International Children's Digital Libary website

As some of you might know, I am an active member of Tapped In, an online community for educators. Tapped In holds many real-time chat sessions during the week. I decided I am going to start blogging sessions I attend.

I attended the session for web tools on Monday. We discussed the International Children's Digital Libary website. The International Children's Digital Libary is a digital library of children's books from all over the world. There are about 900 books in 35 different languages.

The discussion leader asked us to make note of the different ways you can search for a book.

You can search for books by......

• location/continent
• language
• title
• author
• subjects
• color of book cover
• age of reader
• length of book
• picture books or chapter books
• make believe or true books
  

and there even more ways to search for books on the site

I was not sure why anyone would want to search for a book by the color of the cover. I asked the discussion leader this question. I was told kids remember books by color. I realized after that how this is helpful. I thought about how kids could read a book on the internet in this digital library. For example, they could read a book about a dolphin with a blue cover. They really liked the book and wanted to buy it. How can they find the book? They might not remember the title or author, but they could remember the book had a blue cover.

Kids can write reviews about books. It is very interesting to read these reviews. I really enjoyed reading the profiles of the reviewers because you can find out more information about them. Most of them completed the sentence for "If I could change my school library media center I would....".

Why do nonprofits not blog?

There was a comment in an interview on Netsquared that nonprofits that do not blog are not serious about finding new ways to engage people.

I have been thinking alot about this comment and the more I think about, the more I get upset.

Why?

I am trying to find a web position at a nonprofit. I have learned from an e-mail list that I am on that alot of nonprofits do not have time to do everything they would like to do with technology.

I know this is true for small nonprofits. One person has so many responsibilities that they can not take on more tasks. Maybe they would like to have a blog, but where are they going to find the time to create one and keep it updated?

I am not sure if the same thing applies to larger nonprofits. But if it does not, the only thing I can think of is that they do not know how a blog can help their organization. I hope through Netsquared these nonprofits will be able to learn how blogging and other new technologies can help them.

Questions from NTC Blogging Panel

I was reading the questions from the NTC Blogging Panel. They came up with some great questions.

Listed below are the questions I would like to explore more. I will write about them either on here, on the Nonprofit Blog Exchange, or on Netsquared.

1. It is important to know who your audience is, understand that it may change as you go along, who you attract. So how do we do this?
2. What is your goal? To educate, build community, fundraise. Focus on one to start with.
3. What is the true cost involved in blogging? What's the management time, how many hours, time is already short, now you want me to blog?
4. What's the impact of blogging in a distributed organization with a lot of chapters, where they might write things which do not reflect central policy, and may reflect poorly. What do you do?
5. What resources are there for blogging (see the right side of this blog!)?
6. When thinking about how to generate content for blogs, there's often a lot of internal communication about current news that can be used externally - strategic. Target where communication is happening to generate content without doing new work
7. How do you rally citizen blog armies or communities of bloggers around a cause?
8. How do you get other influential bloggers to link to your org/cause's blog?
9. How do you get people motivated around issues with blogs like the March of Dimes Share Your Story site does?
10. How do you teach blog etiquette (the one person who makes it a personal platform - me me me )?
11. What are the advantages between blogs and message boards? What are the differences between blogs, wikis, message boards, etc and how do I decide which to use? In combination?
12. Are people using blogs as community building tools? Examples?

History Podcast

Interesting article titled "Podcast technology helps students at home" about a history teacher podcasting.

Here is part of the article-

Some students usually can't wait to get out of class. Others, such as 14-year-old Adrienne Graskemper, can't wait to listen to her teacher Eric Langhorst again and again and again.

Langhorst is an eighth-grade history teacher in the Liberty School District, and his secret weapon is podcasting. He is among a handful of teachers who use podcasts to help students review for exams and to supplement their education outside the classroom.

Because podcasting is relatively new, it's difficult to gauge how widespread it is in the classroom. Education experts specializing in information technology simply say the number is small.

Podcasts are like radio shows that can be downloaded to a personal computer or an MP3 player, allowing listeners to tune in anytime, anywhere.

Langhorst's Web site - speakingofhistory.blogspot.com - is a mix of blogging and podcasting. Blogs are online diaries that allow readers to post feedback.

On the site, Langhorst interviews civic leaders and a television director. He has links to other sites that he thinks are interesting. He reviews lessons so students can better prepare for tests, and he hosts a forum for student comments.

"It's just another tool to create an environment in which
they want to learn about history," he said.

And students seem to appreciate his efforts. "I listen to it before I go to sleep," Graskemper said. "I think it makes social studies easier than my other classes."

The complete article is at Podcast technology helps students at home and the blog is at Speaking of History...

Blogging - Ways Nonprofits Can Use Blogs

I read a very interesting blog entry written by Britt on Netsquared titled "10 Ways Nonprofits Can Use Blogs".

After reading this entry, I started thinking of ways different places can use blogs. I realized some of these 10 ways can also be applied to nonprofit technology consultants and to technology companies providing services to nonprofits.