Thing #7 Google Tools

Google does have a lot of applications that can help make life easier! I really like Google Alerts. I have a friend in the Army stationed in Afghanistan. I typed in “Wardak Province” and “10th Mountain Division”, and will now get a news alert when something good or (unfortunately) bad happens. It saves a lot of time searching for news, because when I don’t hear from him I worry.

In the library the possibilities are endless. For example, you could get alerts when books by favorite authors are released. I also liked Google calendar and the share feature. It seems that I am so busy that if I don’t write things down on the calendar I forget! It is easy to use and share! I will use this from now on!

Thing #6 Mashups

Mashups were fun! The trading cards are a fabulous idea. My kiddos at school would love them! They could be used with just about any topic of study. Mappr could be used in any history/geography research project. This would have been cool in the Native American project my students just finished. One of the roles was the geography expert, and an image could be imbedded in the PowerPoint they were required to do. The Mosaic Maker was awesome! I found it very easy to create a flickr account. Here is a mosaic of me and my sweetpeas!

Thing #5 Flickr

Photo by clspeace

Flickr is really cool! I really liked that it was tagged and divided into different copyright categories. Of course I selected the easiest one! And speaking of that, you might wonder why I chose the graveyard picture. Nothing macabre…..I like cemeteries and I’m part Irish. I typed in “celtic crosses” and up popped about 25 choices. I really liked this picture and think the photographer is very talented. Now that I know how easy the process is, I will be using the site often. Unfortunately, it is blocked in our district, so if my kids need a picture I would have to save it at home……

Thing #4

Yeah! My blog was registered!