Thing 17: ELM Productivity tools

OH MY GOODNESS. OK, I have spent the last hour and 1/2 on this thing! But yes, it was worth it. I really enjoyed creating the web page - but I have a question for you fellow librarians out there...can you post this page on the web for free? Don't you have to have a hosting site? or is it actually ELM that would do this for you? That's pretty cool. I did try to put an image on mine, but couldn't understand the directions how to make the image appear. That's when I really starting feeling inadequate on this one.
Once again, since I teach elementary kids, the academic search premier, netlibrary and proquest all seemed too advanced for them to use. But I most certainly would like to share these free databases for my staff! Some of them would really use it for their own professional growth, while others would give up and say they didn't have the time. It truly is wonderful that all Minnesotans can take advantage of these free resources. Thanks for making them available.

Thing 16: Student 2.0 tools

WOW, now this is a really cool thing for anyone who is doing research! I liked how each step of the way gave good questions to be asking yourself to help with the research process. I work in an elementary school, so I don't think it would be quite appropriate. But for the middle, high school, college and adult, this would be a great tool to use. I find that sometimes students just don't know where to begin and what questions to be asking themselves. This looks very promising. I'm happy to know about it.

Thing 15: Online games

I tried this at home and it required such a large download that I didn't want to wait so long for the download. I tried it at work and the site was blocked. This is one particular thing that I have no interest in pursuing any further because I believe that the on-line gaming has taken so many skills away from the need for socialization in our country. Kids are gaming so much these days that they forget how to interact with people and they are not always aware of what is real and not real. Students are not getting the physical exercise they need and are not learning the socialization skills they need because of gaming. Some day I may try the games myself. I prefer to not dive in - I am afraid that it'll take WAY too much of my precious time, and I might even get hooked! Then where would I be? I'd be a part of the trouble that society is in right now, which I do not want to be a part of. Is there anyone out there who agrees with me? I don't think I'm alone on this one.

Thing 14: Library Thing

OOOH, this is the site I've been waiting for! A place to list all my favorite titles. I can hardly wait to share this with staff at school. Ultimately, I would love to have a site that staff could all access to add their favorite titles. This might even be fun to add a link to our school's website that students could enter their favorite titles.

Thing 13: Online Productivity Tools

I started my page with igoogle and loved the ease of setting it up. It was so easy to just click the ones I wanted to have on my page, then I could click and drag them where I wanted. The tool that I found and liked the most and that I didn't know existed, was the PDF converter tool. Oh my, I can think of numerous times at school that I need to convert a Word doc. to PDF and couldn't do it because I didn't have adobe. I sure wish I knew about this free converter. I tried it, and it worked so slick. It was very easy and only took a minute or two.
The on-line calendars are nice too, but I don't know if I'd use it. It would probably work for a family planning events or something. I guess I could try to figure out how I could use it at school for scheduling the library and/or computer lab, but I think the spaces would not be big enough. Currently I use a spreadsheet for staff to sign up on our local server, which works fine. The to-do lists are kind of fun, but realistically, I probably will just write my list on a piece of paper...unless I'm feeling especially drawn to the computer to check my list! Backpack looked REALLY impressive, but the fee you'd have to pay turned me off. The thing I would've used is the calendar, and that doesn't come with the free version. Cool stuff, really cool stuff!

Thing 12: Do you digg?

I read a couple articles on Obama and viewed some YouTube videos as well. What impressed me was how recent the articles were! One of them was only 23 minutes ago! Talk about news hot off the press, here it is! The value of this is of course because of the timing manner in which it is presented. It's a wonder why people still subscribe to the daily paper. The news is old the minute it gets to your home. What I don't like about this is merely that the news is on-line. I guess I am old fashioned in that I still enjoy sitting back with my feet up, reading the paper. I get tired of sitting in front of the computer, especially since I do that so much at work every day. It is also valuable in that, it'll help you read what other people consider the top news, and so you'll feel "in the know" for the latest news. Will I use this? Probably not, but it is good to find out how to digg.