Week #5/Thing #11 Ning and Web 2.0 Award Winners

I went to the Web 2.0 Award Winners' short list first. I was amazed at the number of applications with which I was already familiar. I think some of this Web 2.0 stuff is sticking in my head. I scanned the categories and tried Travel first thinking I could find something to help plan my vacation or something that could be used by my teacher husband in his world history class. The first two applications seemed like new versions of Expedia or Travelocity, so I switched to the Organization category.

The big winner in the Organization category is called Backpack. It looks really cool with lots of features (calendar, whiteboards, pages, journals, reminders sent to your e-mail or cell, and more). I scanned the list of how users recommend Backpack be used and hit upon a woman using Backpack to plan her family vacation to Disney World, so maybe I have found an application to help plan my summer vacation after all. I signed up for a free trial and will give it a try before getting my traveling companions involved.

The features I especially like are the calendar and the whiteboards (which seem to function like a wiki). I also really appreciated seeing a video tutorial for each feature of the application. The only feature I didn't like was that there didn't seem to be a login box on the main page. After searching for sometime I finally figured out that each login page is unique based on the name you wish to give it and you have to bookmark your special login page. Now that I have done that, I won't have to worry that I can't find it. Once you're logged in, everything seems quite intuitive. I will have to really post some information to test it out.

As for school library uses, I could easily see where this would be an easy place to plan a unit of study with a classroom teacher. There is lots of room for all sorts of information -- the calendar, files, lists, images, etc. The things that are uploaded are very easy to drag and drop around.

Once I had the Backpack account, I moved over to Ning and joined a group. I searched for YA lit and selected a large group titled YA YNot! It had lots of members and was associated with the website TeenReads so I thought I would be able to get many recommendations for what to read next. Since I will be done with my MLIS in just a few short weeks I will once again have time to read for pleasure. Though I have stacks of books waiting, I am always looking for new ones. I don't have to be the first on the block to read something, but I don't want to be the last either. Scanning some of the discussion posts in the Ning, the group looks active and knowledgeable.