Lesson 10: Mash ups Reading Response

Horizon Report on Mashups

A mashup is a combination of data that is pulled together from a different resources in a single tool. I looked through twittermap and twittervision. Twitter map shows where people who are tweeting live, while twitter vision is a geographical vision of posts. Both sources are maps which show a picture of the person tweeting, their posts and where they are from. You are able to click on their web address and be linked to their post. However, with twittervision, the map moves around while you are watching it. I found that some times it moved before I even finished reading the entire posts. It was interesting to see where people lived and as a language teacher, I found also found it interesting to see all the different languages being used.


The Horizon Report states that “Data mashups are powerful tools for navigating and visualizing datasets; understanding connections
between different dimensions such as time, distance, and location; juxtaposing data from different sources to reveal new relationships; and other purposes.” Wikipedia provides this definition “In web development, a mashup is a web page or application that uses or combines data or functionality from two or many more external sources to create a new service. “

I looked through the Yahoo! Pipes site and found some library mashups that I Teacher- Librarians could use. I will post the screen shot in a separate post.

Mashups would be great to create presentations to classes or for pro.d For example, if I was doing a lesson on Paris, I might be able to combine blogs and pictures to create a lesson. Students to could use mashups for end of unit presentations.

Darlene Fichter has compiled a list of mashups for Teacher Librarian in “Mashups and Libraries: Resources, Article and Links. She also lists sites to help you create a mashup. This article is an excellent starting point for people, like me, who are just beginning their mashup adventure.