Getting started in Flickr

I had heard people on message boards and other places talk about using Flickr, but I've just sort of put off investigating any photo sharing sites since I usually use facebook to post any pictures that I want to put out there. I found Flickr to be very easy to use. I was able to use my yahoo account to connect to it and sign in, so that was a nice treat to not have to go through the process of creating another account that I have to wait for an email to show that I'm not a bot.

Within seconds of getting on Flickr and setting up my page, I was able to add pictures quickly and easily. There wasn't too bad of a wait getting my photo files uploaded (nothing like youtube's wait time on upload, which I will rehash in a bit), and I always like a picture program that asks me right away if I want to put titles, descriptions, and tags on a photo. The whole process of uploading about half a dozen photos and putting the proper information on them took less than ten minutes.

Now that I have photos in Flickr, I have the ability to look at them on whatever computer I'm on or even put them into a slideshow - a nice feature when I've returned from a vacation and am showing off photos by connecting my laptop to the tv. Since Flickr is a photo sharing, I suppose that people will now be able to search and find the picture of my husband eating chocolate bacon (although I don't know why they would want to).

My biggest concern, as I go along in creating these accounts, is that it seems like eventually someone could put the pieces together and find me. Since my accounts are somewhat connected and I try to use similar usernames across the board to make it easier on me, it seems like someone could use this information to find out where I live, what I do, and now what I look and sound like. That's kind of scary since I've always been happy to be somewhat invisible on the internet, hidden behind protected sites. Just something that I've been thinking about and maybe a cause for me to switch up my usernames a bit or not have things that reveal too much about me.

Best LOL of the day

This might be the funniest thing I've read in a long time. Sheer genius.

Thinking back...

This has been an interesting semester so far. Spring semester is always weird because it goes by so quickly. If you blink, all the sudden it's May. So it's hard for me to think about the fact that the Web 2.0 class is nearing a halfway point since it seems like the class has just started. Or maybe, it's just that I'm finally getting into a groove.

At the beginning of the semester, I thought that Web 2.0 meant that I would get to hang out on facebook the whole semester. Since I already spend a lot of time on facebook, I figured that this would be an easy class. I was wrong on both accounts, but that definitely has not been a bad thing for me at all.

In the beginning of the class, I had a very hard time getting started. As many others have mentioned in their blog reflection, it was difficult receiving so many emails all at once and there was the sense of chaos in the beginning. Since this also coincided with the beginning of teaching semester, I shut down for a few days. When I warily tread back in, I decided to give it a go and try to go with the flow.

I really disliked the first couple of weeks. I was frustrated with defining Web 2.o since it felt like there was a correct answer that was being fished for that I wasn't hitting on. It seemed like a lot of the work I was doing was just busy work. There really wasn't an aha! moment where this all changed and everything was sunshine and lollipops, but after the initial couple of weeks, things started connecting better for me and I wasn't as stressed.

Where I initially was not looking forward to rating my peers and giving them feedback (since this is what I do all day long with my classes), I now really look forward to reading their thoughts on each topic and seeing how each person approaches a task. There are always things I didn't think of that my classmates are able point out or help me see in action. For me, the best part of this class has been the feeling that I'm part of a community. Whereas in previous classes, I always did the obligatory responses to work, now I feel like I'm getting to know my classmates and understand what they like and dislike on a daily basis. The insights that they have offered me have allowed me to think outside of the box a lot more than I normally would. To be part of this community and to be part of what makes Web 2.0 work has really been great.

There have been several tools that I really have liked and felt that could definitely use them in the future. One of the first was google docs. Although we didn't really use it for long, it left an impression because I hadn't been aware of its existence. Now my department is using it as a way for all of us to edit our syllabi in our classes to be a little more uniform. I also really liked finding out about Michael Wesch and his thoughts on the classroom and community. He provided me with some food for thought when I'm thinking about my students or looking up videos on Youtube. I think I often overlooked Youtube's vibrant community. I also found the fact that the Web 2.0 class being in Moodle to be helpful to me personally. As I'm switching all my classes from Blackboard to Moodle, it's nice to have a student perspective on a Moodle class and see some of the possibilities - I probably would have overlooked the glossary, but now I can see how that might work in a class.

