Private Universe

For some reason, I was pleased that my answers I gave in regards to the seasons of the Earth and the phases of the moon were viable. I tend to think with right side of my brain more than my left, and therefore, I have setup a mental block against all things math and science a long time ago. I took only the required classes I needed for either of these two subjects, so it surprised me to see that Harvard graduates had trouble pinpointing down an accurate answer for the same questions I answered.

Although the subject that was focused on in the video was more science oriented, I wonder what the results would have been for questions from another subject that is more focused on in schools (I.e. the three R's). I've always been sad that classes like history and sciences tend to take a hit when the budget goes south. It seems to me that students now are being taught more and more towards tests than to how to use and retain the knowledge that a student learns in class.

The teacher in the video made a point about the student that she felt was one of her strongest being a kinesthetic learner and needing to actually touch the objects and maneuver them to fully understand the concept being taught. This is sometimes not always possible in a classroom. I know that most teachers try to engage all types of learning, but sometimes the kinesthetic learners might not get the opportunity to learn hands on as much. This is where new media could step in since students would be able to find out more information about a topic in a way that is comfortable for them. I am a visual learner, so I am able to learn most effectively from reading or seeing (which is why I look to the internet to help guide me as much as possible).

New media in education is something that should be thought as a supplement to classroom education (whatever form that classroom might take). But, part of new media in education is also making sure that students can be analytical thinkers and be willing to look at several sources. In terms of the video we watched and the questions posed, the students in that video could have looked for information about the seasons and phases on the internet (but judging from the hairstyles, I'm going to guess the internet hadn't gone public yet at the point of filming). A student could look at a wikipedia article to get a sense of the topic and follow it up with looking at more visuals on youtube. There are plenty of spots online that a teacher could have sheets to work on or, in the case of something like google docs, allow students to build off of and edit what other students find out.

The problem with this is being able to judge when a source is reliable. If a student were to watch a youtube video that had someone talking about how the moon went through cycles due to glowing moon rocks, he or she has to be able to follow this up with confirmation from other sources. Otherwise, it seems like the student could fall into the same trap of creating a private universe of ideas again.

As the web becomes more and more of a collaboration and conversation amongst people, it seems that ideas that are incorrect or slightly off can be corrected by others (albeit sometimes rudely). This is nice to see since I see this in the discussion boards in my online class all the time. It makes me wonder what the outcome of the questions would have been if we had responded to each other's answers to the questions and helped each other to fix any wrong conceptions we had.

This all was interesting to think about since the classroom is definitely showing that it can't stay within just four-walls as the students and the ways they gather information changes.

Using Wordle in the classroom

Mondays are not my day. I'm buried behind a pile of papers that need to be graded, and I have a hard time really pulling together lecture notes for my one in-person class I teach. So today, rather than have my students write another short paper that I would have to grade, I let them play with Wordle.

For the assignment, I told them to write a one to two paragraph review of Alfred Hitchcock's Pyscho (a movie we watched last week). It was an assignment I was going to have them do for a daily grade anyway, but I decided to tweak it a bit and have them then copy and paste their reviews into Wordle.

I had them post the links on a class discussion board and look at each others' Wordles. It was interesting to finally use Wordle in the classroom setting, and I think it went over very well. I've already passed along this particular activity to some other teachers who I thought might be able to incorporate it into a class with a little bit of time to kill. I'm very happy to be able to see and use a Web 2.0 in an actual educational capacity. It makes the connections seem a little more clear.

Hang 10

http://www.flickr.com/photos/emdot/ / CC BY 2.0

I remember hearing about couchsurfing a couple of years ago when I was listening to NPR. The people on the program were talking about some of the pro's and con's that were associated with sites like couchsurfing and one other site that allowed you to exchange houses with another person/family. I thought the idea was neat but not necessarily for me.

I come from a family that seems to have a constant flux of people from all around the world that visit (right now, my mom's best friend, a German named Uwe, is staying at my parents' house for the next two weeks). My mom goes over to Germany for several weeks each year and ends up staying with people that she just met, only speak German (of which my mom can basically say "The airplane is dead") , and then inviting them to stay with her in the US. This is the sort of ability that I envy since she is very comfortable staying with people she barely knows if it means she is having an adventure. I can't do that.

In setting up a couchsurfing account, I can see how it would be useful to someone like my mom or even college students who are looking to save money and still have fun, but for someone like me, I just don't know. As I'm getting ready to plan a trip for my husband and I to visit the New England area, I'm almost halfway tempted to throw in one night of couchsurfing just for the experience, but I think there is still that hesitation that we could end up in a bad situation. I definitely wouldn't do it by myself, but with my husband, there is a little more security. So we'll see about that.

