Thing #14

Having a tool like Technorati to tag and categorize the onslaught of blogs being created on a daily basis is beyond a doubt one of the most useful of the tools thus far in my opinion. Of course, the inherent problem with tags are that anyone can tag something anything they want. Without a standardization, there might be THE MOST USEFUL BLOG EVER!, but you might never find it because you don't know what someone has tagged it as. You could be using a search term to find that exact blog, but never find it due to this. However, that aside, the fact that there is some organization to these blogs and that they are searchable is invaluable. Using these tags and search capabilities, finding blogs to help me in my professional field is easier than ever before. Thanks, Technorati!

Thing #13

Social bookmarking is amazing! I can create bookmarks of personal interests to share with friends and family, I can create a bookmark for each research unit conducted in the library to share with teachers and students so they can access recommended sources and sites, I can create a bookmark for students with reading-related blogs for my readers, I can create a bookmark with professional links to share with my fellow librarians so we share useful resources. The possibilities are infinite! What a great way to harness the enormous, and sometimes overwhelming, resource that is the Internet for students and teachers alike.