Back to School Web 2.0

Watch this video: Web 2.0 Kids

As I sit here and write this, school is getting to start in a majority of the country. (since you are in FL and I am in NY, I think we can consider the national perspective) Many of you are just getting over the Summer Reading Program, hopefully, parents and teachers will see the fruits of your work. Lets take a look at kids and Web 2.0 this month.

You might be thinking that kids and Web 2.0 go together like peanut butter and jelly but surprisingly enough, not all digital natives are embracing the technology the same way you and your colleauges are. For example, for the most part, kids and teens don't Twitter. They might toot, but they don't tweet! Here are a series of articles from Mashable.com -

Twitter Teenager

Why Teens Don't Tweet

Teens Don't Tweet

Ok, lets think about this for a moment - if you are using Twitter as an info feed for your location or dept - who is your audience? Are you hitting the folks you thought you were?

What is hot with kids? If you have kids or you have observed kids on any of the Lib's computers, you will know that the #1 and #2 websites for 12 and under crowd are Webkinz and Club Penguin. Both of my own children would spend entire days on either site if left to their own accord. I, personally don't think either site is true to social media or Web 2.0. Sure, there are blogs and user generated content, but they seem to be more of a web based gaming platform. Maybe I am just old to get it!! Here are THE Journal's recommendations for Web 2.0 Apps for kids.

What are the dangers of kids using social network sites? Digital natives, by definition, have always had access to the technology that we are learning. They may not associate the dangers of sharing personal information on the web. Facebook to them is like the phonebook and yellow pages are to us. When you were growing up, did anyone "teach" you about sharing your personal information in the phone book? Probably not, for a variety of reasons. How many of you have been trained, as parents, on how to teach your kids to be safe on the interent? Now we have two problems - kids that don't know better and parents that don't know how to teach them. For example, my oldest daughter Kayla recently received a tourism/travel/vacation planning pack from the state of Colorado. Her mother and I asked if she would take us on her trip. She is eleven, and mentioned that since she needed a ride to the airport anyway, we could probably come too. Cute. This child's parents ARE digi-savy and she has been taught net etiquette, but kids are still kids and providing your name and address to access a website that you want seems easy enough. We determined that she provided her mailing address info to some website that sold it.

eXplorers: Since children make up a large part of the Library's buisness, lets take a look at some of these Web 2.0 applications that are safe to recommend to parents or provide to the little tykes as information resources:

Glubble - is a mixture of Flickr, Facebook and a little bit of Power Point. Glubble is perfectly suited to be the default homepage on a family's web browser. It offers a place to upload pictures and the ability to create a family time line to share. Extended family and friends can be invited into the page and kids can create and edit their own page. Glubble also has pre-selected website destinations for kids or parents can add to the list with their own choices. Not bad - I created a page for my family and invited our kids - we will see where it goes.

Kids Tube - bills itself as the biggest kids video site on the internet. Youtube isn't the best place for kids to hang out on. Kids Tube probably won't cut it for kids that are used to the huge variety on Youtube, BUT if they are doing research for a school project, or need video to include in anything, Kid Tube might be a good place to suggest.

Quintura for Kids - Quintura is a visual search engine - I believe that we examined it in Learn 2.1. Quintura for Kids uses a combination of visual icons, phrases and traditional word boxes to focus down to what the child is searching for. Take the tour before you use it, it makes it easier to understand!

Ask For Kids - Ask.com scaled their regular search engine to make it appropriate for kids. I did a search for Hannah Montanna and it returned the official fan web site and a few Disney sponsored links.

In your blog, tell us about your experiences with these websites. Are there any others that you could recommend for kids?


Adventurers

Since you are all living on the cutting edge of technology, lets take a look at an application that might make your life a little easier. Friendfeed is a one stop feeder service for all of your social media accounts. Take a look: Friend Feed

Facebook quizes are the most popular application on Facebook, but are they taking more than you are giving? You hated quizes in school, what makes you think that they are good for you now? Take a look and change your ways! Facebook Quiz link

Finally....Collaboration Software

If you participated in the original Learn 2.0, you may vaguely remember the pre and post survey that we did for the course. At the time, one of the survey items dealt with collaboration software. Anyone remember that? The focus of the Learn series has always been collaboration (and exploration and fun) but at the time, we didn’t really have “collaboration software”, so the course never covered it. Like all things in life, that has changed and several companies have created free, web-based, office suite applications that allow you to truly collaborate with anyone in the world. (remember Information is Open Source from L-2.1?) This month, we are going to take a look at some new web based software and try to do some collaboration.

Not that long ago, documents and computers were focused on the individual user. Microsoft had a very public dream of one PC with Windows for every person in the world. The documents that you created (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) were stored either on your PC or the network. If you were on a computer that you shared with others, you still had your own account and you could use office applications to create your documents. If someone else needed access to your docs, you had to print it out and sneaker-net it to them (geek speak for walking it over to them). Later, you could email it to the person, or if you were technically savy, share the document on the network. Many, many, MANY versions of Learn 2.0 were emailed around the lib for different people to see and comment on. Rashal McEldry edited most of Learn 2.0 and 2.1 and we would use different colored text to mark our revisions. The process worked, but it was less than effective. Just the act of emailing it back and forth consumed hard drive space on our email servers and bandwidth in the network as the docs were sent back and forth.

Now there is a better way: New Ways to Collaborate
(the narator speaks very fast, but the content is very good)

Since Google owns Blogspot and you just happen to have a blog on Blogspot....your blogspot username and password will get you started on Google Docs! Isn't it cool when things come together? We aren't going to get into the nitty gritty of using Google Docs, that is beyond the scope and capabilities of this course. If you are interested, EXPLORE!!! Find an exploration partner and see what you can do, you might surprise yourself! If you get frustrated, (I know that you aren't AFRAID to try!) check with the CRC to see if they offer a class. Here are some Youtube video resources to get you started:

Google Docs Community

How to Use Google Docs


eXplorers – lets collaborate on a document! I have been frustrated with Blogger in that the Follow feature doesn't allow me to back track to your blog. I can see who is following me, but I can't follow you! To fix this, I have created a spreadsheet for you to copy and paste your blog URL into, so I can follow you too. If you have the follower’s widget in your blog, you will soon see my smiling avatar in your followers box.

New Directions: Click the link to open Google Docs. Click the "edit this page" link and add your data. You can cut/copy and paste your blog URL into the cell if you don't want to type it out. Google Docs Spreadsheet

Zoho - Zoho is a G-Docs competitor. Zoho seems to have more applications available and may offer you more capability. You can also log into Zoho with your Google account - sneaky or what?? Take a look~Zoho


Adventurers - you are probably already veteran users of G-Docs, which is cool. The spread sheet above was created with Zoho Sheets - another open source, web based suite of colaboration tools. While I personally don't have a preference for Zoho or G-Docs, it is always good to know both. You can create a Zoho account by using your Blogger account, just click the Google link at the bottom of the Sign In box. What other web-based free applications are you using? Are you using G-docs on your mobile phone or ipod Touch?