Exploration

How did I miss the "SAVE NOW" button at the bottom?
I found a lot of good stuff in my exploring this week. I loved the blogs in education matrix (http://www.edtechpost.ca/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/2008/10/matrix2.gif); I think it's a helpful tool for all librarians and teachers to keep on hand when they are planning or conceptualizing different ways to use blogs in the classroom, or for their professional use.
I like the idea of twiducate (http://twiducate.com/), and the tutorial video was cute and definitely peaked my interest. I think that students, especially older ones, might like getting occasional reminders or updates via tweets. However, I didn't like that you had to sign up for an account and give the site your personal information without being able to see the site in action - I would have like to seen some sample or demo pages/accounts.
The school I work at uses edmodo (http://www.edmodo.com/) for students to see and submit assignments, and it seems to be very popular among students and staff. I like that it's quite safe and secure, and the social networking aspects of it - in fact, I just joined today in order to join the online portion of the student book group the librarian and I run for kids once a month. The online aspect of the group is nice for the kids to contribute to, but perhaps just as importantly, it helps keep the book group in their mind, so they don't forget when our meetings are, what we're reading, things to discuss, etc. All of these online applications seem to be great ways to keep school topics on kids' minds, just in slightly varying formats. One issue with edmodo or any of these programs - especially if teachers require students to get or submit assignments through them - is that when the internet goes down, they're inaccessible, and for a highly technological school district that seems to happen a lot where I work!
I also thought the WordPress 10 Step Tutorial (http://learn.wordpress.com/) was helpful and quite nice to look at, but almost overwhelmingly long. I had a hard time keeping track of all of their steps and suggestions...though perhaps if that had been the first and not the fifth site I had looked at in one sitting, I would have had more patience.

Next up: Twitter.