There are also some things that I'm interested in, but I need to play around with a little more from the class. I liked Wordle, but I still need to think about how I might use this in the future. I also really liked finding out about editing the various big Wikis out there (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiversity), but it's something I would need to play with a little more and think about since it's still new to me. I'm also still on the fence about blogging- I love to write, but with blogging, I still have to force it, and I tend to drag my feet on it a little bit.

I'm still not too keen on a few things though. I know that CMSimple is suppose to be simple, and for the most part it is, but I don't like it. Sure I have the ability to make a webpage quickly, but not being the admin of my page means that I have to turn to D.I. to change or fix anything that goes horribly wrong. Even something as simple as changing the look requires an admin's download, so I'm not completely onboard the CMSimple train. I also don't really like Second Life. I can see the value for having meetings, but it seems like unless you were with a group of people who are pretty astute at Second Life, a lot of time would be spent making sure that everyone knows how to do everything. I'm sure that it gets smoother the more meetings you attend, but for now, it's just not my thing.

As many others have pointed out, right now it seems like I have more accounts than I know what to do with. I've tried to keep my logins and passwords simple, but right now, I have to go back to my profile on the course every time I need to remember how to get somewhere. Having my del.icio.us bar will help a little more with this, but it's still confusing to know when to post where. As Karyn pointed out on her blog, it might be a little easier if we used each thing (i.e. google groups, moodle, ning) specifically for a couple of weeks and then used another rather than trying to balance all three at the same time, and this would give us a better sense of each.

I also liked many of Lucy's suggestions in her emailed blog, particularly in thinking about the big global picture of it all. Almost everywhere I go now it seems like there is a big push for globalization, and I get more and more interested in it as learn more and see different ways that make this possible. But I still know very little and sometimes have a hard time connecting to things on an international level (as a side note, The Vice's Guide to North Korea [this is a link to part one of three] was one of the most eye-opening things I have seen in a long time).

Overall, I feel like the moments of clarity I have in regards to Web 2.0 as a whole and the new things I get to try out have far outweighed the frustrations that I have had. I'm looking forward to the rest of the semester and what I will walk away with at the end of the class.

Deliciously easy!

This evening I checked out Digg and del.icio.us. I setup a page on Digg since I was used to seen articles with a "Digg This" icon. I figured it must be pretty user friendly. I had a hard time figuring it out or really locating a getting started section in digg, so I switched over to del.icio.us. Delicious was a little more user-friendly, in my opinion. Right away, it gave me a bit of a lesson on how to use delicious and the option to download the toolbar. I went ahead and downloaded the tool bar, and wow! what an easy way to bookmark things.

One of my biggest problems has been organizing things I like to look at or pages I visit frequently. I can bookmark until the cows come home, but then I have to organize all these bookmarks in the tool bar. The nice thing about delicious was that I could just tag something and then it was sorted for me. Having the toolbar means I have ready accessed to my organized sites and articles, but I didn't have to do any of the work. The nice thing is that I can also access my bookmarks using my delicious account, which will be a real lifesaver since I tend to jump around on computers a lot and hate having to spend time looking up something that is bookmarked on one computer but not the other.

Delicious has also given me a chance to start bookmarking one of my newest obsessions...curling. I want to find out more about it and keep track of this sport, and now I think I might be able to a little more effectively. I read an article about it I was interested in yesterday, but I didn't want to necessarily save it to my own bookmarks, so delicious is a good way for me to mark an article I found interesting and then be able to come back to it later.

This will also give me the ability to manage some of the pages I come across and use or reference in my classes. I'll be able to sort articles and links a little quicker and by class. I'm really looking forward to using this particular application a little more.

