Thing #6

This morning, I enjoyed looking around at some of the different mash-ups posted for us. Mappr and Filckr Color Pickr seemed interesting, but Mosaic Maker and Big Huge Labs' trading card site seemed to have more apparent uses for an elementary library.

Mosaic Maker, for instance could be used to creatively display something students have done in school. For instance, a display could be made of student involvement in a book club, a reading incentive program, or some kind of reading after-school program.

The librarian trading card idea is pretty interesting, too. I love the examples I saw with cartoon/avatar-looking characters. They would probably attract the students' attention the most. One example in particular had the librarian's name printed in bold at the top, a cartoon of her in the middle, and information about the librarian listed at the bottom. I am interested in seeing how other librarians either currently use these trading cards with the students or are ploanning to use these.

Last summer, I went to a Nettrekker workshop that showed how to make an "online Trek". This application merged Nettrekker with Google Earth to create a cool way for teachers and or teacher-librarians to present research materials to students and relating it to an interactive world map. Would this, too, be a type of mash-up?