Week 4 - Flickr and Tagging

rotated horizon
Originally uploaded by Kristen Kirk

This is one of my favorite photos I've ever taken. I edited the photo on Picnik to create a horizon parallel with the edges of the picture.

As much as I'm a fan of tagging, I find I don't often employ the practice much myself. I think it is such an incredibly useful tool, but don't take the time to use it. The only website I reliably use tags on is Goodreads.com, where they're called shelves. The reason I tag there when I don't tag anywhere else? I'm obsessive about keeping track of my books and my reading. I tag books with the year I read them in. How else would I know that I'm way off pace for reading this year?

That said, tagging is exceptionally useful in searching and sorting photographs.

Week 4 - Image Generators

Other than using our computers to play games the number one thing kids do is look for photos, be it for school projects or their own interest.

I love all the options at BigHugeLabs. Make a magazine cover, movie poster, pocket photo album, etc. There are months worth of activities for kids right there. Create a literary or news magazine and add designing the cover as part of it. Ditto for a movie poster. The possibilities are endless as long as you have interested kids and access to a couple of computers with internet. I can't wait to present some of these options to our fledgling Tween TAB. (I need a better name for that.)

A couple of other image sites I love are:
1. Picnik - my favorite tool for doing simple adjustments to photos, though there are some more advanced options as well
2. BlockPoster - I made some photo backdrops, so kids could pretend they were at the beach.

(I'm having way too much fun making librarian trading cards for some of my colleagues.)

Week 4 - Photos

For the past couple of weeks we've been discussing the use of the word Tween, it's current use and how much to embrace the terminology ourselves. The day after the initial email came through my email I was shopping for a retirement card at Walmart (they didn't have them, by the way). What they did have was a section of greeting cards marketed for tweens.

Seriously? How many tweens shop for greeting cards? At any rate, this was the first time I saw the use of the word outside of professional literature. Have you seen it out and about?

Furthermore, do you market just to tweens? And do you use the word tween or have you found a suitable replacement? Do you have staff that focus on tween services?

Speaking of tweens, have you seen the new Dora?