My profile

Wikipedia-ing

When I started editing the early college high school page in wikipedia, I just stuck to keeping my edits nice and simple- things I knew I wasn't messing up. Although it was nice to finally be able to get my hands dirty with editing a page in wikipedia, a site I visit frequently for information, I was still a little perplexed as to how the page itself comes together. From looking at what was already on the page, I could see some stylistic things that looked like Wikipedia's version of html. It was nice to actually read through the tutorial and be able to really make my profile page look like a real Wikipedia page.

I was surprised by how easy to was to create the footnotes and to link to topics already in Wikipedia. I thought that doing a reference would be really complicated, but it wasn't in the slightest. It's good to see a page that allows for so many to work on editing, adding, and enhancing the information together, but at the same time, keep the editing easy enough for anyone to be able to handle it. I also liked that Wikipedia presented their five pillars to using and editing Wikipedia - it made me feel a little more relaxed with changing information and adjusting to be able to know that anything I did incorrectly could easily be fixed. This really allows for anyone to go in and get hands-on and experiment without ruining everything. The sandbox mode was also helpful for this.

Overall, I give the editing end of Wikipedia a strong thumbs up. It was easy, and Wikipedia provided plenty of tools to make sure that you could get the final product you wanted (I love it when there is a preview button to see what you've done before it goes live.). This is definitely something I can see myself using and doing in the future. My Wikipedia Profile.

Oh Deer!

My mind is always buried in technology. I spend all my days managing my online classes, and my free time is usually spent reading articles on the internet or communicating with friends via facebook. The fact that my mom is now on facebook also is a time drainer since I have to constantly answer her questions. She also joined Farmville and spends half her life watching her crops grow.

In my last blog post, I mentioned how I thought that a reality like second life was not for me...that I would miss what the real world had to offer. I didn't take into account the bad things that life offers as well. This was painfully clear as I hit a deer on Thursday.

There is nothing to remind me how helpless I am without technology as that night. I was on a dark, country road in my sporty little car when WHAM! out of nowhere a deer decided to run into the front of my car. Apparently once wasn't enough since the deer bounced off and proceeded to run against my door. I knew I wasn't in for a fun night when my car started making a grinding noise and my driver's side headlight went out.

My first reaction was to get out of the car and check the damage, but my door wouldn't open. My second reaction was to get my cell phone out and call someone; my cell phone was nowhere to be found. I could visualize it sitting on my kitchen counter, and I assumed that's where it still was. So I was out in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone and a broken car.

I was able to walk to a house that had some lights on half a mile away and use the owners' phone to make some phone calls. But they didn't have a computer, and I couldn't look up some of the places I needed to get in touch with. I didn't have my gps with me, so I couldn't give an accurate explanation where I was to the police and the tow truck. Everything eventually worked out, but I was left thinking about how people survived without all the technical gadgets that I NEED day to day.

Maybe I've become too dependent on being able to use my phone to both make calls and browse the internet, and I think that when push comes to shove in a situation like this, the only thing that can be relied on is other people and the ability of you mind to assess the situation and work out a plan. In all of this, getting my car towed back to my house and getting everything filed correctly, I wasn't able to use any of the things I normally depend on. It was a little bit of an eye-opener.

I eventually found my cell phone...on the passenger's side floor.

Sticking with First Life for now

I feel a little more organized with some of the possibilities of Second Life after meeting up with the Web 2.0 class on Friday. Most of the commands I had figured out just by intuition (and a lot of hours of World of Warcraft as a reference to online worlds), so I didn't feel like I was that bad off. I really enjoyed sitting around the table in a "meeting" with everyone, and I really liked chatting with people in the class on the voice network. Of course the normal problems arise with any voice network where people have hot mics and naturally with a large group, not everyone can speak. But I think it's always nice to put a voice with a name since this is the first time I've had this opportunity with people in this class.

It was fun to learn to fly a little bit better (I couldn't figure out the keys for that before then), and it was also interesting to see how people really get into this game. We encountered a woman who has a second life husband, land, dogs, and a 27 year old body. I think for people like that, Second Life has become more and more like a first life.

