Backing Up Your Blog

Here's how and why to back up your blog, just in case...according to an item in Free Technology for Teachers.  The article provides a "how-to" for Blogger, edublogs, and Wordpress.  For example, with Blogger, go to "settings" and "export blog" by downloading to your computer.

Momento - Diary Ap for iPhone

Going on a journey or just want to keep a diary?  Momento might be a good solution: Capture, import, browse, read, protect (lock your diary).  In moments, it can add all the facebook, Flickr and tweets you ever posted.  See the YALSA blog for more ways teens and teen librarians can use the application.

BlogBooker

Interesting -- I don't have time now to experiment with BlogBooker, but this might be a good way to capture this and other blogs for historical purposes...in  book format!

Social Media Online Guide

Here's a colorful and useful guide to social media from SMO.com that is downloadable. It includes 10 websites (left column) by customer communication, brand exposure, traffic to your site, and SEO (search engine optimization).

Websites covered include:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Flickr
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• DIGG
• StumbleUpon
• Yahoo! b
• Reddit
• Del.icio.us
  

Decorate your library, lab, office, or classroom.

Decade in Data - Forbes

Forbes article on "The Decade in Data" by Oliver J. Chiang offers some 2000 vs 2009 data points for presentations and perspective:

--CONSUMER BROADBAND. Percentage of U.S. households with a broadband connection in 2000: 6.3% vs 2008: 63%

--E-MAIL: Number of e-mails sent per day in 2000: 12 billion vs. 2009: 247 billion

--MOBILE DATA: Revenues from mobile data services in the first half of 2000: $105 million vs. first half of 2009: $19.5 billion

--TEXT MESSAGES: Number of text messages sent in the U.S. per day in June 2000: 400,000 vs. June 2009: 4.5 billion

--DIGITAL CAMERAS: Percentage of U.S. households with at least one digital camera in 2000: 10% vs. 2008: 68.4%

--MP3 PLAYERS: Percentage of U.S. households with at least one MP3 player in 2000: less than 2% vs. 2008: almost 43%

--PAGES INDEXED BY GOOGLE: Number of pages indexed by Google in 2000: 1 billion vs. 2008: 1 trillion

--GOOGLE SEARCHES: Number of Google searches per day in 2001: 10 million vs. 2009: 300 million, estimated

--WIKIPEDIA ENTRIES: Number of total Wikipedia entries in 2001: 20,000 vs. Wikipedia entries in English in 2009: 3.1 million

--BLOGS: Number of blogs in 2000: less than 100,000 vs. 2008: 133 million

--COST OF HARD DISK SPACE: Amount of hard-disk space $300 could buy in 2000: 20 to 30 gigabytes vs. 2009: 2,000 gigabytes (2 terabytes)

MyPictr - clip or size photos for your sites

Librarian-in-Black posted about MyPictr as a cool tool for properly sizing photos or icons for websites and social networks. I could have used this a year ago! Check it out.

It is as easy as 1- Upload. 2- Select. 3- Pictr it!

Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners - T.H.E. Journal

T.H.E. Journal carried an article on the "Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners" in its February 2009 online issue. Author Chris Riedel's article covered an interview with educational technology consultant Gail Lovely, who presented her Top 10 Tools list at the FETC 2009 Conference in Orlando, FL. Gail's list of young learner tools included:

1. WIKIS (3 examples): wetpaint, pbwiki, wikispaces
   
2. Blogs (4 examples): Blogger, Class Blogmeister, 21 Classes, Gaggle
   
3. VoiceThread - voice and image.
   
4. Glogster - interactive posters.
   
5. Skype - communication. video window.
   
6. Animoto (education version) - mini music videos for kids.
   
7. YackPack - Yackety-yack! Voice-driven communication.
   
8. Create a Graph - easy visualizations of data.
   
9. Voki - design fun avatars.
   
10. Kerpoof - create movies, scenes.

In her presentation, Gail pointed out that the list is not as important as what teachers will do with the tools. She showed how teachers were using these with their students. Check it out!

CITATION: Chris Riedel, "Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners," T.H.E. Journal, 2/2/2009, http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23898

Mobility@Your Library - #8 Publishing

Here is #8 of 10 categories of how libraries use mobile devices.

#8- Publishing. Mobile reporting and more. Library Conference bloggers. Library Legislation Day bloggers. Government and School Board Meeting bloggers. Here are some examples of cool tools.

• Gabcast – a podcasting and audioblogging platform to create and distribute audio content to mobile devices.
• GCast - run by the same people that run GarageBand.com.
• Blogger on the Go – blog from anywhere.
• Mobango – download anything to mobile phone

Many of these Mobility @ YourLibrary categories and examples overlap. See also #4-Assistive Technology and #5- Productivity Tools.

Text Alerts from your Library

I have to organize all the mobile applications for libraries that I've collected over the past year! Mostly, I need to sort out K-12 applications and focus on public and academic libraries.

Looks like Nate Hill also tracks librarians’ efforts to make public libraries and their services accessible on mobile devices (PLA Blog, Oct. 2)

Text alerts have been popping up at academic and public libraries as an option, but there are lots more applications. Stay tuned!

Blogger "how to" videos on YouTube

Do you want to know how to create a blog on blogger? Or connect to your mail or blog from your cell phone or other hand held mobile device? Blogger has added a collection of "how-to" videos on YouTube.

Classroom Learning 2.0 - Professional Development

An invitation to improve the performance of your education team.

School districts and other educational groups are invited to offer a fun, new online professional development course for classroom teachers, administrators, and other educators. This 9-week course introduces educators to web 2.0 tools and curriculum connections.

