Week 4- RSS Feeds

Most of us have good intentions when it comes to keeping up with important news and information that affects our lives. With so much information to sift through and so little time available our good intentions often fall flat. My husband and I still hold on to the old tradition of receiving a daily newspaper- and I love to have some quiet time in the morning to peruse the headlines while drinking my coffee. Sadly, on too many occasions the paper barely gets a glance. With the fast pace of life, it should come as no surprise that RSS feeds are the new way to get news. The latest headlines come straight to you (no wasting time searching!) and you can customize the choices in your reader so that you get the kinds of information that are important to you. As a school librarian the usefulness of these tools is obvious- from keeping up on the latest book reviews and library news to learning about new technology trends, the opportunities are endless.
On a side note, I loved the video, What is RSS? This was very clever and the point about reversing the flow of information on the Internet made perfect sense.

Week 3- Flickr

Okay, it's week 3 and I have enjoyed playing around with Flickr. I must say I am very impressed, and I think I will start using this as my personal photo site. This site could definitely be useful to students working on a wide array of projects, as long as they give credit to the creator. A creative teacher could also find some interesting uses for the site. A geography project involving combining images and information on a map would be a great way to incorporate technology into a traditional project.
I've chosen to include a picture of a favorite destination in St. Martin, Pinel Island. I took an uncharacteristically relaxing vacation there last spring. It was almost too easy to find pictures of the island!
I am having some difficulty understanding the usefulness of some of the masher sites, but I guess this appeals to the more artistic types, and could be very useful in those areas. I will have to spend some more time looking through them to get a better feel for the concept.