I like that you can look at other people's profiles in couchsurfing and read some of the comments that people have made. I looked through a lot of profiles though and didn't see any negative comments. It seems sort of impossible that out of all the people who do couchsurfing that there are no negative comments. It even seems like couchsurfing discourages negative comments since you have to message the couchsurfing honchos to process a negative experience. So does this mean that couchsurfing is just that awesome or does it mean that only the positives are being highlighted?

I set my profile up to have coffee since I live in a house with virtually no room for someone to spend the night. We had a guest room at one point, but it was converted into another office. I joined a few local groups, and I was able to see how people could just throw out a "hey I'm going to be in the area these dates- who can help me out?" I actually answered a question that one woman had on trying to plan a western NC trip since I knew that one of the roads she wanted to travel on was closed for construction. Couchsurfing is one of those communities where it seems like everyone is really nice, so much so that I keep thinking there has got to be some catch to it all. Some dark underbelly that isn't being revealed.

After writing a few references for classmates, it seems that you could really just get anyone to write something nice about you. I don't even know in-person some of the people I gave a reference for, for all I know, they could have a collection of severed heads in their basements (I seriously doubt it, but you never know).

Couchsurfing seems like the sort of site that you go to for specific reasons, but not necessarily to hang out like some of the other social networking sites (i.e. facebook). There aren't games to play or the like, but what makes couchsurfing so different is that a lot of your interactions on couchsurfing could result in possibly meeting the person or people that you talk to on a message board or get in contact with to meet up or stay with. This is something that makes couchsurfing a whole different beast than other social media. The other social medias allow you to display yourself for others to look at. Couchsurfing seems more like a place to put yourself out there to actually meet people and make real interactions- not just comments on a blog or wall.

After going through my meetup meeting, I'm not as hesitant about couchsurfing as I might have been when I first started putting my profile together. So maybe, just maybe, this will be something I'll be using when putting my trip together.

Another step to becoming more social

I hate meeting people. Not just that I hate making small talk or trying to think of interesting things to say or ask, but I get physically sick and start sweating when faced with having to meet new people. At parties, I'm the person who watches more than gets involved with any conversations. If I know a bulk of the people, then it's a different story and I'm quite outgoing. This has led a lot of people to be very shocked when I admit that I'm an introvert instead of an extrovert. "But how can you be a teacher?" is the question I get when I admit my shyness. Teaching is a different beast from having to be in a social setting, and teaching also doesn't faze me. I sometimes get nervous the first day of class, but I can overcome that quickly. Plus, since almost all of my classes all the time are online, it's not something I have to deal with that much.

The reason I say this is because when I first read the assignment to "tie the worlds together" and meet someone or a group of people I don't know or knew of ahead of time, I felt the familiar surge of anxiety in my stomach right away. I think I spent a whole day just mulling it over in my head and getting freaked out. I was totally convinced that I would not be able to complete this assignment, but I also get overly anxious about uncompleted tasks, so it was a battle of the wills.

During this time, I started talking to Kelly from class. I was chatting with her on google chat one night about my hesitation with this particular assignment and we decided that maybe it would be good practice to meet in person. Kelly lives in the next city over from me, so it seemed like why the heck not? We decided to meet at Tyler's Taproom over by the Durham Ballpark. It was sort of strange, but I knew who she was right away without having to go through any of the cheesy "I'll be the one with the carnation in my buttonhole" things. We hit it off right away since it turns out that we both enjoy fancy beer and soft pretzels. We had a lot of things in common, so it was very easy to talk to Kelly, and the initial anxiety I have from meeting new people was fleeting. I was a little more hopeful that I might be able to complete the assignment without ending up giving myself a heart attack.

I invited Kelly to join myself and a friend of mine for a geek session where we basically crack out our laptops and grade papers or work on other things (usually involves me surfing weird blogs). My friend took a picture of Kelly and I so I would at least have something to write about if I chickened out on the assignment.

The three of us had a good time basking in the warming glow of free wi-fi. Kelly and I discussed the assignment further and my friend mentioned meetup.com and said that we would be able to find a group for anything (and boy, she was right). It was easy to create an account, and I just stuck to using the same information that I used in most of my profiles. Kelly and I surfed through several pages of everything from Wiccans to single-mingling groups before we stumbled upon a meetup for The Apex Fitness Walkers & Social Club. They were just a group of people who met every couple of weeks and walked around Apex Lake.

