Thing #14

I had some trouble making Technorati work for me. As at least one other of our blogs mentioned, I found that they layout and options did not seem to match what was shown in the first video. I was able to search and find some things of interest, but I had to poke around a lot to find what I was looking for.

The "popular" lists were interesting, and I can see spending some time there. I will say that many of the current topics and popular stories were not things I was interested in.

The second video's main point seemed to be the Internet and tagging as the great leveler. We no longer need to trust in the authority of some expert to interpret information for us. Anybody can contribute their 2 cents. Interestingly, one of the blogs I searched for on Technorati is written by a friend of mine. He is a regular guy with a great interest in local Houston and Texas politics, and very definite political views. His blog, Off the Kuff, has been around for years, and is so well thought of that when I searched for it, the first three pages (or more- I stopped looking) were references TO the blog by others, not the blog itself. Not in the top 100 yet, but moving up. My friend who writes this blog is not a reporter, nor is he a politician, just an informed and articulate citizen. Power to the People!

Thing #12 part 2

Library2Play blogs commented on:

• Lonestar Library Lady


• Get in Gear


• Notes from a Texas Treehouse


• Pam Loves Books


• Adventure 23
  

I haven't really found any outside blogs to comment on yet, but I have subscribed to several and begun following them, so it is only a matter of time :).

Thing #12 part 1

The discussion of commenting etiquette was very interesting. In a comment on Drape's Takes, Sarah Hanawald said she teaches her students that "behind every post and comment [is] a real person." I think this is a key issue. All forms of distant conversation (from the telephone on up) require the members to realize that everyone involved is actually a person, with rights, feelings, viewpoints, etc. It's like the psychological problem involving a person on the train tracks and a speeding train. The further we get from the actual human, the easier it is to pull the switch that sends the train to squash them. Some of the commenters on this blog felt there should be no hard and fast etiquette rules, or that "rules" might squash free speech. I disagree. I'm a big believer in the social contract- if you choose to interact with others, you choose to behave civilly. That is a vital lesson to teach our students. Many students at my school do not have an adult model of civil discourse at home. They need as many as we can provide at school.

In coolcatteacher's blog, she brings this up as well- "NEVER: Be sarcastic, rant prolifically, curse, or personally attack a person." When I took logic courses back in college we learned that personal attacks were weak arguments. I've heard it said that excessive cursing indicates a weak vocabulary. Our students need to learn how to disagree appropriately and effectively. Some of the rules we teach children about tattling apply here- "Are you commenting to help someone or are you commenting to get someone in trouble?"

I also really liked what coolcatteacher had to say about the importance of commenting for students. Learning is a social construct, and happens most easily when it is done in a community. We forget that because it can't be tested on a scantron, but our students can't be lifelong learners unless they know how to find or create learning communities for themselves and participate in them successfully (the point of this whole 23 Things, it seems to me).

Thing #9

I found the Edublog award winners site the most helpful. I added 2 more librarian blogs to my reader, and found a website that compiles children's literature blogs and other information that looks great- jacketflap.com . The award winner's site was exactly what I needed- just a few options that matched very closely with what I was looking for.

I found Google blog search to be quite unhelpful. It apparently searches keywords in any blog post, and therefore returned vastly more hits than I wanted to slog through, and they were only tangentially related to what I wanted (much like standard Google searching itself :)).

The two feeds I added were Hey Jude and Cathy Nelson's Professional Thoughts, both blogs by librarians on topics of interest to me.

I cannot figure out how the little RSS icons work though. I want my feeds to go to my Google Reader, but when I click on the RSS icons, it tries to put the feed into a folder on my local hard drive. I have just been copying and pasting the URL into Google Reader, which seems to work, but I don't get what I'm supposed to do with the icons.