Neil mentioned in his blog that second life is hard to define as a web 2.o tool since it is a download and not technically on the web. I tend to agree with this assessment. It feels more like a game to me than anything, but it's frustrating that there really are no goals in Second Life besides those that are present in normal life: work, make money, get a home, and find friends and companionship. I also think that for something to be Web 2.0, it needs to be a little quicker. I think a majority of my time on SL is spent waiting for enviroments to fully load. I have a great computer, so I'm not sure why it takes forever. It also seems like SL is very empty a lot of the times. I'm sure that there are plenty of places where there is a vibrant community, but I've only found ghost towns and places that have long been abandoned. This seems to suggest that this place isn't really growing towards anything but that it is either stagnant or dying. I don't think that I would place this in Web 2.0 for this reason as well.

Could this be what Web 3.0 could be like? Sure, absolutely! But it seems like SL is more of a fantasy world than real. I would think that things like video chat would be more of what Web 3.0 would embrace rather than an avatar that looks like how many people wish they looked than they actually are. It seems like this alone would make people question the authetic, especially if, what we saw in this week's youtube videos are any indication, we seek community and being part of something genuine. But perhaps something along the lines of SL more revamped is what would be seen in Web 3.0.

There are a lot of movies that explore the idea of using your mind to control an avatar of some form to do things that a normal person might never do (think Keanu Reeves in The Matrix - "I know Kung fu!), but at what point does a person stop being a real person when this happens? If you only experience life through fancy gimmicks, is it really experiencing life? Even at the end of Avatar SPOILER (highlight to see) the main character made the choice to experience life for himself and actual become one of the natives rather than living a life of smoke screens and computers. END SPOILER

A world like SL seems to straddle both lines. It has one side that is all fantasy, but then it also has the side where a person might do everyday tasks like shopping, walking a dog, or sitting in a meeting. Even if the graphics are nice (after they load), it still seems like a weak comparison to sitting with an actual person and having a conversation or going to a mall with a friend. It's easy to see how people could want to live in a world like SL and would probably readily embrace it if this slowly became our future, but for now, I don't think that I'm ready to give up the real for a facsimile.

Wordle

Today I played around with a web app called Wordle (see my attempts at Wordle linked here ). I hadn't heard of this particular page before, but I've definitely seen these "word clouds" in other places. I figured when I saw those that they must have taken awhile to make and place. I had no idea there was something out there that could take the words I wrote in a box (or on a blog) and turn it into wonderful looking art. Being an English teacher, I always see literature as art, but now to see a blog or even a resume as art is something that I can totally get on board for.

In a culture where brevity is fast becoming the norm, it's not completely outlandish for something like Wordle to be the future of things like resumes. One thing I noticed was that the things that were mentioned a number of times appeared bigger than the other words. So someone could describe themselves using a few "big" words and use the smaller words to complement those. Something like wordle really shows how keeping it short and sweet can still make a big impact. If you can explain what you are doing or how your day is going in 140 characters, why wouldn't it be reasonable to make something that looks good and sells yourself with just words. However, this might open up a weird can of worms where maybe the person looking at the wordle doesn't like blue and so glosses over looking at a wordle that uses a lot of blue. I could see how this could work either way.

I always tell my students that a resume should never be more than a page long and sometimes students have a hard time fitting everything that they think makes them hireable in one page. Imagine if you could put whatever you wanted into one wordle. It would be interesting to say the least.

To end this post, here is a link to what this blog posting looks like if it were a wordle. I think you could get the gist of my blog posting from it.

Second Life

So I joined Second Life today. It's still just as choppy and weird as I remember when I tried to get into it a couple of years ago. I wandered aimlessly around and somehow ended up in an area where a British lady was arguing with some guy that Egypt was in Europe. Wow.

I went and found a clothing place where I could get some new looks, and it was hard choosing between the black leather, black leather, or black leather. I finally found some sensible looking clothes. Somehow I ended up with a lot of thongs in my inventory. I also got a cardboard cutout of a bloody rabbit. No idea how I aquired that.

