Ending the semester

It was nice to end the semester with getting to work with my classmates a little bit more. I wish that I had gotten to know them all sooner in the semester, but at least I know we have more classes together in the future.

The first group I started working with was Lucy's brainchild. She, because of her experience being out and about in the world and experiencing other cultures, saw the value in having a translation product. Our group for this project consisted of Lucy, Krysti, Brooke, and myself. With this project, which we named Globetalkers, we met a couple of times on Skype to discuss the nitty gritty, but we decided on having a centralized website to reference that would contain the information of the product and also have the product out in the social networking world (it even has its own Skype account!).

In the second group I worked with, consisting of Amy, Karyn, Shelly, Thomas, and myself, we developed an LMS system using a Presi to put it together. I had never used a Presi before, and I think I ended up spending part of one Skype meeting just playing with the tools. In this project, which we called New Open Book Learning Environment (or N.O.B.L.E.), the backdrop was the shape of a tree where we looked at the foundation of this system and the three branches that would benefit and what it could offer. It was neat playing around with new tools in this group as well.

Even though I was not looking forward to the group projects since my experience with group projects in the past was less than fun, this time around, everyone was active in the groups I was a part of, and it was a great learning experience as well as a social experience. I'm glad to end the semester on a high note!

My individual project

I've been struggling with how to put together an individual project (in addition to really settling on something that I would enjoy), when I came across a CNN article on a guy that was analyzing dreams via Twitter.

I don't really understand Twitter, but I thought about how great it would be to have a site where people could submit their dreams, similar to Postsecret's site (which is nothing more than a blogspot as well!). I named my idea "Such stuff as dreams are made of..." (geek alert!) from a quote from one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, The Tempest.

What I did was start a blog, so there would be somewhere to dissect and discuss any dreams I found to post. Since I didn't have any immediately, I also embedded a few youtube videos. I also started a twitter account for this project and linked the RSS feed of the twitter account into the blogspot page.

What really got this project rolling was when I created a facebook group page. Before the last two weeks in this class, I had never created a group facebook page, but now I've created one for this project and my two group projects. Since facebook is the hub of social activity right now, it seems like this is the best place to plug in and get people. I asked classmates to join the facebook group page and I posted it on my facebook status as well. Initially, I got about 13 people to join the page. Then, suddenly, overnight, that number doubled. I don't even know about a third of the people in the group. Facebook is such a social network that friends of friends were joining the page because they saw the link in their feed that a friend had joined the page.

What this shows me, since my interest in Postsecret was that there are so many websites that become popular through word of mouth (People of Walmart, Cakewrecks), is that is it very easy for a site or idea to gain some momentum fairly easily. The really neat thing on the facebook group page for "Such stuff as dreams are made of" is that people really did start posting dreams and nightmares they had. So I was able to take real dreams from members and put them on the blog.

Obviously, this concept is still in the infantile stage since I have held back from really pimping it out, but I think this might be something that I will play with this summer in a goal to see how many people really will join this group. I'm amazed at how social networking really has a snowball effect (I remember when "Can This Pickle Get More Fans than Nickleback" was running rampant; they did achieve their goal in the matter of a week or so).

Geotagging

I've always enjoyed going on vacation and then showing my photos to other people. I'm not sure if the people I showed the photos to enjoyed it as much as me, but that's okay. I also love to travel, and if you are in a certain area, a lot of buildings and scenary can start to look the same in the pictures. This presents a problem when later on trying to go through and label the photos and remember where they came from. I have many pictures from my trips to France and Italy where I'm at a vineyard, but I don't remember where. If had geotagged my photos when I uploaded them (although, these trips were more when digital cameras were just coming out), I wouldn't have this problem.

This brings me to a story. When I was in France in March 2004, I spent a day in the city of Arles and went to a little fortified town on some beautiful cliffs called Les Baux. Les Baux might have been one of the most beautiful spots I've ever been in in my life. I took many pictures and even sprung the 3 euros for access to the crumbling castle that offered even better views. I was so excited about these pictures. However, my camera was stolen from me that night along with all my photos. My biggest regret was that I then had no pictures from this one day of my trip (and that I had to use disposable cameras the rest of the time). Over the years, I forgot the name of the place even. Until I started geotagging my flickr photos.

