EXERCISE #23

Hooray! We did it! Thanks Bethany for all of your hard work in putting this together. I've really enjoyed the Summer 2.0 course. Please see my final responses below:

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

I have to confess my favorite discovery was the Pandora online radio. I use this site every single day and my children love the fact that they can customize their own radio stations, although the Barbie radio station is starting to get on my nerves :-)

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? Web technology is constantly changing and growing and as IT professionals we need to be aware of emerging trends. This program has helped me to understand the many different ways that people are using the Internet. For example, I was not familiar with social bookmarking sites and now I feel like I can have an intelligent conversation about them.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? Not really, I know there is a ton of information out there and creative people are adding new and exciting features/capabilities to the web all the time.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? The format and concept were excellent! Perhaps I would make fewer exercises, this might help the participation rate. Also, I would make the content available all at once so that over-achievers like me can do all the assignments right away. The reminder emails helped me to remember to go back and update my progress.

And last but not least…
If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate? Yes! I loved this program. Two thumbs up!

EXERCISE #22

I like the Project Gutenberg site because it offers free audio books online. I've used this site in the past but I always like to check it out and see what is available for free to the general public. Here is a link to their Top 100. I think it's great that a lot of the classics are available online in either text, computer read or human read format. I'll have to check out the online version of Homer's Iliad in my 'free time' (if I can remember what free time is).

EXERCISE #21

Podcasts are very useful and help to ensure that you don't miss a thing. From conference speakers to news headlines to radio talk shows, podcasts are an easy way to stay up to date. I'm currently looking into the technology that will allow our instructors to create and upload podcasts to their Blackboard accounts. This link will bring you to a Blog containing several podcasts involving podcasting and Blackboard (the podcasts mainly come from the 2007 Blackboard World conference): http://rod4jefferson.blogspot.com/2007/07/rpp-45-blackboard-world-and-podsafe.html

EXERCISE #20

I love YouTube, I go on the site at home all the time to catch up on my favorite music videos and check out the latest unique, creative and often hysterically funny videos that people post to the site. For this activity, I searched YouTube for something more 'educational' and found many, many videos involving Blackboard tutorials. Here's a link to a video clip that explains how to use YouTube with Blackboard: http://youtube.com/watch?v=LuFj4-zkqGI

EXERCISE #19

I enjoyed checking out all of these fun Web 2.0 things, it's so easy to waste hours and hours of your precious time on the internet! Of course, I went straight for the games, music and toys. I liked the widgits found at yourminis and I REALLY loved the customized music stations at Pandora.com. On this website, you simply type in the name of one of your favorite music artists and based on your response, Pandora creates a 'radio selection' based on your artist's music 'genome'. I typed in that my favorite artist was 'Alaine' and I ended up with a great selection of new, soca/reggae 'chunes' for my listening pleasure.

EXERCISE #18

I played with Zoho Show to try out the shared presentation features. This allows you to create and share PowerPoint-like presentations completely online. Unfortunately, I found the tool to be clumsy and limited-it would not allow me to cut and paste or at least it didn't make it easy to find this feature. I also ran into quite a few errors while trying to save my work. I can see benefits to using this application but if you have the server space, you might as well upload and save your own PowerPoint files as web pages.

Here's a link to my sad sandbox Zoho Show

PS-I absolutely love these cartoons, check out more at http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/

EXERCISE #17

PBWiki, mmmmmmmm, my favorite! Big ups to the wiki site and its creators:

EXERCISE #16

I love wikis, I think they are an excellent evolution of our collection of shared information. While one must take wiki content with a grain of salt due to authoring, wikis offer limitless potential for sharing knowledge. In 2006, I attended the NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) in San Diego, CA and went to a presentation on wikis. The guest speaker explained how the traditional 'guardians' or 'gatekeepers' of knowledge no longer have complete control over the 'history' or 'facts' that are disseminated to the public. I. e., Encyclopedia Britannica in print form is no longer one of the only options for researching information. I especially love that the common shared version of 'historical fact' is no longer from the perspective of the 'winners'. Wikis, discussion boards and online access to global newspapers has helped us, as humans, to learn to form our own opinions of fact based on our own construction of knowledge (Can you say constructivism?) Here's a link to to Al Jazeera news, in English.

