Thing 16 - Student 2.0 Tools

The Research Project Calculator and the Teacher Guide could be used in a variety of situations for the students. It can be used to help guide the student in understanding how much time they have to do their project. When I was a student in high school, I know that this would have been extremely helpful. It breaks down each step of the research project. It lets the students know that they have so long to finish each of the steps.

The teacher guides is a great resource for teachers. There are a lot of resources there that a teacher could use to help plan their assignments as well as help the students in understanding what they expect in the assignment.

Thing 15 - Online Games and Libraries

I did the Puzzle Pirates. It was interesting interacting with the other pirates. I am not one for the chat rooms. So I wasn't that talkative to the other pirates. I did enjoy playing the puzzles.

Thing 14 - LibraryThing

My LibraryThing catalog

I've had a LibraryThing account for sometime now. One of my co-workers had mentioned she say a small blurb about it in Real Simple magazine. I then proceeded to set it up. I haven't done much with it for a while now. I would say that the last time I entered any books would have been in December.

I did find that some of my books were pretty popular, especially my Harry Potter books. My other books aren't quite as popular as the Harry Potter.

I was unable to really find any discussion about the books I have in my collection. Most of the conversations that I found were about other books that were similar to the one that I clicked on. I did find another series by Tanya Huff that I did not know she had written.

Thing 13 - Online Productivity Tools

I chose iGoogle as my start page. The reason I chose this it, is because I have a gmail account and find that it is easier for me if I keep everything related to Google.

I did find that stikkit will be useful in the near future. I will however, probably use it for a good week to two weeks, before I decide that it is too much of a hassle to keep inputing stuff online. The Zamzar would be a great productivity tool for at home and even in the library. It could be used in the library when someone has an document that would like to work on at the library, but we do not have the right program to open it. We could then direct them to the Zamzar website and have them convert it in to a document that would work on our computers. I could also use it for myself in the same way.

I did take a look at Backpack. I think that it is a great idea. It would be something that I would want to use if I had my own private business. At our library, we already have an intranet that is set up.

Thing 12 - Do you Digg?

It's hard to say how the library would use these items. It would be a great reference point for our patrons. The patrons could be referred to these websites if they wanted to be able to read all sorts of different types of news. I would use it in my personal life as a way to get different types of news. That I may not see on just a regular news site. I would definitely use it for the Entertainment news that I always seem to miss.

It does seem as a productivity detractor. Mainly because of the fact that I would become distracted and start to read all sorts of different kinds of articles. I know that I would not be able to look at any of these websites while I'm at work. Just because of the fact that I would be come extremely distracted from what I had planned on doing. Other people may find it a productivity enhancer. They could say that because of the fact that you have different types of articles all in one spot. There would be no reason to go from one news site to the next.

I do have to say that doing this thing was the first time that I was introduced to these different sites. I find that if I had known about them, I would have used them sooner. I like that the users have the ability to share the different news articles they find on the web.

Thing 11 - Taggin and Del.icio.us

I have used the Del.icio.us and have decided that I think it is a neat idea. Mainly because then one has the ability to access their bookmarks at any computer. This is a tool that I could have used while I was still in school. It would have been helpful while doing online research. I would use it more now as just a bookmark site. If I needed to find a site and was not at my personal computer, this gives me the access to that site without having to wrack my brain thinking what the dang site address is. I do see the potential for research tool. You have the ability to look at other people's comments on a certain site. There is also the ability to look at the different tags and find different sites/articles.

Thing 10 - Wikis

I like the idea of wikis. It seems like a neat idea to allow everyone the opportunity to give their insight on what is needed or what they believe should be the fact that is on the site.

Wikipedia is a source that many Professors do not like. It is generally one that I avoided during my time in school. (Which is not that long ago) What I would do with Wikipedia is I would use it as a springboard. I would look something up in it, and then I would use that information to go in a different direction than I maybe had originally planned. Of course, this would never go down in my Works Cited/Reference page. This is because I had a couple of Professors who told us that they would mark off points if they saw it on the Works Cited/Reference page. My thought on the banning of Wikipedia is that you really shouldn't ban students from the ability to use what Wikipedia has to offer in expanding their research.

I ended up editing the 23 Things on a Stick Wiki.

Thing 9 - Online Collaboration Tools

I only used the Googledocs. Mainly because of the fact that I have used it in the past and find that it is easier for me to stick with things that I know. I enjoy the fact that anyone that you want to be able to read and edit can with Googledocs. I know that I have used it as a way to be able to edit some of my information from another computer with out having to email to myself or use my jump drive. This was my first time in editing a document. I feel that this is a great idea for if you were going to use it as way to share a group paper with who you are working with. This really cuts down on the time that is spent downloading and uploading attachments.

What would the founding fathers think? I think they are probably turning over in their graves. They probably never thought that in this day and age that people would be slaughtering their documents into something that is laughable.