This was good for two reasons: 1) Both Kelly and I were familiar with Apex Lake. It's a lovely area and a fairly easy walk. 2) It's a very public location, so if this group was crazy or whatever, there would be the benefit of other people around. Since Kelly and I felt it would be easiest to do a meetup group with each other (safety in numbers), we decided to signup for the March 20th walk.

One of the features I really liked about meetup was that after I RSVP'ed to the event, I was given the option to add it to my facebook postings. So, after I added it, I received several comments and others of my friends that said they might be interested in something like that in the future. I also left a comment on the group's meetup page just to let them know that I was new to all of this and looking forward to the walk.

Leading up to the walk, I was sent reminder emails periodically and I could check the page to see what the numbers would be. There ended up being 22 people who had given a definitive "yes" to attending this walk. We ended up finding out that this was the 2nd largest group turnout in the two years that this group has been active.

We were given a specific location to meet the group in a reminder email, so it was pretty easy to find everyone. The organizer of the event introduced herself to us right away and took attendance.

We all went around and introduced ourselves, and just like that, we were off in a pack.

The weather was perfect for a walk, and getting out and doing something the first day of spring made me excited for the nice weather to come. During our walk, we got to talk to Pat, the organizer, who told us a little bit about the group. We told her about class assignment. We also chatted with various other people in the group about things from weather to dogs (of which there were several on the walk). I have to say that the 2.5 mile walk was over before I knew it. It's amazing how fast the miles go as you are chatting with people.

In the end, maybe it was good that I got out of the house and met some people that I knew nothing about besides a few postings on the group discussion board. I probably would have spent the day inside working on schoolwork or cleaning, and I would have missed out on the chance to see the beautiful weather and meet some new people. This is a group that I could see myself being part of regularly, but this wouldn't have been possible without the step out of my comfort zone. Perhaps meeting people off the various social networking sites is not a crazy idea as I initially thought. And maybe the saying "Strangers are just friends you haven't met yet" can be applied to this situation: "People on the internet are just friends you haven't met yet."

(Our walking group Saturday, March 20th. Kelly and I are in the back row with sunglasses)

Fun with words

So I realized today that I was on hiatus from writing on my blog. I was busy with my students, getting my car fixed, and having a fun sinus infection. I was at a conference for the last three days, and I'm going to try to put a few things I learned in some posts coming up so I have a point of reference more than just the crappy hotel paper that I jot things on since this conference is usually the one I learn the most from during the year.

The fun thing about going to conferences is the neat little tricks one can learn. Today, my favorite thing is Spell with Flickr that I found out about today in D.I.'s session (yes, I actually met him in person- a rarity in this program, I'm discovering). So check this out:



This is the kind of thing that makes a conference worthwhile. It's sort of like when I learned how to make banners in Blackboard at one conference, and that is still the only thing I remember from the conference (probably because that was the only thing I did for the rest of the sessions that conference).

Tomorrow I vow to get back on track with other things, but for now, I need a much needed nap.

Sloodle: The Missing Link Between Education and Second Life

I don't think that I'll ever just "hang out" in second life like a lot of people do. I don't really want to build a house, start a career, or have a virtual pet or plant that I need to take care of. There is a lot of normal life reflected in Second Life, and to me, it seems like why would I go to the store and shop when that's something I don't even really like doing that much in real life.

I have understood that Second Life is a neat idea for meetings and interactions with people, but I still have been having trouble seeing how I could use Second Life as an actual tool with my students in my classroom. It's hard to tell students in an online class that they must attend a meeting at a certain time, and in fact, my school makes me put all required class meetings in the course list each semester if I want to do that, so telling students to meet me in SL would probably never happen. So, for me, the struggle has been understanding how I could personally use SL. This is where Sloodle has come into play for me.

I came across the various announcements for Sloodle in the SLED emailings and my interest was piqued in the first emailing I received February 23rd.

Professor Merryman will be demonstrating how to connect Second Life to
Moodle using the SLOODLE open source module.

Since I'm in charge of a large number of conversions of classes to Moodle at my school, I've been interested in all things Moodle. Moodle is a program that I originally hated and didn't see how it could ever replace all my organized folders on Blackboard, but now I keep finding myself yearning for my classes that I teach this semester to all be in Moodle. I went to the session on Wednesday the 24th, where it was just me and one other person. Professor Merryman basically gave a brief rundown about using Sloodle and then pointed us to a schoolhouse of sorts that he had all sorts of examples of Sloodle for us to view. We were told that it was available to look at at any time and that we would be enrolled in a orientation class that would allow us access to the Sloodle example classrooms. Because I'm a little awkward with SL, I decided to come back and explore this schoolhouse a bit more later.