My favorite place to go to make wikis is PBWiki.com, it's free, easy to edit and access.

EXERCISE #15

In the Library 2.0 article, Away from the “Icebergs" by Rick Anderson I was most intrigued by the following statement:

"In my library, we’ve seen a 55 percent drop in circulation rates over the past twelve years, making it harder and harder to justify the continued buildup of a large “just in case” print collection. As a Web 2.0 reality continues to emerge and develop, our patrons will expect access to everything – digital collections of journals, books, blogs, podcasts, etc. You think they can’t have everything? Think again. "

While I don't think that books are going anywhere anytime soon, I do think that more and more resources will become available in digital format. I think that this is a form of human evolution!

EXERCISE #14

Technorati seems useful as well, but I don't see myself using it anytime soon.

EXERCISE #13

De.licio.us is a social bookmarking website that seems mildly interesting but I don't see a need to use this in my personal or work-related life. Can anyone fill me in on how this has made their online life more productive?

EXERCISE #12

I admit it, I'm too lazy to create my own seach roll, but I did check out a few others. Here are a few of my faves:

Food and Drink

Top Political Blogs

Reference

EXERCISE #11

LibraryThing is very cool, see my list on the left. I think this is an effective way to connect with others that share your same reading preferences.

EXERCISE #10

Make your own at ProfilePitstop.com

EXERCISE #9

I'm not really a big fan of RSS feeds and don't rely on them for information. This exercise was informative as it allowed me to check out what other people are checking out :-)

EXERCISE #8

RSS Feeds are very effective at giving you specific news items that you personally care about without having to waste time filtering through other stories. I did subscribe to bloglines and the 10 feeds but then could not figure out how to set my profile to 'sharing' in order to post my blogroll of feeds on this page. If anyone masters this, please let me know! Another site I use on a daily basis is Google News , you can personalize the page to just show the categories of stories you are interested in reading (ex. World, Science/Technology) or you can customize categories to track certain keywords (ex. Virgin Islands).

EXERCISE #7

Apple is set to launch its new iphone, do I want one? You bet, but the price tag is a little steep for me. The gadget itself will cost $500-$600, while customers will be required to sign up to a two year service contract, which could cost another $1,500. Still, this has not stopped people from camping out on the streets in NYC, in 90 degree temperatures, desperate to get their hands on one of these beauties. The iphone will do away with the styus and/or mini-keyboard other similar devices have, replacing them with a simple touch screen panel. This phone is revolutionary in design and I predict that future phones will follow the touch screen path.

EXERCISE #6

Ok, here is my very own trading card. I will have to make some more cards showcasing my other 2 years with the troupe so you can 'collect them all'!
This was fun, thanks for the link Bethany :-)

EXERCISE #5

Flickr is a great online tool and I found this cool picture/mosaic by Jim Bumgardner
It is entitled, "Peach".

The image above is actually a compilation of photos from many different posters in the 'squared circle' group and is available in poster form. I think this is an excellent form of creative online collaboration.

EXERCISE #4

After watching the tutorial on the 7 1/2 Habits of Effective Lifelong Learners, I found that for me, Habit #2, "Accept Responsibility for your own learning" is the one that comes most naturally. I have made a serious investment in my education and I have educational goals that I know I will achieve. I am always looking for learning opportunities or challenges that will help me to shine and set me apart from the crowd. I am also very skilled at applying Habit #7 1/2 "Play!". I think I've got this one covered!

The hardest Habit for me is #1, "Begin with the end in mind." With some things, I tend to be a procrastinator and the more I put them off, the greater my anxiety. I am one of those people that works well under pressure and am used to getting things done at the last minute but I would like to work on improving my effectiveness.