THING 36 - Have some fun.

This site is pretty cool. This is from Glass Giant. There are different generators that will make fun things. Just a note, the prom make over was stupid. I tried it with 2 different photos and all it did was put a paper bag over the face. It was kind of disappointing, I thought it would actually apply make up or something.





I liked the fake newspaper page generator. I used this slide in my daily announcements on the TV as a reminder to students to return library books.





This is from an email icon generator


This image is from http://www.acme.com/labelmaker/

Thing 35 - Books 2.0

Wow!!! I love this Thing. I signed up for Library Thing the first go around, so I am already familiar with it. One interesting thing about Library Thing is GRRL (Great River Regional Library) uses Library Thing in its card catalog. When you search a book and click on it for the description and information, you also see tags from Library Thing. I haven't logged into Library Thing since 23 Things on a Stick. I also signed up for Shelfari, it is basically the same as Library Thing. I do like the look of Shelfari better. Facebook also has similar applications, you can add books to your profile and join reading groups or become a fan of authors too. I really loved What's Next too. I tagged it in Delicious and plan on using it frequently. Working at a school library, a lot of my readers are looking for series and the next book in the series. What's Next is perfect for that. I also signed up for Overbooked, the Ning for books. We will see. Once again, my never ending dilemma....not enough hours in the day.

JUMP ROPE VIDEO

Thing 34 - Online Answer Sites?

Good or Bad--hmm. Well there are both good and bad sites out there? Yes. Are they used? Yes. Will students continue to use them? Yes. Here at the HS-MC, usually I am the only one here. And doing tech duties at the same time. Most of the students are doing projects dictated by their teachers and have approved sources. The answer sites are helpful, especially for a small school media centers, we don't have a large budget or staff. So for the most part, I would have to say good. If it weren't for the computers in the media center my traffic through here would be greatly reduced. (The couch helps a lot too! :)

Thing 33 - Travel 2.0

Wow, is this stuff fun! Creating a travel journal, blogging about your experiences, mapping the route and inserting pictures and videos. I liked the blogs and the travel journal sites. As internet access grows, I see computers being so much a part of daily like, just like cell phones. It is kind of like blogging though, who has time to look at all this stuff?

Thing 32 - Google Maps

I liked this Thing. It combines two of my favorite things, maps and Google. Maps because I was a geography major and Google because who doesn't love Google? I played around and made a map of states I have visited. That was kind of depressing, I would love to travel way more than I have!!

Google maps would be useful in the media center to create book promos. You could create a map of different book settings, books about different cultures, etc. You could map out your favorite authors, libraries, colleges, the list is endless.

I could definitely waste a couple of weeks on Google maps.

Thing 31 - More Twitter

Twitter is much like RSS, it can be so overwhelming. I like following just a few local people I know. I follow some local politicians and libraries and Sam at CMLE, to name a few. I prefer to keep it kind of small. I am a "Twitter Pragmatist", only following 30-50 people. I once stumbled on a guy I though might be kind of fun to follow and what a mistake that was. He was way into it and have 16,000 followers. After I started following him all kinds of people started following me and it got so overwhelming. Who has the time to read all this information!! There is a whole world out there I don't want to be a part of. Maybe later down the Things journey I may change my mind. Right now even the ALA posts get overwhelming. It kind of stinks to look at your Twitter feed and see nothing good.

Thing 30 - More RSS and Delicious

I have been struggling on this thing. I just don't surf the web enough to check my RSS feeds all that much. It is just too much....information overload. Occasionally I will check my Google Reader and that is sufficient for my needs. I don't post that often, or even want to. Same with texting and IM.

Delicious is ok, it is kind of cumbersome to use. You have to log in and I really don't like the layout of it. I have been trying out the Delicious sidebar, which I really don't like that much either. I like the look of Microsoft Internet Favorites better than Delicious. Of course Delicious has the advantage of being on any machine you are on, but I pretty much use the same computer all the time and haven't utilized it much.

Thing 29 - Google Tools

Well here I go gushing about Google...again! I feel like this is all I ever blog about. I love my iGoogle homepage. I heavily utilize Google Docs. I have done Google Sites, Google Calendar, Google Reader, etc.

If you are not a user of Google Docs, you should be. I love it, it is not as fancy and as user friendly as Microsoft Office. But, it is free and online and always accessible. You do not have to save your documents to a flash drive or CD or disc. You can easily share documents with other people, you can give them read-only access or editorial privileges. I have so many documents for all my work and volunteer groups.

I did a Google Site. It is not the best for making webpages and a little frustrating at times. But, like I said...it is free. What can one expect?

p.s. Try National Geographic Picture of the Day. It is fun to get a new picture every day. I frequently change my desktop wallpaper to one of their pictures.

Thing 28 - Customized Home Pages

Once again, a Thing I already have done. I love this project! and I love Google. I have iGoogle set as my homepage with my Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Groups, Weather, To-Do List, Gmail, Google Reader etc...... There is no end to the amount of gadgets you can put on your iGoogle page. I try to keep it to a minimum though. Who has time to go through that much stuff everyday? I went to Widget box and tried to do a blidget, I liked how it turned out. But I just can't seem to get it on my blog page. Oh well. On to the next thing.

I also have a MyYahoo! page, but I much prefer the iGoogle page. With all the add ons Google beats Yahoo! hands down. I do prefer Yahoo! groups and Yahoo! email though. I have long done away with email accounts from my ISP and solely rely on my Yahoo! email address.