Thing #6 Mashups

Wow! The Wikipedia article describing mashups required some techno lingo knowledge. Parts of it sounded like another language. I got the gist of it, however, and explored almost all of the Flikr mashup tools. Rather than concentrate on one of them, I'm making comments about several that I particularly liked for library/student/classroom use.

Students studying United States landmarks and monuments would benefit greatly from seeing and/or placing the sites in the appropriate places on a map. I need to play with this more to figure out the best way to apply this, but there are a number of uses for it throughout the curriculum, if I understand it correctly.

Trip Planner could be very useful as a highly motivational techno tool to produce an end product for a countries research unit. Students can leave feedback about other students' trips, and teachers can post comments to help students learn or correct simple mistakes (such as noting that the Leaning Tower of Pisa is not in the U.S., as one of our sixth graders stated in his presentation).

One of my favorites, Flikr Color Picker, makes it incredibly easy to find gorgeous photos for each of the colors studied in kindergarten. Locating and printing the pictures ahead of time to use with the lessons is one way to benefit from this tool, but adventurous librarians and teachers might want to consider using this with laptops or in the lab and letting the students choose colors from which to generate the pics. My experiments didn't pull up any questionable photos, but that is something to delve into a bit further before trying it with a class. I have no doubt there are filter issues with Flikr at the elementary level, though I haven't tried it yet.

Using Motivator, Magazine Cover, Movie Poster, Captioner, and Billboard to design promotional materials for the library featuring books and students would definitely capture student interest and generate excitement.