Classroom Learning 2.0 participants learn about and use social networking tools such as blogs, image generators, avatars, RSS feeds, wikis, nings, and much more. This course and its accompanying Management/Users Guide is brought to you by the California School Library Association 2.0 Team at no charge. It supports a number of legislative programs such as school technology plan requirements for E-Rate and Module III of AB430 administrator training. Continuing Education credits for the course are also available for a modest fee through Fresno Pacific University.

Designed for classroom teachers, administrators and other educators, this on-line course introduces participants to the many exciting web 2.0 tools available to us to communicate more effectively and creatively in a wide variety of activities. This tutorial introduces educators to many new opportunities for developing dynamic lessons, and shows how to work with colleagues in the school library to create exciting standards-based lessons that will reach students with the tools that they use daily.

Classroom Learning 2.0 is a specially designed course in that each participant learns about the web 2.0 tools and actively participates in a collegial conversation using the applications that they are learning about. Web 2.0 refers to the fact that the Internet is now an interactive medium rather than a ‘place’ to go to get information. Because students are flocking to these Web 2.0 sites, it is important that those of us who work in schools should be up-to-date with the latest trends in educational technology and learn how they can be utilized to support student learning.

Participants can take the course on their own, or they can lead a site group, a district group, or a group of interested teachers. An organization can offer incentives, create collegial work groups, and/or provide on-site workshops to support the course. Forming groups allow for participants to ‘cheer’ one another along, problem solve together, and begin conversations that lead to exciting collaborations.

If your library personnel are already graduates of our first professional development program, School Library Learning 2.0, you have a partner who can help you develop a 2.0 Partners group. Both online courses are available for free during the 2007-2008 school year. To learn more about these courses and to get a copy of the Management/User’s Guide, please contact Connie Williams or me at CSLA2Team@yahoo.com.

Favorite 2.0 Tools -- a Poll

Blogger now offers us the ability to post a poll, so I'm asking for readers to vote for their favorite type of 2.0 cool tool. See poll to the left. I've asked a different polling question on my other blog, Advocate4Libraries.

Now, what question would be good to ask on the School Library Learning 2.0 course blog? Sorry, I just love polls. It's easy to get carried away! Here is how to add a poll to Blogger:

1. Sign in and go to "CUSTOMIZE."
2. Go to PAGE ELEMENTS. Add a page element.
3. Top choice is "Poll" (new)

Blog Variety of School Library Learning 2.0 Participants

It is amazing how many varieties of blogs are being created by members of the California School Library Association as they work through the online course, School Library Learning 2.0 See the Bloglines account of member blogs.

WEEK 4 - Bloglines, Blogrolls, and Bookmarklets (#9 Thing)

One suggestion in Discovery Learning 2.0 was to search podcast alley. I searched on "books" and found a number of good-sounding sites including Chronicle Books Podcast, ChildrensBookRadio, and Page Turners. Podcast, videocasts, and Flickr feeds can be added to my Bloglines.

I learned how to add a Bloglines “bookmarklet” to my browser. A bookmarklet lives on the bookmark bar of your browser. I already had two bookmarklets on my Foxfire browser but didn't know that was what they were called.

OK, now I have added my Bloglines as a "blogroll" to my 2CoolTools blog. See lower left.

WEEK 4: Bloglines (#8 Thing)

As I understand it, using Bloglines is a FREE news aggravator that allows me to get a bunch of RSS feeds and also allows me to make my blog public so others will be more aware of my blog (not this blog, but my other one, http://advocate4libraries.blogspot.com.) I opened a Bloglines and will see what will happen. At this point, I'm more interested in seeing if folks from other parts of the U.S. will discover my library advocacy blog.

I already get a bunch of news feeds sent to my AT&T Yahoo! DSL (MyYahoo!) page, so I'm not eager to add 10 more here. I do get several library, business, CDE, SF, and other news feeds so I know what they are -- some are not contributed to frequently, but that is OK.

PS: I looked at some of the other SJ blogs and posted a comment or two, just for fun.

WEEK 1: Creating a Blog (1-3 of 23 Cool Tools)

Our first assignment is to create a blog using blogger, play around with formats and features, and then start posting. A blog is the first of 23 Cool Tools or Technologies that I'll get to play with. How cool is that?

I familiarized myself with the project (Thing #1) and discovered pointers from lifelong learners (Thing #2) The online tutorials and podcasts are a nice change of pace from reading. Although I created my first blog about 3 months ago, over the Thanksgiving holiday, it is a great idea to use a blog to write about 2.0 web applications and experiences as I go through the SJLearning2.0 program. My new blog is called "2CoolTools" because web 2.0 applications are really wonderful and cool = hot! (Thing 3)

A Look-back" from WEEK 9: For the past two weeks, I've been modifying Learning2.0 for school libraries. This has presented a number of interesting challenges, such as figuring out how to post the full 1-23 exercises.

HOW TO MAKE ALL 23 THINGS (9 weeks) flow as one post.

1. FIRST: Create and finalize all 23 individual posts, posts for "about," _Participants," etc.
2. SECOND: When satisfied with final product, do the following:
   CREATE a LAST POST called "Exercises."
   Open a separate browser and COPY 1 of 23 Things; PASTE to "Exercises" post.
   Then, COPY 2 of 23 Things; PASTE to "Exersises" post. And so on until all 23 are in one final post.
3. LAST: Tell school librarians to sign up and get going!

It is a real kick when each problem is solved. Once you learn 2.0, you start really using it.