Logging back on later got me a lot of "Shake that ass" as I walked...how....mature. A very nice girl started talking to me and encouraging me that it was a lot of fun to play. She seemed really nice. Then she asked me if I liked vampires. I tentatively said sure. I do like vampires, but this was sort of a weird question. She then wanted to show me her clan's castle. So what the heck, I haven't seen much in Second Life, so I went. It was sort of like going to a timeshare- she showed me the place and then asked me to join her clan. I figured what the hey, why not.

Apparently being in a vampire clan means I had to spend 15 minutes having my blood sucked. So apparently, in just my first day of second life, my character is almost dead. At least she was nice enough to take me shopping after for better clothes.

I'm not real sure what to think about Second Life right now- it's pretty confusing right now, but maybe it will grow on me.

The machine really is us

Today I worked for the machine. By playing a simple game, I contributed to what the machine knows. Last week, I saw videos from Wesch that made the statement that the machine is us/ing, and I pondered that and figured that it connected to the way we tag blogs or how we search for things. I played a few games of google image labeler yesterday before I left my office, and I sort of glossed over the purpose behind doing the game...instead I was focused on how well I could do at the game.

This morning, I took a sick day and decided I was going to actually going to get caught up today. I got a chance to watch the lecture video about how simple online games can be used to do the work for the machine- simple things like google image searchs could become more accurate based on people playing these games. I was surprised by how many hours are wasted by people playing solitaire, but then again, I often find myself playing it as well when I'm watching tv or just bored. I think a good point was made by pointing out that these wasted hours could be put into doing something productive for internet searches and pictures while still being a game.

Since the class has defined web 2.0 as something that is very social and collaborative in nature, this game of labeling makes sense. The uses of having people do the work is something that I could defiinitely see transferring well into education. On a smaller scale, I approached the head of my department yesterday to fill her in on the possibility of using google documents to work on a standard syllabus for our department (a problem that we have been trying to find a solution for for awhile). But, now that I think about it, in the English department alone, there are tons of ways that having a "game" could help to determine outcomes. Having a game available to submit sentences/paragraphs from one's paper and then having people from around the world pick out grammar errors might be really great to teach about proofreading and also help to pinpoint common grammar errors that people are prone to making with the English language. This would, in turn, allow me to adjust what I teach in some of the basic writing classes. I tend to stick to certain grammar topics as a whole (e.g. commas), but if I could determine that students tend to have more problems with introductory commas and not really serial commas, I could adjust accordingly.

And the speaker was absolutely right...I felt a huge sense of accomplishment this morning when I was able to break 1000 points on google labeler. I couldn't help cheering, which in turn got my husband interested, and now he is labeling for the machine/us.

Playing Catch-up

Even though the first part of this week was an adventure in snow, the later part was just a sheer energy drain. I haven't had a chance to do anything but try and get through all of the papers my students handed in that had to be readjusted because of snow days. Then there is the nightmare of trying to rearrange schedules to try and get everything in. So I feel a little off-kilter with everything and am just getting a chance to get back to working on Web 2.0 class. At least I had the foresight to work on a few things at the beginning of the week, so I won't have too much to get caught up on. The warmer temperatures suggest that I'll be able to get back into a routine this week (I hope!).

Reviewing introduction videos

So I'm having a lot more fun looking over my classmates' introduction videos than I thought I would. It's taking me awhile to get through them all since I've been watching them two at a time and then thinking about them before I comment. Luckily I have a snow day today, so I hope I'll get caught up with them all!

I wish that I would have watched some of my classmates' videos before filming my own, but I wanted to film mine just as a total noob with no outside influence. Now that I'm watching my classmates' videos, I can see things I want to improve on for the future and also different ways to approach the same task. Now that I have a tripod for my flip camera, I should be in business!

I hope to get through the last few I haven't seen today so that I can feel like I'm on track. This semester has been hard getting into since I feel like I'm being pulled in ten different directions with everything going on. Not to mention that I have two mini-semester classes starting this week, so I better stay on track with Web 2.0 this week.