Thing 16

I tried "Remember the milk". I am always making list of things, and I like the idea of having everything organzied without having to write it down on a piece of paper. I have been looking for a tool like that since I purchased my itouch. I am currently using "easy note" on the itouch, and I am not sure yet which I like better. The free app on the itouch is only availalbe for 15 days until you have to purchase, so I may just stick with "easy note". They are very similiar.

Thing 15

Google docs is a great tool. I can think of several ways it can be used within my department. Collaborating on a parent presenation would be a great way to use this. Also, as counselors we are always creating lists of things. Being able to start a list, and having the next counselor add on would be much more efficient and accurate way to compile data.

One issue that comes to mind when using this with students if they are making edits that are completely off track the the next student that views it would be confused. I guess it would depend on the assignment.

Thing 14

I have a facebook account that I have had for about 2 years. I keep it pretty private, and do not use it very often. I like it to connect with family and share photos. Other than that, I am not sure that I would use it for educationally purposes. It may be okay for a discussion group on a particular topic, but blogs would also work as well.

Thing 13

I chose Diigo because I really like the highlighing feature. I think that it is especially helpful when you want to share information with others. I also liked that you can connect to other social networking sites easily. For those that may not be diigo followers you can share the information through another site. I also liked that you can get additional features as an educator so that you can use it in your classroom with students.

This was the first time I have done social bookmarking, and this is awesome. I get so many resourses sent to me on the college planning process, financial aid, study skills, etc. I want to use them, but I can never remember or I forget they are in my favorities (which is too much of a cumbersome list). This can be used so many different ways in our departement. It would such a great tool to share with the other counselors so that each counselor would have a library of resources to share with their students.

Thing 12

Tagging is a great way to store digital resources. It is quick and helps one sort a lot of information quickly. I feel like the Internet itself is set up like one large tag. When I do a google search, I type in key words (tags) to find what I am looking for.

The advantages of tagging are depending on the type of tag. It could pinpoint information quickly and sort through a multitude of websites on a signal topic, or if tagged incorrectly you may miss information that you are looking for.

I think it is important to think about your audience before tagging, avoid putting two words together into one, watch punctuation, and remember that you can always change the tag if it is not working.

Thing 11

I chose a widget on College Scholarships.



Embedding this widget was very easy. I found this widget on Widgetbox:education, very easy to use and search.

If I had a blog just on the college search process, I could include interactive widgets like this. I thing widgets could be very helpful to "breal-up" the blog and add more interest to the reader. If would make it more interactive for the reader/student.

Thing 10

I don't see any major value in twitter. It is similiar to facebook, except it limits how much you can write. So, I guess one of the values would be to stay connected with people or interests and receive snippets of their activity.

I looked at a lot of the sites lited on the Times 50 best, and I was having difficulty connecting them to how they could be useful in education (in the counseling world). Some of the sites on best of the Web 2008 for education seemed like they would be useful for teachers teaching a language (at least the ones I viewed). As a counselor, it was hard for me to make a connection on some of the sites and their usefullness in education. One of the sites that I spent a little more time on was OMGPOP which has nothing to do with education, but was a fun site to play free internet games. You can connect with others or just play on your own which I thought was a great feature.