Week 6, Thing #14: Technorati and Tags or Which Prince Did You Mean?

When I keyword searched for school library learning 2.0 I got more than 406 hits that displayed posts that were about schools, library and learning. When I clicked on the blogs tab, I found 21 blogs about "School Library Learning 2.0" that were blogs similar to mine (a place where people completed web 2.0 things) or devoted to exploring the relationship among school libraries, web 2.0, and education via new web 2.0 technologies that crop up frequently. Most of the 406 posts and 21 blogs were relevant to our study of web 2.0 and school libraries, whereas all the posts tagged "School Library Learning 2.0" (yet there were just three) were relevant. Overall, the advanced keyword search feature of Technorati produced a good deal of relevant results.

I checked out the top 5 blogs of Technorati and was immediately attracted to Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done. It's a blog about how to utilize web "apps" applications to help you simplify your life and "get things done." I liked this post about Google web apps because it reminded me of when I discovered Google reader (see Week 4, Thing #8: It's as simple as RSS!).

An obvious advantage to tagging is that it organizes all types of information. Tagging enables authors and readers to organize their websites, blogs, online newspaper articles, and pictures with any label they desire. These self/user-imposed labels allows readers to organize information in a manner that is convenient for them, in a taxonomy written in their own language. With tagging, my Prince (the musician or The Artist Formally Known as The Artist) links will not mix with Machiavelli's The Prince links nor with my Prince William of Wales links--unless I want them to. Herein lies the disadvantage of tagging, because I am free to tag any piece of information with any label I want even if there is no clear relationship between the tag and tagged item.

Even though tags are a double-edged sword, sifting through it all is an exercise that sharpens my information finding skills.

Week 6, Thing #13: Remedying Information Indigestion

"Thank you for the site, I can now put it on my del.icio.us!" a colleague of mine once enthused. To my yet-to-be-trained in web 2.0 ears I wondered, "Her delicious what?!"

Now I see why everyone, librarians especially, are so excited. When I browsed through SJLibraryLearning2's Del.icio.us account, I noted the various tags that were alphabetically organized to the right. After clicking on one, another window of related tags popped up. This simplifies my search for websites on related topics. I envision Del.icio.us as an easy way for librarians and teachers to set up a public index (that can be accessed anywhere) for students written in a language they understand. Since the tags are user-generated, teachers can create an account and direct students to their lists of websites grouped by topic. So if I wanted to create a list of the blogs of my favorite teen romance novels I could tag them "teen_romance" or "young_love" and not confuse my students with traditional subject headings like "Interpersonal relations--Fiction." Del.icio.us is also useful for organizing the myriad of bookmarks you already possess and the ones you continue to add daily. I will have to peruse the Del.icio.us accounts of libraries to witness how it is used in libraries and schools.

*Edit July 14, 2008*

So I explored a the Del.icio.us accounts of libraries that were posted on the CSLA School Library Learning 2.0 page for thing #13. The San Mateo Public Library's Del.icio.us page was the most useful because it organized websites according to the Dewey Decimal System. By organizing websites using the Dewey Decimal System, it was easier to imagine the ways in which information on the Internet intersects with the information found on library shelves. The Alameda County Library Del.icio.us page categorized their websites was according to topics of interest. I noticed, however, that when I visited the websites of these libraries it was not very easy to find a link of their Del.icio.us pages. I am curious to know how patrons are discovering their libraries' Del.icio.us pages and if they are being utilized.

Week 5, Thing #12: Roll(yo) Call!

Rollyo is the wish fulfillment of internet users who always wanted to search for items consulting only their trusted websites. After creating an account with Rollyo, and understanding what it has to offer, I was thrilled to discover all these specialized search engines. By restricting searches to specific websites, searchrolls filter out unnecessary or irrelevant websites that hinder your search. I tried SJLibrary's searchroll, typed in "ostrich" and I got all these articles from authoritative encyclopedias.

Searchrolls are interesting because they are crafted from websites that are deemed relevant by its creator. For example, I tried The Big Answer Deck searchroll, and put in "ostrich" and I automatically got articles from wikipedia. But this is why Rollyo can be so useful when doing internet research, you can choose to include or exclude any website you want! I see great potential for Rollyo when teaching students about internet research. The majority of the librarians I know discourage students from using wikipedia or solely relying on Google for their research projects. Rollyo is one way to ensure that students are utilizing the correct internet sources. Teachers can use Rollyo to are expose their students to authoritative internet websites. They could even cross-reference the results of different searchrolls to demonstrate bias in internet searches and the importance of scrutinizing the academic authority of websites.

Rollyo's potential uses are not only for research, but also for recreation. You could create Harry Potter searchrolls or graphic novel searchrolls for fun. A searchroll can be created for any interest.

