It's a Conversation!

7 Reasons People Give For Not Using Twitter And Why They Can All Be Rebuffed With The Phrase: It's a Conversation

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Reading Rewards

"It's summertime and the living is easy" , oh too easy for children to forget those reading skills they honed during the school year. Now that summer is upon us, we as parents, librarians and educators fret about how to prevent "summer learning loss". After spending the school year advancing reading and study skills, how can we get kids to keep reading and engaged in pursuits to retain their literacy? Libraries offer summer reading programs, but not all children are able to get to the library regularly. What to do? Michelle Skamene, a Montreal, Canada mother who is a web designer by trade, took a pro-active approach and decided to challenge her children to match the amount of time they spent in front of TV and computer screens with time reading books. Her husband suggested that a web site for tracking time spent reading might be helpful to her challenge. And so Reading Rewards and its French language counterpart were born. And thanks to the social web, we can all use it.



The Reading Rewards website is very easy to use. Kids set up a free, private account which must be approved by a parent. Families determine together what rewards should be for a set amount of reading. Kids log in periodically to record their time spent reading and earn RR Miles for their reading (RR miles-- think similar to airline miles) which must be validated by a parent. But the site goes far beyond tracking reading time. They can also see what other kids their age are reading, write their own reviews, and get reading recommendations by age from a variety of sources, including the National Education Association, Coretta Scott King Book Awards, recommended by Parenthood.com,Parents Choice Foundation, Cybils, recommended by readkiddoread.com, Publisher's Weekly Books of the Year, Newbery Medals and Honors, Caldecott, and American Library Association.

Reading Rewards can be used on an individual basis, of course, but has the ability to create groups, making it suitable for use by teachers to manage a group from a single account.



Creating a group couldn't be easier. From the 'Groups' tab, click on create to set up a new group. Give your group a specific name that your kids will be able to find. Put in the start and end dates. Click on 'Create' and you will then be able to add the details for your group and put in a description and rules, if any. If you have a reading target (in minutes), you can enter it as well. Click on 'Apply changes'. You can also set up a default reward for the kids in the group (optional). When you are ready, click 'Publish'.

Once your group is published, just let your kids know how to find it. Tell them to register on Reading Rewards, and find your group in the 'Groups' tab. Once they've found it, all they need do is click on 'Join' to become a member and start tracking their reading.

Rewards can be set up as a group, or individually since some kids need more encouragement than others. You can click on 'Change reward' next to each child's name and modify their reading targets. By clicking on the smiley face next to each child's name in your group, you can send little messages to encourage them. These message appear in their news feed, on their public page.





If you want to have a list of 'Books I Recommend' appear on your group's page, simply click on the 'Add book' button and find the books on their Amazon-driven website. More about this can be found in the slide show.


Think about how you and those you know might use Reading Rewards to keep those kids reading skills in tip top shape over the long hot summer or anytime for that matter. And for those folk on Facebook, you can search an like their page on Facebook: Reading-Rewards.com.

Thinking About Friendfeed and Facebook

I'm not really sure how I feel about the acquisition of Friendfeed by Facebook, but this is a somewhat amusing take on it.

Thing 41 Mashup Your Life

I tried out a number of different aggregators. The one I use the most and find helpful is Friendfeed. I added my Friendfeed badge to the sidebar. You can see most of my web2.0 affiliations are added to it.

What I like about it is that you can be as active or inactive as you like on Friendfeed. It's like Twitter expanded. You can chose to be part of the conversation, or just be solitary when you want to. Like Twitter, what gives it value is the people you follow. I've learned a lot of things just by seeing what those I follow are interested in. It's sometimes led me in unexpected directions. It's definitely expanded my interests and my world. I use it more for professional interests. Facebook is for my closer contacts.

Thing 37 Photo Tales

I skipped way ahead to do some fun stuff. I love photographs or pictures and words put together. Animoto is a very fun application to use and easy as well. And they keep making it more versatile. You can see a number of things I did with Animoto by looking at some of my blog posts from late 2008.

I recently upgraded to a Flickr Pro account as Flickr is so convenient to use for sharing photos and integrates well with other social media applications. I added Flickr to my Facebook application, but find that even so it sometimes takes as much as two weeks for my uploads to Flickr to post to my Facebook account. But they do eventually get there. If you want to share in real time, though, it's best to load directly to your Facebook photo albums.

I added Picasa to my computer to manage photos and find it very useful and easy to use. Did you know that all the images you post to your Blogger blog can be found in your online Picasa album? I didn't, but found out in the course of using Blogger that this is true. How cool is that?

I've used Photobucket and Picnik as well since they integrate with some of the Web2.0 apps that Flickr or Picasa don't. There's room for all of them, but they all are user friendly.

I'll share one of my Animoto creations as a separate post, but I intend to do a lot more things with this thing.

Thing 31 More Twitter

Believe it or not, I have actually read all of these things and tried all of them..but before I wrote the "Thing". In doing so, I discovered how useful Tweetdeck can be for viewing and organizing how you view tweets.

