#10 Image Generator

Ok, still learning how to do this. I've found a few fun things to play around with, but am figuring out how to post them on my blog! I'll keep experimenting...

#9 Virtually Online

Wow, there must be people with huge brains out there. This was really a bit of an eye-opener to see just how clever the internet can be.

I checked out the links to Second Life, ExitReality and the Warcraft one, and while I was blown away by the cleverness of them all, I was not tempted to join the virtual worlds or even download the plugin for the 3D effects.

I barely have time to fit everything into my normal life and have no desire to set up a second life for myself, or lose myself in online games. I can see that if I downloaded Exit Reality, I could easily spend much more time checking out 3D pages. In fact one of the video links mentioned that - it is their goal that people spend more time on websites. Could be fun, but I'm going to save myself that time and not get caught up in it.

At least I now feel more up-to-date with what is happening in the online worlds!

#8 iGoogle

I have a brand new iGoogle homepage and I love it. I had kind of figured out iGoogle when I first set up my google account, but making the time to really explore it tonight was fun.

I've added lots of gadgets - the most important one at this moment being the weather for Hong Kong! I'm going there next week and it is very handy to know what the weather is doing.

I used to have hotmail as my homepage. I now have iGoogle, and I have added hotmail as a gadget so I can automatically see if I have any new emails.

I also have added, among others, GoogleDocs, Facebook, currency converter, a cool game, and Flickr (I'm looking forward to learning about Flickr soon and am sure I want it on my homepage...)

As for adding something that will be useful to my job... well apart from Google Books, I can't see myself using this for work very much. Oh, unless I'm at work and need to remind myself of any birthdays coming up, in which case I will be able to use the Birthday Reminder! Handy indeed :-)

By the way in my next life I am coming back as a Google employee.

#7 Google Books

I've just spent an hour playing around with Google Books and creating my own library. I think you could spend a lot of time checking things out and wasting time, but I can straight away see three very practical ideas of how I can use this in my job. I'm sure over time I will be able to make even more use of it, but as a beginner I can:

1. check out reviews for new books, especially in regards to appropriate age groups, and also for the CBC shortlist;
2. share my library with my staff. I have created a Shortlist shelf (for CBC awards) on my page, I will email the link to them, run a very short PD session on how to use Google Books, and they will be able to look at the shortlist titles and decide which ones they want to read to their classes;
3. teach my staff how to use Google Books to find class novels or professional reading titles they might be interested in.

I can also see great opportunities for the kids to use Google Books as a way to share reviews. Perhaps teachers could set up "class libraries" where they could add class novels etc. They could write group and individual reviews and share their libraries with other classes. What a great way to get them talking about books!