once again. I do think this website is cool for finding new blogs and websites to visit based on your interests. I do like that once you pick a topic, say family for instance, on the right hand side of Technorati includes latest articles that deal with family. I found one interesting article about a girl who has half of her brain removed and recovered. Who knew you could get half of your brain removed. If it weren't for Technorati, I would have never read this article.

I have never been a person who is on the internet for more than 30 minutes unless I am doing school work. I would ask my husband how he could be on the computer for hours, I now understand. Lately, I have found all sorts of cool sites and blogs that I am visiting weekly. I think Technorati is a good site to find new and interesting things that the internet has to offer.

Thing # 13 Tagging and Delicious

I have to say that I wish I knew about the site Delicious earlier in the month. There is this almond spinach salad that I like to make a lot that I got from Recipies.com. You would think that I would write the recipe down since I like to make it a lot. Well, guess again. I now can pull up the recipe up anytime I want all because of Delicious. Delicious is a great website to go to when you would like to bookmark a website. Instead of bookmarking it to your favorites, you can now tag it. I recommend everyone checking out this website.

As I was exploring the site, my husband asks me what am I working on for school. Here I was thinking that I had something new to share with him but of course, he already knew what the site was. I did get to explain to him and his computer geek friend about RSS feeds which made me feel important.

I think Delicious is great for educators. There are several times when I am looking for information that would enhance my teaching. I like how I can tag the websites that I find useful and share it with my colleges. I also like how you can click on a tag that is interesting and it will pull up some good websites to visit. I have to say that 23 things has made more technology savvy.

Thing # 12 Community through Commenting

I never knew there were rules for commenting on peoples blogs. I feel like I should take my own advice when I tell my students to back up there thoughts with a because. I'm always reminding my students to have meaningful reading responses and here I am... I should be having meaningful comments. Although, I am more of a lurker than a commenter. I have to say that I am getting better. I did enjoy reading How to Comment Like a King (or Queen) from Cool Cat's blog. I think his suggestions were helpful and useful. I know I like it when I have new comments on my blog so I have been trying to do the same with other blogs. Hopefully my comments have improved.

I did find some interesting blogs that I have added to my page. Hopefully I can add more to the list. It takes me awhile to find blogs that I can see myself visiting after all this is over. Simply Stated is a blog that I found. It is a blog from the magazine Real Simple. I love that magazine because the cover everything from food, home, fashion, etc. Simply Stated has postings about food, book, home, etc. I was interested because one of the postings was about cute items she found at Z Gallery.

Why haven't I visited blogs before? I didn't realize how fun they can be.

Thing # 11 Library Thing

I have never heard of LibraryThing but was recently introduced to Shelfari which is very similar. They both have the same concept which gears towards book lovers. I like Library Thing although I would prefer Shelfari instead. When I was exploring LibraryThing, I had to think of the titles of books I wanted to add which was a little difficult. I like that Shelfari allows you to choose from books that are categorized for you according to most popular, most comments, and best reviews. Looking at the book covers allows me to choose books that might be of interest. I did like that LibraryThing has a list of topics to read from as well as blogs which were on the right side.

It think both sites would be great for students to have book discussions with other schools. I have lots of friends who are third grade teachers in other districts and I think it would be fun if we could set up a group discussion for our students to participate in. I know they would enjoy it knowing that students from other districts are reading their comments.

Thing # 10 Online Image Generator

I could spend hours visiting all these websites. I was a big fan of Big Huge Labs back when I first noticed it a month or so ago. I like all the features it has to offer. This time around, I spent most of my time on Scrapbook Generator. I loved all the layouts it had to offer. I did take me forever to figure out how to upload the picture. I guess it would of helped to click on the upload button. How dumb of me. Scrapbook generator allows you to pick many layouts such as birthday, holiday, and other cute themes. I like to scrapbook although I never have the time.

I also played around with Make Word Mosaic. I've seen this image before on someones blog and I really liked it. My kids are currently studying poetry. They have written some poems about color and I would think this would be a fun way for them to display their poetry.

Thing # 9 Useful Related Blogs and News

I have never been a blog person before this project. I think just because I never really researched them to find ones that I like. Now that I am somewhat forced to find some blogs I like, I have enjoyed them. I liked Technorati the best out of the other search tools. I like the look of the website as well as the categories at the top to help narrow your search. Of course, I'm always drawn to the celebrity gossip so I found this blog, Just Jared, that I was able to add to my RSS feeder. I did not enjoy Syndic8 very much. It is not eye appealing. ( As you can tell, I am really into the look of the website. I should get over that.) As I click on some of the links, they were somewhat confusing.

Thing # 8 RSS Reader

I have never heard of RSS feeder before so I enjoyed the exploring and seeing everything it had to offer. I think it's a great way to save people time. Technology just gets better and better with how people receive information. I explored Google Reader because I already had a gmail account. I like how I can get all my celebrity gossip all in one place although I do enjoy going to the websites. I like looking at the colored backgrounds and graphics. I think Google Reader is a little boring to look at. It is nice to go to one place to see if the websites have updated information instead of revisiting the websites which I tend to do. I think this is a great way for teachers to keep up with student blogs or projects. I was thinking this would be great for when students post new comments on Shelfari . Teachers would be updated on new posts and keep track of those who are behind.

Thing # 7- Google

I've always heard all the things Google has to offer although I have never really spent the time exploring. My husband loves Google Docs. I think it would be a great way for educators to use. It would be easier to collaborate and add to documents without having to email each other all the time.

I have recently found out about Google Education which is really cool. They offer many different tools educators can use. I think at first, it is somewhat confusing, although I think the more time you time you spend, you realize how you can utilize the site.