Creating my own searchroll was difficult, because I wanted to make sure that I had chosen relevant and authoritative websites. I tried creating a movie searchroll, using my favorite movie websites, but I found that it only works when you enter the title of a movie. I plan on tinkering with it further so that I can enter a keyword and out pops a list of movies. I am sure that there must be a website like this already. I also created a searchroll with my favorite dictionary websites, which includes my favorite slang website as well! This way, you can browse through various definitions of one word--like a very sloppy, poor makeshift version of the Oxford Dictionary.

Rollyo is another internet tool I foresee using fondly and frequently.

Week 5, Thing #11: My Personal Music Library

As I write this blog, I can hear the strains from the mellow song that my new personal radio station hand-picked for me. When I clicked on the link to the Web 2.0 winners, I immediately clicked on the site for music. The number one site was Pandora, which boasted that it could create a music station attuned to your musical tastes. I was familiar with other sites with online radio stations, like music.yahoo.com which gave you stations based on genres. How pandora tickled my fancy was their initial question when I began to learn about their site. The first step in creating your personal radio station begins with your answer to this question: What is your favorite song/artist/band? Based on your response, a radio station is created that showcases artists and songs that share elements of your favorite song/artist/band. What's great about Pandora is that each of these songs have been analyzed in the Music Genome Project, so when they play on your radio station you can learn why that particular song came up. This analysis of songs distinguishes Pandora from other websites that feature personal music stations that merely categorize them in genres. I like Pandora's capability to identify songs that I may like, with pretty good accuracy and surprising results. They do this by allowing me to choose what songs I like and do not, thereby creating a musical profile that lets them know what type of music I would possibly enjoy. Listening to Pandora provides me with the songs that I know and love, but also opens up my musical knowledge by introducing me to artists that I haven't heard before.

The only downside to Pandora is that you are unable to skip a certain number of songs in an hour, which allows for the unfortunate situation of you stuck listening to a song you really don't like. When this happens, the site suggests that you create a new music station to listen to a new song, which isn't so bad.

Pandora would be great in libraries that provide music CDs for its patrons. Just how we recommend books based on what books our patrons have read in the past, Pandora could provide music recommendations. Another feature of Pandora is its artist search, which provides the artist's biography and selected discography (complete tracks!) for free. Pandora would be a great starting point for research projects on musicians, for its artist search contains the biographies and discographies of Beethoven and The Beatles.

This is truly my new favorite website!

Week 5, Thing #10: "A new fantastic point of view!"

Playing around with the text and image generators was amusing--and addicting! I enjoyed a number of the generators found on The Generator Blog like: the anagram generator, the Garfield comic strip generator, the poem generator, the Shakespearean insult generator, andthe Picassco painting generator. My favorite image generated project was from the Comic Strip Generator. Unlike the Garfield comic strip generator, you have a whole array of different pictures from television and movies so you have many characters to create funny comics. Here is one I created:

I know it's corny, but I think it's cute. I could make a whole bunch of bookmarks and stickers out of this too!

Week 4, Thing #9: Don't Just "Google" It!

When exploring the uncharted wilds of news, blogs, and feeds it is most helpful to have a guide. The search tools that I found most helpful finding news was topix.com. I liked how I could browse for news articles by topic and source. Topix.com has a wide readership from around the world, evidenced by the number of comments that users leave on the articles. I liked reading their comments because they enrich the news articles with various perspectives, I am glad that Topix.net has this feature. The bar graph of my topic of interest in the news was fun to see, and I wonder how watching the trends in news topics will be useful. The advanced search option allows to you to restrict your search to a specific source and locale, and I liked using the advanced search because it distills information into a dose that I able to digest. If I was interested in searching for a blog, I liked technocrati's advanced search and Google Blog Search (if only because I was familiar with its interface).

It is helpful to know that these search tools exist, especially since I was so reliant on Google.

Week 4, Thing #8: It's as "simple" as RSS!

This exercise was an opportunity to discover the true purpose of those "small funny tags on websites" and what RSS really means and what it can do for me. Setting up an RSS Reader was easy because it already existed--I just never accessed it! Thanks to my gmail account, conveniently, my Google Reader was there waiting for me to fill it up with subscriptions.

I used to frequent the blogs of my favorite poets and websites, visiting my bookmarks daily in the hopes of encountering new content. After a while, however, I grew tired of waiting for updated posts and I slowly stopped visiting them. Thanks to newsreaders, I can re-connect with these lost links as well as save time and stay informed of new content. I can also search for new blogs and websites that interest me and subscribe to them as well.

Libraries can utilize newsreaders when planning events and programs for patrons and discovering new books for their collections; taking advantage of newsreaders' instant dissemination of fresh content. After reading the post on RSS for educators in this blog that I found on the school library learning 2.0 page, I was excited that the writer was a former English teacher who assigned homework to his students through blogs! So to spin-off this idea, libraries could use newsreaders to subscribe to the blogs of the members of their book or homework club. RSS appears to be an exciting forum for information seekers and sharers. I am curious to discover how libraries have utilized them to enhance and improve their library services.