Pursuit 23

1. The image generators and widgets were the easiest - a lot of bang for the buck so to speak. I also will keep in mind the Web 2.0 Awards page as a source for new ideas. Embedding videos will be a big time saver for me. I have spent hours recording YouTubes to VHS at home because the site is blocked at SBISD.
2. The course reminded me that there are always new things to learn. I just have to find ways to seek them out. I enjoyed sharing bits of the course with my friends and family. There were 6 of us from our campus that took the course, so I need to organize a way for the 6 of us to present to the faculty what we learned. (That's my job as Technology SIS.)
3. Unexpected outcome - there are so many people out there that spend so much time on the web! So many different comments and threads.
I asked my three twenty-something children if they blog, and they all responded with a similar answer. They used to but it just got to be too time consuming. Specifically, they don't have time to read their friends blogs and post their own.
4. Some of my teacher friends that are more mid-level users struggled through some of the Things. You could provide more specific instructions - but I know the sites change all the time. I used the Help on Blogger and it told me what I needed in a brief, concise format. Maybe you could point that out to learners.
5. Yes, I would participate in another course. I would like to see some coordination with the Education Technology department regarding students actually logging on and using many of these sites. Most user agreements ask if you are over 13 when you register, so how much trouble will we get in if we let our students use these sites???

Pursuit 22

Nings- At first introduction, I thought the concept of Ning providing a social network outside of Facebook or My Space had some possibilities. I spent about 45 minutes looking through your Ning links and some of the Nings posted by other Library2Players. I just have to say that the format doesn't work for me. All the pages are SO crowded that it gives me a headache to read them. There is no "white space" to rest your eyes. (I have a vertigo problem and I don't know if that contributes to my inability to focus on the content.) The content is so random. Less than half of the postings seemed to relate to the goal of the site. This was particularly true in the photos and videos postings.
I don't see any advantage to using the Ning site versus a Blogger page for classroom projects. Am I missing something?

Pursuit 21

I am familiar with Photostory, so I admit that I took the easy option here. I think that I like using it better than Audacity anyway because this way you get the photos along with the sound. Like many other Library2Players, I can't find my microphone here at home, but will try adding some narration once we get back to school in August.

We've done Photostory projects on campus for the last few years. This would be a great way to share them!

BTW - The best way for me to get help with postings is to use the Blogger Help menu. I can find out how to post things in under a minute. I would recommend going straight there instead of wasting time trying to figure it out yourself!

Pursuit 20

I enjoyed viewing the videos on Teacher Tube. I can see where organizing a whole set of tutorials could be useful for our faculty and students. Will have to delve into this further at the start of the school year.

Pursuit 19

The Web 2.0 Awards page has a lot of fun sites to visit. I found Lulu.com which is a site for publishing books and songs. My sister has previously published a short paperback, so this site looked like a good way to publish a second book for her. I looked specifically at the songs section for use on MDE TV. Last spring I went to Best Buy with a mission to buy some new broadcast music but found nothing. Either High School Musical or Sponge Bob. This site seemed to have some cute, original children's songs for either very cheap or free.
I had mentioned in a previous post about a color picker widget that I couldn't get to work on my blog. ColorBlender.com was listed on Web 2.0. Since I am moving into a brand new house next week, I am hoping this help me pick some colors for fabric. I could also use it for making color appealing web pages or presentations.
iFoods.TV was also on the Awards page. I watched the recipe for 10 minute Crab Cakes. I'm going to send this link to my college-age children. They are always looking for recipe ideas, just like their mom!

Pursuit 18

I have experimented with Open Office in the past. I have it on my home computer as well as my new school laptop. I started looking at it more closely after visiting with my niece and her sons. They are constantly struggling with their home computer. Part of their problem is a severely limited budget. I sent them a copy of Open Office to install instead of spending money on Microsoft Office. (They are on dial-up, so it would have taken them a long time to download it themselves.)I haven't heard from them. I am curious to know if they were able to use the program easily. I will have to ask them in person to get honest feedback, and I haven't been to Indiana lately.

Pursuit 17

Rollyo is an interesting concept. It would be nice to use it to narrow searches to my favorite sites to use as a first go around. I had looked for online crossword puzzles in the past, but was never sure which sites were safe to save from on play online. I used the Rollyo Reference list (as previously established by Rollyo) to search Crossword Puzzles and came up with some pretty good results. Much quicker to sort through than my previous searches for this topic. My Search list is at
http://rollyo.com/drtrivialpursuit/trivial_pursuits/. I would have to think for awhile about other sites to add to the Search list.