Since this introduction time, I've popped over to the Sloodle island a few times and perused about. It's a really neat community and everything is labeled extremely well, which I appreciate. I finally sat down to run through the orientation introduction to Sloodle this past weekend. What I found was just amazing to me.

After I confirmed my registration (all I had to do was sit in a seat), I read through the information that was placed on giant panels on the back wall of the schoolhouse; the information was also on a notecard for me that I was given upon confirmation of my registration. The organization that put this on was called Cypris, and information on contacting them was found throughout the first few panels of notes I read.

When I had read about the practical uses for Sloodle, I was able to experience it firsthand. The room I was in in the picture above was the actual classroom. There were two classrooms, and apparently the way the sound is setup is such that voice chat is restricted only to the classroom you are in. The picture above is where a student can submit his or her assignments and check grades. Apparently, and this surprised me, a whole Moodle class can be taught without ever having to leave SL.

This picture above shows one of the actual classrooms. By clicking that white box, the classroom can be anything from a nice library room to a movie theater. It can be changed back just by typing "clear" in general chat. I thought this little box was neat since if you actually did have a meeting with students or even office hours (the library room has a nice desk), even though the location is stationary in SL, the background can be changed.

This picture shows how a student can check in for attendance. Simply by clicking on the little calculator looking thing, the student is then marked as having stopped by and is awarded points based on the teacher's point system. Very neat. This still allows the students to do this thing according to what works with their schedule (an important element of online classes). At this attendance machine was also how I was able to teleport to the room that held the two classrooms I mentioned above.

So I was able to see how attendance could be taken, how assignments could be received and submitted, and also how to have a specific meeting room for a class, but I was still wondering how things like quizzes would be handled. Apparently, Sloodle can setup quizzes either as a gameshow style where you compete against classmates or individually by sitting in a chair and clicking on the correct answer from the popup question that appears.

Even though I only focused in on this specific schoolhouse location that I had permission to play around with, I walked around the island area to get a feel for it. There are several classes in session there (I think) that have large rooms to check in and submit assignments, although I didn't see any rooms that had the ability to shift like the ones I encountered with the white box. There were also several halls that had explanations of the connection between Moodle and SL (apparently SL can be added into the Moodle drop down menu when setting up an assignment). There are also several lecture hall areas in the Sloodle region as well. My favorite is the UFO auditorium.

I really enjoyed my experience with Sloodle, and it made it very clear to me how Second Life doesn't have to just be a supplement to education; it can actually BE the educational experience. All of the things that I'm familiar with with teaching online classes and teaching Moodle are still present in Sloodle but with more visual effects and more of a sense of involvement. The Sloodle area can be found here.

Attempting to Embed

Embedding is a lot easier than I thought it would be, if you are using the right sources. I embedded an audio clip, a youtube video, and a slideshow from my accounts on my web 2.0 portfolio page and was surprised that I was able to simply cut and paste and put my item right in my page. However, this wasn't achieved until after I realized that what I put in CMSimple using Internet Explorer simply wasn't viewable unless I switched over to Firefox. I'm not sure what would prevent IE from showing something that Firefox allows. Maybe I need to upgrade a browser or something, although I'm loathe to do that until my school finishes converting to Moodle since Firefox blocks files from being downloaded in Blackboard.

The other problem I encountered was that Chirbit doesn't really have a way to play embedded audio files. In trying to find a way to embed the chirbits, I did a google search on audio embedding and found this neat site that gave some specific things, like embedded players (my favorite was the Google Reader MP3 Player that seemed easy enough, but again, it wouldn't allow for me to link Chirbit to play into it. I ultimately had to settle on starting a Woices account since a few people had said that it gives an embedding code.




This was the ultimate result. As I was typing this post up, I found that embedding doesn't show up for Internet Explorer on blogger as well, so it looks like this isn't just a problem with CMSimple. I had to switch to Firefox to finish this posting.

