Okay y'all. I went to the St. Patrick's Day party on Eduisland 9 for about 30 minutes tonight. I left when I tried to stop dancing (you were supposed to click on a spinning shamrock to have your avatar animated by another avatar who had created 6 different dance moves - I thought this was pretty cool - but when I was ready to stop, I kept trying to click that damn shamrock but instead somehow ran/danced past the food table and into a giant hedge). Also, Jason hit me in the face with a hot dog.
The other people at the party (there were three other people besides Jason and me) were super friendly. We did not talk about education, but instead made party small talk, which consisted mostly of someone "singing along" with Steve Winwood and insisting that we "crank it up" and various other comments about how awesome the music was. Strangely, the first song I heard was "Out of Touch" by Hall and Oates (am I showing my age yet?) and I do concur that that could be a song that some might find awesome. But it felt very outdated to be gyrating around to, I kid you not, "The Living Years." The song about the conflicted relationship the guy had with his dad and then the dad died. Erin Go Bragh!
We were dancing on a floor that had been designed with green celtic symbols and had a giant rotating "Happy Saint Patrick's Day" logo in the middle of it. Someone had gone to a lot of work to design this party! Off in the distance there were bonfires (and actually, when I first arrived, Jason was somehow sitting on a bonfire dancing. I don't know how he did that). Somehow I acquired a giant green bottle, which I suggested to everyone could be Jameson's. And after the Steve Winwood song ended - it was "Higher Love" for those keeping a checklist of the adult contemporary tunes - I tried to go look around a little more, but ended up in the hedge.
So, all in all, I actually did enjoy myself. Mainly because it was so crazy and it gave me the opportunity to write phrases like "hit in the face with a hot dog." Cheers!
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Embedding: A Progression -
So, first there's this:
Then this:
http://soundcloud.com/jbunn/apalachicola
Then this:
Hmmmm - why is it cutting off my first slide?
Here's the first slide:
Photos are from my Picasa/Google+ photos site, but I didn't know how to create or embed a slideshow from that platform, so I put them in Quicktime Pro (good thing I'm taking this class at the same time as CI5200).
Now that I'm done with everything, I don't think that the words are a great match with those images, as the poem is all about the arrival and the images are obviously after we've been there for awhile. Kind of confusing. But, for my first stab at this sort of thing, I feel okay about it! Onwards and upwards, right?
Then this:
http://soundcloud.com/jbunn/apalachicola
Then this:
Hmmmm - why is it cutting off my first slide?
Here's the first slide:
Photos are from my Picasa/Google+ photos site, but I didn't know how to create or embed a slideshow from that platform, so I put them in Quicktime Pro (good thing I'm taking this class at the same time as CI5200).
Now that I'm done with everything, I don't think that the words are a great match with those images, as the poem is all about the arrival and the images are obviously after we've been there for awhile. Kind of confusing. But, for my first stab at this sort of thing, I feel okay about it! Onwards and upwards, right?
Monday, March 19, 2012
SoundCloud -
SoundCloud is all new to me - and I LOVE IT. Love the "time comments" - that's a really cool feature! I've also found the podcasts of a friend from college that are killing me (Glitter in the Garbage - Drew Droege - kind of foul, FYI).
We do a monthly storytelling show at the theatre called Listen to This. All original work. We should record it and put it up on SoundCloud. Yay social media class!
We do a monthly storytelling show at the theatre called Listen to This. All original work. We should record it and put it up on SoundCloud. Yay social media class!
Picasa -
For my niece's birthday, I made her a personalized coloring book out of photos from our family vacation. Pretty neat!
I did not edit the photos in Picasa to turn them into line drawings - just sharing them through Picasa. Very easy to use, especially if you already have a Google account. Picasa organizes your photos and images for you - sometimes this can be a little frustrating as it doesn't always use the same folder organization as your harddrive - but to share these, I simply clicked "Blog This" and it sent the images directly to a new post on my blog. (By the way, I used Paint.NET to change the photos to line drawings.)
I did not edit the photos in Picasa to turn them into line drawings - just sharing them through Picasa. Very easy to use, especially if you already have a Google account. Picasa organizes your photos and images for you - sometimes this can be a little frustrating as it doesn't always use the same folder organization as your harddrive - but to share these, I simply clicked "Blog This" and it sent the images directly to a new post on my blog. (By the way, I used Paint.NET to change the photos to line drawings.)
The Halfway Point -
The halfway point. Yes, it does feel like we're here! This is slightly stream-of-consciousness, but here we go!
