#19 Web 2.0 Tools

I had a look at Lulu http://www.lulu.com/. There's a lot of content that may be of limited interest except to the person who posted it. This site could be useful for using with specific groups e.g. Young adult book Group to publish/share original material cheaply. I quite liked browsing some of the calendars.
I also looked at yourminis http://www.yourminis.com/. I have long admired the LMS Go live widget on my colleague's blog. We could use widgets such as these on our website to promote events such as the Summer Reading Club or Children's Book Awards.
I decided to give "The Golden Compass" a free plug on my blog. It was extremely easy to add, although I have no idea whether the countdown is accurate for Australia (I suspect not, but I did see my first trailer on TV tonight so it must be getting close). I am very much hoping the film is not a dud!

#18 Web-based apps

Zoho Blog trial
Today I took part in the Melbourne Walk Against Warming. Police estimates put the crowd at around 30,000 which isn't too bad, although I've been in much larger peace rallies and anti-Work "Choices" rallies in the past.

Ironically, it was so hot we had to use our placards as umbrellas to keep the sun off.

The above was written using the Zoho site which I think is a brilliantly useful web application. I'll tell my Dad about it: he doesn't have any word processing program installed on his computer.

Unfortunately the cute little picture I inserted didn't come across and the emoticon ended up with a border! I'll assume I did something wrong. I can live without smileys anyway.

#17 PB Wiki

To bracket or not to bracket that is the question. Whatever. I added my blog and had a look around.

The "favourite" pages were a bit too haphazard for me - a lot of scrolling required, but I guess that's the nature of a "sandbox".

There's a lot of stuff on the web that has novelty value for me at the moment. For example, I followed a "favourite website" link to bookcrossing http://www.bookcrossing.com/home

I've heard about this before but hadn't gotten around to checking it out. It's a great idea and I've signed up (yet another screen name and password to keep track of) but I'm not sure how often I'll log in in practice.

#16 So what's in a wiki?

A few of my favourite things about wikis:

• When done well they can really help the newcomer around an issue, a topic, a site. For example the wiki at the K12online conference (see post #13) http://k12online07.wikispaces.com/ really does assist a first-timer like myself to navigate the array of links without making me feel like an idiot (wikis often seem to have an enthusiastic, empowering tone to them: I guess because they are driven by enthusiasts).
• Wikis are great for reader-to-reader recommendations and reader community-building. I can see lots of potential for C&YS applications.
• What a great tool for collaboration and knowledge-sharing! I had a look at things like "unattended children policies" on the best-practice wiki and found some food for thought.

Now we have something else to talk to our council web boffins about!