Thing 15 ONLINE GAMES & LIBRARIES

I checked out both games, Puzzle Pirates and Second Life. Puzzle Pirates is graphically geared to a younger audience and Second Life is geared to adults and teens. Picture Super Mario Bros vs. Grand Theft Auto. I am not real thrilled with this Thing, I don't have much interest in RPGs. In a work/school setting, this is not allowed anyway. I did the tour of Info Island and thought the authors Poe and Koontz were displayed nicely, but I don't think it would encourage anyone to read.

Thing 14 LIBRARY THING

I found another Thing I already have been using a little bit. I can't believe I actually remembered my log-in and password. I took the opportunity to add some of my titles to LT.


So now I just need a time machine to create some extra time during the day to enter all my books into LT.

Thing 13.4 BACKPACK

I like the BackPack suite of tools, but alas it is not the magic amount; FREE!! Working at a school with no budget can get kind of tough sometimes. BackPack is part of 37 Signals, which I am utilizing Campfire and now TaDa Lists for free. So you can worm around the cost, but it would be nice to have all the features rolled into one place.

Thing 13.3 ONLINE LINE LISTS

I went for the Ta-da list because it is part of the 37 signals group, which also does Campfire (an online chat room) we have been trying out at work. I can already think of uses for this. I created a list of books I have been buying for the HS. I can see creating wish-lists of books, assignments, tasks.

I make lists all the time, so this Thing is right up my alley.

Thing 13.2 CALENDARS

I can't just seem to say Google Docs enough. I have created a calendar and shared it already with my fellow Cub Scout leaders. It works great! I put in important school dates and Cub Scout events and then shared it with the other leaders so they can put in their data. I just love iGoogle.

Thing 13.1 ONLINE PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS

I am always so excited when I find Things I have already done. I am already a user of iGoogle and My Yahoo!. I have never heard of PageFlakes, but I went there and it does the same thing as iGoogle and My Yahoo!. I use iGoogle more, because I like there Google Docs. I create and upload a lot of them. The Google Doc calendar is my favorite right now. You can create a calendar and invite collaborators to provide input, make changes, or edit existing information.

I do like the Countdown timer. See below!!!

Created by OnePlusYou

Thing 12 DO YOU DIGG IT?

Social media sites: hmph.....I am kind of torn, I checked out all four of the recommended sites; Digg, Reddit, Mixx, and Newsvine. The most legitimate looking one was Newsvine. All the other sites had a lot of junk, not worth looking at. In a high school setting the social sites are not allowed. They can be a huge time suck. I just wasted probably about 2 hours checking them out. I would like to say I only looked at the worth while sites and news stories, but I found myself just surfing crap.

Thing 11 TAGGING & DEL.ICIO.US

I already had heard about del.icio.us at a tech conference I went to that was hosted by Apple. I loved the idea of having my bookmarks on any computer I was at. There are so many times when I am at home and I want to just click on my favorites from work and get to the web address I want without typing it in. Del.icio.us does that for me. Del.icio.us is acting goofy today, I can't seem to get on their website.

I like the potential of sharing bookmarks. I have referred a couple of people to this sight to try this already. I even went back and added more tags to my existing bookmarks. The key to doing this right, is to add the tags right away. It is so easy to say/think "later" and then it never gets done.

Thing 10 WIKIS

I like wikis. I never quite understood what they were and how they worked. The Common Craft Video explained it all very thoroughly. Now I just need to explore which website that offers free wikis would work best for me.

I am thinking this might be the perfect tool to set up a High School Class Reunion. Everyone can edit their own information.

Thing 9 ONLINE COLLABORATION TOOLS

Zoho vs. Google Docs.

I may be a bit biased, I have already been using Google Docs extensively for sharing documents with colleagues.

I have uploaded Excel documents to share with my Friends of the Library. I have created an online Google calendar for Cub Scout events. I created a sample presentation for online sharing. The Google presentation was easier to use than the Zoho one I thought. But, Zoho does have more editing features. I think I would still stay with Google, I am pretty engrained with them for iGoogle, Google calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader. So just for ease of not having another log in and subscription, I will opt for Google.

Click on the link to view my sample presentation.