In addition to embedding audio, I also embedded one of my videos from youtube


and I embedded some pictures from my Flickr account


Embedding is easy when the codes are given to you to just copy and paste into an edit html page on wherever you want to embed, but I think it would be much harder to do if I was trying to embed from a place that didn't provide the code. However, it seems like internet searches yield enough results from people who have found players that work to help embed, as I found when I searched for audio players. It seems like it is becoming pretty standard to provide an embedding code when something is uploaded now though. A lot of times, programs automatically embed links - I've found this to be true with Facebook and Google Buzz where just providing a URL as part of your post allows these programs to then post a small thumbnail sized version that shows what the link goes to. Maybe this is the direction that programs are going in that you don't even have to go through the hard part of copy and pasting an embedding code since the program is smart enough to do it for you.

Licensing: Definitely Not Black and White

I'm not, what I would consider, particularly good at music (although I play a mean Guitar Hero). I don't intend on ever inventing anything, and my photography is typically a blurry thumb. However, my secret desire is to one day be the next great American novelist. I've always seen myself writing a single novel that defines me as an author and then fade away from the public eye. J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee are two authors that were able to do this- write a single, great, defining novel that speaks to a generation and then continues to be able spark conversation and love. However, both were authors that closely guarded their works- Salinger even made a rare public appearance to go to court to prevent another author from trying to publish a sequel to Catcher in the Rye.

While I admire both authors, I'm not sure that I could be so close-minded about my what I would write. If the purpose of writing something is to both get and give enjoyment, then wouldn't keeping everything to yourself be going against this? I want to think that I would be one of those people who would allow the public to use my work however they like, but I think that wouldn't necessary be 100% true.

I liked what Creative Commons offers by providing a place to make your work available or even just giving the ability to have samplings. Even though they claimed that the man who wrote a book and put it in creative commons and had it printed did okay, he was read by far more for free than who paid for the book. I suppose this begs the question of whether you are in it for the money or whether you are in it to provide the public with enjoyment. I guess there is also the question of integrity and not wanting to see your work mutilated or passed off and sold as someone else's. I don't know. It's a hard thing to decide.

I think I would probably allow for samplings of my work to be used without any problem, but I think in order for me to allow for full-unhindered use and access, I would have to be absolutely sure that the person using it wasn't going to be passing it off as his or her own creation and giving some credit where credit is due. I may not be as driven by making money off my creation as some, but I definitely don't want someone else making money off of it either. But then again, I guess it would depend upon the context and ultimate use.

I was trying to find something to show as being able to be posted and used, and one thing I found was a page that had picture of Snoopy as Joe Cool. I didn't think that Peanuts characters were in public domain, but maybe this somehow fell under fair use (although it wasn't a parody). What I settled on was the picture at the top of the page. I was struck by it since I always feel like colors are so bright right before a good thunderstorm.

I went through Creative Commons searching for photos to find this. Creative Commons has a little disclaimer that they only make the search a little bit easier, but some things you find might not technically be under creative commons. So I looked underneath the photo and found the cc logo, a link to the profile of the photographers, and a message saying that this photo was labeled for reuse under creative commons. I feel about as sure as I can be with this sort of thing that I won't have any lawyers coming for me by posting this photo on my blog.

Although I can't speak for the photographers, I'm assuming that they wanted it to be available for resuse so that it could be spread throughout the world. They obviously appreciate the colors before a storm like I do, so perhaps they hoped that their photo would bring me joy, and I, in turn, would post and pass those emotions that come from looking at a world before a storm with others. To certain degree, I can go along with this, although there is nothing really to stop me from claiming I took this photo in my backyard, which is my greatest fear with these licenses.

These are hard questions to think about, but maybe I'll have better answers by the time I finally get my novel done (or started).

The Wide World of Wiki

The more I get to examine the world of wiki, the more amazed I am at how many wiki-things there are. When I played Warcraft, I used to read a wowwiki for my information, but I didn't really think much about it, didn't think about the fact that I could have contributed things to, and didn't think about who was creating it. Wiki is really a vital tool for Web 2.o, it seems to me.


In looking at wikimedia to get a sense of what is out there, I instantly gravitated to the wikibooks. The reason that I instantly went to that one was my love or reading, and oh yeah, I teach literature and writing. I was curious as to what wikibooks would present. In meandering around and clicking on a few different topics, it seems like wikibooks is still in an awkward growth phase. There are several topics that have "textbooks" with a lot of reading and examples, for example, the trig section in math, but then there are several topics, like literature, that seem a little bare. Clicking on some of the genres within topics shows the skeletons that are laid and intended for some of the books, but there obviously needs to be more information filled in by the masses. Maybe when this is done, these books will be useful to the wikiversity members. My favorite section of wikibooks was actually the recipe books. There was a little bit of everything here, including how to boil water and other cooking techniques.

