Week 5 Thing 11 - Web 2.0 Awards List

SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards site was interesting. I chose to look at a site from the "Philanthropy" heading. I choose to look at Be Green Now as it was the one which seemed most interesting to me. The idea that I could track my "carbon footprint" and then learn ways to offset my hazardous behavior seemed great. I was disappointed with the site as it seemed a little too simplistic, didn't seem individualized enough to be meaningful to me and the suggestions for off-setting my 20th century un-green activities seemed to boil down to "plant a tree" or "pay us to take care of it for you." I suppose that having them invest in wind, wave and solar power is a really powerful thing, but it felt like advertising. While I haven't planted a tree yet, my mind has been jogged to water my basil plant.

So I tried something else. I tried out both Library Thing and Reader2 (honorable mention) and Good Reads (recommended by someone in this class). All of them are variations on the theme of social networking about books. I liked them all and am now having the difficult decision about which one to really focus on. With all of the stuff that is out there, it is hard to think that I would actually do all three. It is easy to see the potential for using these tools in a library setting. What a great way for people to react to the books they have read and also to recommendations. One very intriguing post was the list of a 4th grader and the supportive comments she was receiving about her reading adventure.

Looking at Ning! was interesting, but I couldn't really figure out what to do with it. None of the groups had things going on which grabbed my attention. Maybe I've missed the whole point of the thing. It will be interesting to see what others post about it and see if some of the ideas make me view it in a different way. Any future thoughts about Ning will be posted separately.

The Travel IQ game was fun. Wish I could say I got to level 12, but in all honesty level 8 was the last finished. Funny, today students were really interested in the world map and got me sidetracked for a while discussing different parts of the world. This game would be a natural choice for student fun and learning. It did seem to be a quiz which you could get better at by paying attention to the mistakes made along the way. At least you could get in the right country, if not the region.