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web 2.0

Web 2.0 Workshop Day at Nioga

May 1st, 2008
by pollyalida.
2 comments

We’re having a great and productive day here at Nioga Library System in Lockport NY. We’ve spent the morning sharing ideas about using 2.0 tools in libraries. Everyone shared what they’ve been doing in their libraries, their successes and challenges. Suggestions and ideas have been flying like rapid fire. Lots of the ideas are (or will be soon…) on the class wiki page.

After all the idea sharing, everyone outlined what project they want to work on this afternoon. In some cases this turned out to be something different than they had planned on doing when they arrived. All are real world projects that they’ll be able to use back in their libraries and communities.

And since I brought toys to play with, Lorraine decided to test out my Flip video cam. Here’s her quick test video. We’re having fun and getting some boot fashion tips too!

Treasure Trove of Learning Tools

Apr 28th, 2008
by pollyalida.
1 comment

Top Tools for Learning is an invaluable list of 100 learning tools compiled from the contributions of over 150 educators who each submitted their top 10 tools for learning. The top tools include del.icio.us, Firefox, Google Reader, Skype, WordPress and Audacity. From the list, click on the names of the tools for useful comments from the contributors.

While you’re at this site, be sure to check out 25 Tools: A Free Toolset for Learning 2008, which includes a page of learning activities for each tool.

As if that wasn’t enough good stuff, there’s also the Directory of Learning Tools with information on more than 2,000 tools organized into 40+ categories.

All of these are from Jane Hart who blogs at: Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day.

Sharing 2.0 Curriculum Ideas for K-12

Apr 23rd, 2008
by pollyalida.
No comments yet

I just ran across the California 2.0 Curriculum Connections wiki. It has some great ideas for using 2.0 tools in the K-12 curriculum. The wiki is a part of the California School Library Learning 2.0 project.

Another great repository of curriculum ideas is the Classroom 2.0 wiki.

You’ll find these and a selection of other resources for school librarians in the School Library section of my wiki.

Webware 100 Awards – 2008 Nominations

Mar 9th, 2008
by pollyalida.
No comments yet

The Webware 100 Awards is a people’s choice award, run by CNET’s Webware site that covers “cool web 2.0 apps for everyone.” Got a favorite 2.0 app? Head over to the Webware site to vote for it. And while you’re there, check out the other finalists in these categories, you’re sure to discover some interesting new services.

    • Audio: Music, podcasts, audiobooks.
    • Browsing: Browsers, start pages, RSS readers, widgets, runtime engines.
    • Commerce and events: Retail, auctions, travel, real estate, concerts, conferences.
    • Communications: E-mail, chat, voice.
    • Productivity: App suites, to-do lists, groupware.
    • Publishing and photography: Blogging, content management, photo sites.
    • Search and Reference: Search engines, encyclopedias, mapping.
    • Social: Social networking, family sites, recommendations, online worlds, contests.
    • Utility and Security: Infrastructure providers, storage, online protection.
    • Video: Video storage, playback, streaming, editing, and animation.

    And see how many of the 2007 winners you recognize!

Tons of iGoogle home page themes

Feb 14th, 2008
by pollyalida.
2 comments

Joyce Valenza has posted about iGoogle’s new personalized home page themes. Tons and tons o’ themes! And each of your pages/tabs can have a different theme. If you’re using iGoogle as a research tool for your students or as a current awareness service for your library patrons, this would be a fun way to make the pages more appealing and distinguish one page from another. I often forget which subject page I’m looking at in my iGoogle account, different header images would clue me in more quickly.

And for those of you who want to get all geeky, you can design your own google theme – this might be a fun project for a group of students. I know I’ll be playing with that later. How can I resist!

p.s. Pageflakes lets you customize the theme for each tab as well. And it’s really easy to make your own theme. Over at Netvibes, I can’t find an option to customize individual tabs, though it might be hiding there somewhere.

Turning off YouTube’s ‘related videos’ feature

Feb 9th, 2008
by pollyalida.
1 comment

Embedding YouTube videos on your web site? The embedded player that YouTube provides includes links to videos related to your video based on the words you used to describe your video. Problem is, these ‘related videos’ might not be what you want on your library web site. Take a look at the related videos showing up on your video pages on YouTube to get an idea of what might be showing up on your embedded video player. Fortunately YouTube provides an easy way to turn off the ‘related video’ feature if you choose to do so. Thanks YouTube!

To turn off the ‘related videos’ feature, edit the embedding code that YouTube gives you and change the two instances of: $rel=1 to $rel=0

Explanation at: http://tinyurl.com/2xbrob

UPDATE: even easier way to do this – just click on the customize link above the embed code to get the option for excluding video. Thanks to Curtis Rogers for posting this tip to flickr.

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