#12 Week 5

My thoughts on Rollyo...

Rollyo is pretty slick. The fact that a person can make a search engine to search only the pages they want is pretty awesome, actually. This can be useful if a person wanted to have students search the internet, but using a pre-made (before the lesson) search roll, the students would only be searching the pages that will be relevant to them. In that respect, Rollyo is pretty sweet.

My Rollyo sort of combines a few of my interests. Its set to look at a few aviation related sites, a few lesson plan sites, and a few motorcycle enthusiast sites. So for me, my Rollyo will combine everything I'm interested in.

Life is good!

Select...Brian C.Search The Web

#11 Week 5

Greetings.

With this assignment, one of the things that I checked out that was pretty cool was the g.ho.st. G.ho.st is an online desktop/operating system. If a person were to be on the go alot, an application like g.ho.st would be especially cool. When you loaded the thing up, it was like a complete desktop, all online. G.ho.st has a built in spreadsheet, word processor, games, and even music. Also, they give you 5 gigs of storage to back up all of your information. To see how this worked, I backed up my entire 2 gig flashdrive.

This service is free of charge, and actually quite quick to use. The only drawback that I'd see to this service is if you dont have broadband internet, or even if you had a lower speed broadband connection, you might be in trouble.

The other web 2.0 application that was an award winner that I found was imcooked. Imcooked is a site for creating recepies and cooking them, on video. Out of curiosity, I looked up "hot wings". I found a video of two guys making grilled hot wings. The video was absolutley hillarious though. A website like this would be helpful, obviously for what goes on when school is over.

As far as the Ning went, I registered for it, and joined a teacher-librarian network. Ning didnt impress me all that much, however. I thought it was confusing and difficult to navigate. I wasnt all that impressed. I've used facebook for years, and facebook is quite more advanced than ning.

Finally, my traveler IQ...yeah, I took the test, and as the kids at school say "I got owned." My traveler IQ was an awesome 90. I feel proud of myself...yeah. I made it through round 6, and then I was out.

I'm enjoying the activities thus far. Have a good one.

#10 Week 5

I was playing with the ImageChef generator. I discovered the jigsaw option. I only had a picture of me on my motorcycle at the time, so that was the picture that I used. I thought that the jigsaw option was pretty cool. Other things that I did once I found another picture was play with the motivational poster application.

Check out two of my creations above.

#9 Week 4

I've added a few things to my page on Bloglines.  I've found several very interesting feeds.  I did a search for Young Adult Books, and clicked on the down arrow beside the search button.  Once I changed the search field to search for feeds instead of just articles, I began to have alot more success in finding what I was looking for.

I used the navigator page on the left to add a folder called "School Library".  I added alot of the things that I found on there.  Most of the pages that I added were book reviews, because as far as I'm concerned, there can not be enough information about the ever-changing world of young adult literature.  These RSS feeds are great for finding that.

Also, as a personal interest, I added a folder called avaition.  I did a search for feeds for aviation, and was able to come up with alot of feeds that are just about aviation and aviaiton related blogs. 

I was unaware of the power of such a service.  This is one of the things that I've found that has really enabled me to learn more about the power of web 2.0.

#8 Week 4

Sorry that this is late, had an extremely hectic week.

I've set up and used the bloglines account as directed.  My thought on the site is that its an excellent website, but I thought that it was a little bit confusing to navigate at first.  I had a heck of a time adding some feeds, but once I got it figured out, it worked with success.  

The format of the site is pretty user-friendly, and attractive.  My initial thoughts were that it was clean and pretty crisp.  The site actually reminded me alot of delicious.

I thought that this site could be useful for collection development, as I found and added a pack of RSSs about books, and also found a few other blogs that updated as well.

"Anything Technology Related"

My choice for my blog that is anything technology related involves photos. My library is being used for a lesson unit from out art teacher. He is teaching Adobe Photoshop. During this time, I've been following along on my teacher computer. Photoshop is quite the interesting program. The possiblilites that you can do with a picture are almost limitless.

If you want to see some photoshops, and have a sense of humor, A website that I used to visit in College called Something Awful, and every friday they have a Photoshop Competition called Photoshop Phriday. A sense of humor must be had though, but some of the photo shopped photos are acually pretty inredible.

Flickr

Flickr is a website that I rather enjoyed.

I did a few searches, one of them for Airplanes (I'm a private pilot, airplanes fascinate me), and the return was about 65000 pictures. Some of the pictures that returned however had nothing to do at all with what I searched.

My Picture

The picture that I selected to blog about is one of Cadillac Mountain, outside of Bar Harbor, Maine. Also, the location where that picture was taken specifically was where I proposed to my Fiance'. That place kind of holds a special place to me.

I also explored one of the reccomended third party websites, I checked out Mappr. I didn't know that this even existed, and its extremely interesting. There is a demonstration on the first page called route 66. The pictures follow US Route 66 the whole way accross the country. Absolutley Fascinating. Its amazing the things that technology can do for us. More to follow in my next entry.

WEEK 1 NUMBER 2

Upon competion of the 7.5 habits of lifelong learners, I've come to conclude that I am a lifelong learner. I determine this obviously because I'm here. There are several other factors that make be feel 100% confident that I'm a successful lifelong learner.

The state of Pennsylvania requires all their teachers to be lifelong learners, because of the Act 48 requrement. I also hold a Private Pilot's certificate, which you also must be a lifelong learner to stay current on changes in regulations, and even something simple like keeping your certificate current.

As far as my behavioral contract is concerned, I'll break it down below.

1) Goal. My goal with this course is to learn how to utilize the new and ever changing web 2.0 applications to further my effectiveness as both a library media specialist and as an instructor.

2) Obstacles that I feel will may need addressed include learning new technologies, dealing with interruptions, and getting faculty members to go along with the new web 2.0 applications. I feel that if I can use this course to educate myself, I can pass that on to the other faculty members and the students where I work.

3) Toolbox. Things that need to be included in my toolbox are a computer, and high speed internet. I've used a few 2.0 applications with dial up, and they just dont work the same. The rest of my toolbox, I'll assemble as the course continues.

4) Resources for help. Resources for help that I feel I can use are other faculty members at my school, and other people in the class. Also, something as simple as a Google search can be effective, as long as you know what you are looking for.

5) Path to goal. The course pretty much lays out the target date for the objectives, does it not?

6) Check In- I'll update often as I need to, to keep in key with the course.