By geotagging, I realized I could look at a map and look at photos anywhere in the world. I used this to slowly track down the city of Les Baux that I didn't have pictures of. To me, this is more valuable than posting my pictures, but maybe my pictures will help someone else one day.

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

Along these same lines, it seems like the fact that digital cameras can keep track of where you are should also help with post-vacation memory. I really think that having the location on a photo would be better than the date and time (that is usually wrong anyway). This seems like it would eventually make geotagging your own photos obsolete since plugging your camera in could already download all that information.

I'm also very interested in photosynthing - I think it's a neat idea to take the pictures and experiences of many other people and piece together something as intricate as the Notre Dame Cathedral. I think this might show how maybe our photos and experiences are not as unique as we might think- there is a common thread that links us all and we all have shared experiences. One thing I particularly liked about this lecture was reading the comments underneath it. This is a man with a passion (and a bit of attitude) for this technology. I'm not sure how many other people read through the comments, but it provided a little more specific information about this sort of technology.

I'm hoping to get back into taking pictures this summer while I'm on break, and this assignment reminded me of that. Now I'll know how to license, tag, and geotag all my photos!

My Rte 66 Trip

I have always had a dream to drive Rte. 66. I think it's because I've heard the Chuck Berry song way too many times. To me, Rte 66 always seemed like that little piece of old-fashioned Americana that has been dying out with the invention of bigger and better things (i.e. I-40). I used google maps to create a map that pinpoints all the major cities that Rte. 66 goes through.


View Maureen's Route 66 Trip in a larger map

I marked some general feelings I have when hearing the city names and my sort of plans for each major city. Since I haven't been to many of the cities, I would have to do research to figure out exactly what I want to do (I'm a sucker for tourist traps like "The World's Largest Ball of Twine").

One thing that I really liked about marking my trip down in google maps is the ability to turn on photos, videos, webcams, and wikipedia articles for my map. So simply by clicking "More" at the top of the map, I can choose these things. This is nice to get a sense of what people felt was worth a photo. Plus, after my trip, I would be able to add in my own Rte. 66 trip photos.

I have never played with this part of google maps before, so this was very interesting to me. I have a Garmin gps device that I never leave home without, but it only gives bland directions and shows roads. If google maps could combine with my gps, I could have photos of what I am looking for, satellite pictures, wikipedia pages that might recommend some of my tourist traps. This would be a far cry from the vacations I took with my family as a kid, where we had a paper map that could never get folded the same way again. I think that this newer technology would make it very difficult to get lost or to remain lost for too long. This is where I see cell phones taking over the gps market since it doesn't make sense to have a bland gps unit when a cell phone can do all that and more!

Wordsmithing

I found this assignment to be one of the more difficult ones, so I've been putting it off for awhile. In theory, it should be an easy assignment to simply make a few modifications on a "poem" of sorts, but I think that editing poetry is akin to a serious crime since you are changing someone's personal thoughts and experiences. Also, since this particular poem comes from the Rives poem, I can't bring myself to change too much since the Rives poem has that nice stream of consciousness quality to it.

So I just changed a few spots where commas were needed since I visualize the DI-Rives-poem as being read aloud just like the original, and commas are important to breathing and adding pauses for an audience to take it all in quickly. I also marked a few spots where I needed clarification or else had a question.

thank God! If you take a man's cookie he's got no cookie but if you copy it he might find it offensive, but you've got a cookie too.... Teach a man to copy a cookie and everybody gets to eat!

I liked this line- probably because one of my favorite quotes is similar - "Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes, that way you have judged him, have his shoes, and are a mile away."

Anyway, I'm not really sure what further modifications could be made to this poem without telling DI that his poetic voice is wrong or that his experiences with the web didn't happen. I'll be interested to see what others think or want to add to it.

Educating without copyright

Since most of my thoughts with websites and content without strict copyright tends to gravitate towards how I can use something in my classroom. With this in mind, I decided to look for lectures that were either in public domain or had creative commons licensing. What I found was Academic Earth. This is a website that seemed similar to Wikiversity to me in that it seemed like potentially you could take a whole course this way (the literature section was pretty interesting). There are lectures within each topic, and some of the topics and lectures have handouts, worksheets, syllabi, and even quizzes and tests.