I also looked at wikinews because part of my perusing on the web is always looking at the news, be it local, national, or worldwide, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. It seems like there are so many news outlets available out there that something like wikinews might be lost in the shuffle. What I do find interesting is that people could pool together their knowledge on a news story and provide different viewpoints. I think this could be valuable considering there are many worldwide views that aren't usually brought up in the news we read. My favorite feature on wikinews, by far, was the "Random Article" link that would take you to a random page in the database. This feature helped me realize that it mgiht be good to have somethign like wikinews that would also serve as an archive for things in the news now that we might need to reference or try to find out more about later. Google searches work well, but to be able to search for older news within a site is always great.

Although these were the two wikis that I focused on, I'm intrigued by the others as well and the possibilities that if I were to look at this same menu in a couple of years, there could be double, triple, the number of wiki items.

Really getting started (again) in Youtube

I've had an account in youtube since the fall, when I uploaded a video tutorial about using the Picassa program, but since then, my account hasn't really had anything added to it.

This semester was different. Because I'm teaching an introduction to film class, I need to be able to show clips of older movies to my students, and as it turns out, Youtube has all of these things. Since Youtube has the ability to create "playlists," I can save youtube videos in whatever playlist I need for the next class period.

I honestly hadn't really used it or wanted to use it for uploading videos since fall, but now I've started having ideas on how to put together youtube tutorial videos to help my students next semester with the transition from Blackboard to Moodle at my school. I have a guniea pig class now, and I was able to create a video using Camstudio that shows them how to get rid of some of the extra clutter in the class (something that I'm tired of answering in emails)

My Camstudio has been acting up, so where I wanted to play around with recording and uploading some more videos like my first, I had to settle for using my flipcam a little more. Everytime I use the flipcam, I realize how easy it is to use and wonder why I don't use it more. I just played around with using it on my cats and uploaded those videos. Not really educational, but a nice stress relief (especially my orange cat who purrs 24/7 - the camera did a nice job of picking this up).

My experiences with uploading videos on youtube have been pretty hit or miss. I was able to upload my two kitty videos with no problems in under 5 minutes, but the other videos I have up there have taken at least an hour a piece and sometimes more since I have often gotten to the 99% mark only to be told there was an error. I'm not sure what causes the difference unless it's the file types and the content, but it can be pretty frustrating to be hanging out by this computer waiting for my files to upload (I use my desktop since it is wired directly into the internet).

I'm not sure I'm ever going to be one of those people that will be comfortable having a vlog or really filming myself too much, but I don't mind using it to achieve specific objectives, i.e. showing a class how to do something since I don't see the students in person.

Chirbit- Not just for Furbies

I really think that Chirbit sounds like something that Furbies used to say. "Ooo wahhh heeee Chirbit Ahahahhaha." Or maybe just my Furby said that...along with turning on and talking at 3am.

Anyway, I was stumped on what audio sharing program to examine since there are tons of them out there on the web. I knew how to do podcasts using audacity (or at least I used to- it's been awhile), so I wanted to try something a little different and something that could go along with my need for instant gratification. In reading through my classmates' blogs, I came across Karyn's blog entry about Chirbit. I'll admit, I was intrigued because of the name (judge a book by a cover much?) but what I liked was that it could be linked to facebook and twitter, according to Karyn's entry.

Since I had nothing to do during office hours yesterday (a normal occurence for an online instructor), I started a Chirbit account and played around with it. It was very easy to setup, and although I'm not a huge Twitter fan, it has a similar layout to Twitter, so it was at least familiar ground.

Within seconds of setting up my account, I was using the text to Chirbit program. Yes, you can make Chirbit swear, but I deleted those audio clips since my Chirbit is family-friendly (or is now). The text to Chirbit made me very happy since this would allow me to type up announcements for my classes and copy and paste them on Chirbit. I've been trying to keep a professional twitter account going for my students who want to check on what I'm grading that day or announcements, but the tweets didn't really seem all that different from just posting an announcement. Now, with Chirbit, I could get the RSS feed going into the class and they could click on whatever Chirbit they wanted to hear. Lots of possibility there!

As I'm writing this, I realize I have a ton of windows open. I have a youtube video uploading in one window, two tabs open for the Web 2.0 class, one for my blog, one for Chirbit, two email windows open, and my main class page at VGCC. It's no wonder I have the attention span of a flea.