The thing I use the least is mobile tweeting. I don't want to be tied to a cell phone and consequently only carry one when traveling for work. I do understand the convenience of mobile tweeting for some people. It's been especially interesting to see it used as events continue to unfold in Iran. In fact, the use of Twitter to circumvent the shutdown of the normal news media channels and other communication avenues is making Twitter itself newsworthy again. Despite the best efforts of the Iranian government, Twitter is allowing news there to leak out to the rest of the world in addition to within Iran itself. I did notice that most reputable US news agencies are careful to note that the information spread via Twitter cannot be authenticated and should be taken with a grain of caution.

Two Twitter tools I enjoy using are Twitpic for sharing photos and using Tinysong with Grooveshark to share a live link to tunes I'm listening to. I don't tweet songs a lot, but sometimes it's fun to share the current tune. One person I follow tweets entirely too many tunes, especially when it's music I don't really enjoy, but I haven't unfollowed yet because of that. I just ignore it.

There are so many Twitter tools that keep popping up that it's hard to keep up. Mashable has a nice organized list of them that's a good place to check. I like some of the ones that let you save a copy of the Tweet for use as a blog illustration.

I like the convenience of Tweetdeck for replying, retweeting and direct messaging. I also use Twhirl, Betwittered, and the web interface depending on where I am and how I'm tweeting. When using a computer that isn't my own, the web interface is most convenient. My current background is courtesy of PrincesstimeToys, some spring tulips. I really like the ability to change the background, but Twitter has had some difficulties with this off and on. I was stuck with a Christmas background for longer than I wanted to be because of their technical difficulties.

I've integrated Twitter into my Facebook and Friendfeed applications as well as some other social media aggregators I use. I also have my latest tweets in my blog sidebar, and have a twitter badge there too.

Scheduling tweets worked well when I knew I would be away to my internet connection to deliver expected information when I had promised to provide it. This feature would work well for a library who tweets.

I think Twitter is what you make of it. If you give it a chance, you'll soon become a believer. And if you don't give it a chance, you'll never even know what you're missing. And those of us who do use Twitter and LIKE it will have less noise because you don't use it. To those who do enjoy the flexibility of Twitter, I salute your astuteness. I've had great unexpected information supplied via Twitter and fun things as well. I might be labeled a Twitaholic; I love it that much. And as I use it, I become more convinced of its value as a communication tool.

Thing 27 Twitter

Since I wrote Thing 27 for the most part, I viewed and read all the contents that it has. I combed through hundreds of tagged items in Del.icio.us to pick out what were in my own opinion the most helpful to understanding Twitter. Understanding Twitter is not an easy thing; I think it is many things to many people. One thing it is is adaptable; new uses spring up everyday.

My username on Twitter is @lindawadman. I created an account in the first round of things just to try it out. I could not imagine what possible use Twitter might be, but as I used it it I found more and more value to it. Some view it as a time waster, and it could indeed be that for the unenlightened, just as many other things are. What it become for you is entirely up to you. I have found it to be a valuable tool in many ways. You can glean a lot from following a twitterstream of a conference you cannot attend. Where else can you follow someone who is a leader in their field and perhaps get a direct response to a query? You can do it on Twitter. It will be as useful to you as you allow it to be.

Twitter's rapid growth should be a clue that there's something there to pay attention to. If you don't get it, how will you ever understand it without using it?

I'm currently using a Twitter theme that is included by Twitter. They are having some difficulty with uploading images and backgrounds that I hope they will resolve soon. I had a background with first snowflakes, and then valentine hearts both from PrincessTime Toys, but as they were seasonal it was time for them to go. I've not been able to upload my background of choice because of their troubles, but I'll keep trying.

Since I had my "aha" moment on how libraries can use Twitter, I love it. There are many interesting as well as fun applications using it. Twitpic is a favorite, but I use many more.

I use Tweetdeck, Twirl, BeTwittered, Twitter's Gmail Gadget,and am trying out a new one AlertThingy which also can include status updates from Facebook, Flickr, Twitpic and some other social networking applications. All have their uses, but the one that I like best is Tweetdeck.

Another Twitter application I like is Tweet Replies. Since I don't monitor Twitter continuously, Tweet Replies enables me to see all the Tweets that are @replies to me so that I don't miss them. The @replies are e-mailed to me so my Twitter friends can be sure I see their tweets even if I'm not on Twitter when they tweet. I love it! And if you like Twitter, you will love it too.

I tried all the things in the Challenges as well to make sure that they worked. It was an interesting and learning experience. Scheduling Tweets is useful if you tweet for a library, so that even when you're not working, or the library is closed, you can still keep your Twitter stream going.

I went from skeptic to an adopter who loves Twitter and finds it enormously useful and fun as well. My Twitter friends are many and varied, including my eighty year old father. There's a lot going on there and I'm enjoying the Twitter.