This would be helpful to me since it would give me a good source of lectures already organized for content. If I were developing a class, I would be able to find lectures and handouts on a topic very quickly. Just in general, this website is a good source for lectures and seminars that were taped. I would be very interested to see a site like this combine with Wikiversity since online lectures in any sort of quantity were lacking a bit for each topic in Wikiversity.

Almost all of the lectures and courses I looked through were under creative commons with the freedom to share and to play around with them and remix them. The only stipulations were that I had to attribute, I can't use the courses and lectures for commercial purposes, and I have to be willing to share with the same license anything I adjust from this website.

I've embedded a lecture about Dante here (I plan on adding this in to my World Lit class).

Watch it on Academic Earth

This website is so awesome that most of the lectures even have a button to click for embedding and one for citation. So the video above has this citation: Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante's Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, Fall 2008. (Yale University: http://oyc.yale.edu/), Open Yale Courses (Accessed April 12, 2010). License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

I'm glad that I found this and now know how to embed since I feel that many sites provide audio, videos, pictures, etc. that could really enhance my online courses and even be nice just for my own betterment and interests.

Finding the human connection

I think one of the things that has really fascinated me with Web 2.0 is the way that people can connect...not just through conversation, but through the human experience. I got particularly interested in this after watching the Michael Wesch lecture that talked about how people responded to the "Numa Numa" guy by wanting to join in to be part of the abandonment of dancing to an upbeat song. There is so much that is negative in the world right now, that I find I really like to see these moments where people are just happy or willing to help their fellow people. That's why the "Where the Hell is Matt?" videos are neat to me as well- it's just dancing and people join in. This reminded me of link that one of my favorite websites woot.com provided on the tweenbots project.



This is something I would love to do as a group project- something simple like getting an item from point A to point B. This is one of the reasons I'm really a fan of geocaching right now. In geocaching, I have often come across a travel bug that I have to look up on the website to see where it is heading. I then move it to a geocache that is a little closer to its end destination. What would be neat is to video an item traveling and have a sort of traveling vlog for an item. This is obviously a project that would take much longer than we have remaining in this class, but it's something that I could see doing for fun - releasing an item into the world that has a destination and directions to post a vlog to a specific channel in youtube so everyone will follow it. This has the possibility to go viral simply because as more people help the item get to its destination, the more people that will be interested in how the progress is going and tell their friends about it.

A series of videos I am digging right now have Ben Folds using Chatroulette at his concerts and basically welcoming the person that pops up on screen to be a guest of honor at the concert.



I'm not quite sure how I would use this as a group project, but it seems to have a certain potential to allow for interactions. I'll be honest, I've gotten on chatroulette a few times, and almost every time, I get to see naked guys. So I've kind of been leery of it since then. I like the concept of it, however, and think it could be used to create some really interesting videos, as evidenced by the Ben Folds videos.

These are just a few ideas that I could see playing around with videos in the future (maybe even in my classes!- I'm sure I could tie this into World Lit somehow), but since we sort of have (several) directions that the fun group project is heading in, this is just food for thought.

Objectives Review

In the beginning, there were objectives. And I was okay with these objectives. I realized as I was going through trying to find any gaps with the objectives I have that I had set really broad objectives. I think that part of that comes from the understanding that if set very specific objectives, it might not pan out. The nice thing about broad objectives is that it is pretty easy to meet them. When I initially came up with mine (although it feels like it was so long ago that I actually forgot about them), I tried to think about what I expected to get from a Web 2.o class.

I feel that all four of the objectives I set out in the beginning of class have been met to my satisfaction and some beyond my expectations. When I put down one of my objectives as continuing to learn from my peers without face-to-face interaction, I thought it just sounded nice. However, since I didn't fully understand Web 2.0 when I wrote these objectives, I never expected that this class would have such a deep focus on these interactions with my peers. In the web design class last semester, everyone kept to their own websites and there was a friendly hum of being joined in our webpages, but this is one of the few classes I've had where I've really felt like I've really gotten to know my classmates (this includes in the seated classes I had in college). I've actually gotten to meet a few, and I value the connections I've made with people in this class. For me, that is the most valuable thing I'll probably walk away with from this class (although Wordle is pretty sweet :D ).

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.

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.