Since the beginning of this class, I have created accounts in Google+, Twitter, Diigo, Feedly, Soundcloud, Second Life, Classroom 2.0, and Wikipedia. While I have found all of these platforms to be interesting in some way, I must admit that joining them all over the period of a few weeks has been slightly overwhelming. Is there an app to keep track of all your apps? I also haven't been able to go back and spend more time really investigating these platforms in order to feel like I have any sort of mastery over them. But maybe that's the point of this class? To at least jump off the diving board into the social media pool and start feeling comfortable in the water?
I wish there were another way to participate with this class rather than going to the forum for each specific assignment, clicking to see who's done what, and then commenting (or, as the case may more often be, not commenting) within that forum. Is there a way to show a feed of most recent activity across all forums? A "trending now" gadget? I don't know enough (read: I don't know anything) about Moodle, so I don't know if that's possible. But I would be a big supporter!
I would also love more critiques of various platforms - what are the pros and cons of using this platform? What educational uses could this platform have? A few times along the way this has happened - for instance, I thought Neil's introduction of Tagxedo, and Curtis' post about Livebinders were specifically helpful.
I'm not really making the jump to connecting with strangers via social media. Isn't that strange? I wonder if it's because I started my social media experience with Facebook, where I don't friend or accept friend requests from people I don't know. However, on Twitter, I do (but I only have 24 followers, and I know 93% of them) - so I guess I should say I would connect with a stranger on Twitter, if they met some sort of criteria - followed other people I did, lived in Asheville, etc. I'm following people I don't know - mostly they're celebrities - on both Twitter and SoundCloud.
Here are some other things I don't understand that I would like to:
Since the beginning of this class, I have created accounts in Google+, Twitter, Diigo, Feedly, Soundcloud, Second Life, Classroom 2.0, and Wikipedia. While I have found all of these platforms to be interesting in some way, I must admit that joining them all over the period of a few weeks has been slightly overwhelming. Is there an app to keep track of all your apps? I also haven't been able to go back and spend more time really investigating these platforms in order to feel like I have any sort of mastery over them. But maybe that's the point of this class? To at least jump off the diving board into the social media pool and start feeling comfortable in the water?
I wish there were another way to participate with this class rather than going to the forum for each specific assignment, clicking to see who's done what, and then commenting (or, as the case may more often be, not commenting) within that forum. Is there a way to show a feed of most recent activity across all forums? A "trending now" gadget? I don't know enough (read: I don't know anything) about Moodle, so I don't know if that's possible. But I would be a big supporter!
I would also love more critiques of various platforms - what are the pros and cons of using this platform? What educational uses could this platform have? A few times along the way this has happened - for instance, I thought Neil's introduction of Tagxedo, and Curtis' post about Livebinders were specifically helpful.
I'm not really making the jump to connecting with strangers via social media. Isn't that strange? I wonder if it's because I started my social media experience with Facebook, where I don't friend or accept friend requests from people I don't know. However, on Twitter, I do (but I only have 24 followers, and I know 93% of them) - so I guess I should say I would connect with a stranger on Twitter, if they met some sort of criteria - followed other people I did, lived in Asheville, etc. I'm following people I don't know - mostly they're celebrities - on both Twitter and SoundCloud.
Here are some other things I don't understand that I would like to:
- How do channels and tagging work on YouTube? If I ask 40 people to make a short video about a topic, would all those videos appear on my channel if they tag me?
- Is there an ad-free photo sharing site where you can create your own e-cards?
- What about that Google+ hangout? Are we doing that?
Module 4 OUT.
Understanding Wikipedia -
Well, after reading through the tutorial and a handful of the links (biting the newbie was especially enlightening!), I don't know that I'll ever reaally understand Wikipedia.
It honestly never occurred to me that I could be an editor on Wikipedia. I understood that it was open-source and that anyone could be a contributor, but it just didn't cross my mind that anyone also meant me. I have actively wondered why Asheville Community Theatre didn't have a page (it's the oldest continually operating theatre in Asheville, the third oldest community theatre in North Carolina, and has had its share of notable participants - ie: Charlton Heston was the second artistic director) and yet never thought about writing it myself. However, it's encouraged for a user to not create a page about themselves or their employer - harder to keep the NPOV. Hmmmmm - can I throw it out for discussion? Would it be appropriate for me to create that page?
It honestly never occurred to me that I could be an editor on Wikipedia. I understood that it was open-source and that anyone could be a contributor, but it just didn't cross my mind that anyone also meant me. I have actively wondered why Asheville Community Theatre didn't have a page (it's the oldest continually operating theatre in Asheville, the third oldest community theatre in North Carolina, and has had its share of notable participants - ie: Charlton Heston was the second artistic director) and yet never thought about writing it myself. However, it's encouraged for a user to not create a page about themselves or their employer - harder to keep the NPOV. Hmmmmm - can I throw it out for discussion? Would it be appropriate for me to create that page?
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