Week 7: Microblogging

I started a Twitter account last summer and began to follow some people but didn't tweet after trying it a time or two just to learn how it worked. I really liked it from the beginning, but I didn't know many others using it and I didn't want to just send random thoughts out into the universe unless I really had something of value to say. I like the idea of using it as a tool to gather and share information, photos, and links to resources. Marcia McPhail blogged about using Twitter with Delicious, Diigo and Facebook. (Thanks, Marcia!)  I'm still exploring those options, especially using Facebook and Twitter simultaneously to receive tweets directly on my Facebook page.  That sound like a VERY useful feature.

Two of the best ways I have found to find people on Twitter is to see who others are following and to look at the sites for those who post interesting comments.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I enjoy following author Neil Gaiman. He often tweets links to all kinds of things, including photos, music and videos.

I follow School Library Journal. That has been another way for me to keep up with one of my favorite blogs, A Fuse 8 Production, by Elizabeth Bird. Her posts about the Top 100 Children's Novels have been amazing, full of valuable resources. (I can't believe how many links I am putting in this post! I'm actually starting to get good at it!!)

Catherine Trinkle's bio on Twitter reads "365 tweets! I am going to tweet every day for a year on a book, author, information about literacy, etc.." I have found a number of good ideas and learned about some great books from her tweets. Another fun resource for learning about books is KidderLit. From the bio: "KidderLit is a version of TwitterLit for the younger set: Twittering the first lines of kids' books so you don't have to."

We have a Newsflash feature on our school webpages, but I find it really cumbersome to use. I think would be much quicker and easier to use Twitter to send short updates about what is happening in my library and to share resources with parents.

23 Things Week 6: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

I have had a Delicious account for a while and it has been very helpful in organizing my ever growing list of bookmarks.  I especially like that it allows me to access my bookmarks from any computer (assuming I remember my log in and password).  Since I have more time to browse and to do searches at home, this allows me to save and tag useful sites for school use while on my home computer and then access them easily from any computer at school.

Tag bundling has been an especially useful feature for me as my list of sites grows longer. I also like viewing my tags as a cloud.  I need to spend time editing my tags and deleting sites that are no longer working or no longer of interest to me.

I set up an account for teachers at my school to use and share but we really haven't made use of it.  I may start using it to separate my websites; putting only those that I want to share with my elementary students and/or their parents on the second site while keeping the first site for personal interests.  On the other hand, after looking at the Diigo videos, I am impressed with the enhanced capabilities of that program.  I can see how the highlighting, sticky note, and especially the archive features could be VERY useful in an educational setting.  It is no fun to have a class full of students primed to see a site and then to find that the site has disappeared or drastically changed overnight.  So, I may decide to switch from Delicous to Diigo.