thing 23-reflection

I have so loved my experience! I believe that I have gained a lot of confidence regarding my use of online tools. My toolbox runneth over! I have especially liked some of the simpler tools and I know that I will use them again. I don't know that I'll use or contribute to wikis, but I will continue to learn from other people's contributions to the "wiki community". I liked writing upside down and creating a word cloud. I enjoyed exploring youtube and the web 2.0 awards gave me sites that I will continue to explore and enjoy. This class has contributed to my goal of being a lifelong learner by helping me explore technologies that I never knew existed or did not have the confidence to try! Thanks very much for the opportunity!

thing 22-audiobooks

In looking at the library site, I can only imagine there are a million titles that I would like to download, but to tell you the truth, I'm not a big fan of audiobooks. I'm sure if I had a lot of windshield time and there weren't three children in my back seat, I would enjoy audiobooks much more. I am glad to know, however, that this is available!

thing 21-podcasts

I found a great podcast that I actually subscribed to. It is by the pastor of a Church in San Antonio, TX who has authored several books that I have enjoyed. I guess I will be getting little snipets of wisdom from this man daily! I'm so excited! This is the RSS feed link--I think. This one was so easy to copy and link to my blog, I'm really wondering if I did it correctly!

http://maxlucado.com/feeds/podcast.xml

thing 20-youtube

Youtube is a really great tool, in most cases. Tonight, as I'm doing this, my daughter came up to watch too. We watched a video of a song that we both really like and then we watched Charlie Brown Christmas Ch. 1-3. It was so much fun watching those things with her. If I can finish my class tonight, we will watch some more before she has to go to bed! I have also really enjoyed watching other youtube videos. The Last Lecture was one of the more touching and "teaching" videos that I've watched. I'm disturbed, however, when someone commits suicide on youtube and there is an audience that does not try and stop that person. It also makes me wonder if we've taken "vouyerism" to a whole new level. I don't know that I will ever post a video to youtube as I'm not so sure that I want my life to be a running record for all to see....forever.

thing 19-web 2.0 tools

I loved the web 2.0 tools that I tried. I went only for the winners--exploring what was determined to be the best! In the food section, I looked at Urbanspoon, which gave restaurant reviews of local restaurants, as well as restaurants in Denver and a few other cities. It was very helpful information and for the most part, I agreed with the reviews! In "Fun stuff", I looked at Hairmixer--a site where you can take celebrity hairstyles and switch them with one another or import a picture of yourself and have their hairstyles put on you! Fun! In the health area, I looked at PeerTrainer, which is a site that will send you an email daily to help you lose weight and log your progress for free. Maybe I'll do that one....right after the holidays!

Those are fun sites!

thing 18-pbwiki

Thing 18 has not gone well for me. I simply do not get how to use this tool. I have been able to create an account for myself (I think), but unable to find anything else in the pbwiki site. I'm sorry. I've totally failed!

Not big on failure--sorry!

thing 16-exploring wikis

I really enjoyed looking at two of the wikis that were linked to this "thing". The first was the Book Lovers Wiki, set up by the Princeton library. As a member of a Book Club, this would be an invaluable site, as it gives "star" ratings/reviews for books that people enjoyed. It does not seem that there is a lot of current information, but the reviews were great and gave me some ideas to take back to my Book Club! The other wiki that I reviewed was the one set up by the Saint Joseph County Public Library. This was well organized and easy to use. It gave the user the ability to look at books they might enjoy, searching by topics, author, genre, etc. It also gave other searches-geneology, hobbies, local history, etc. Considering the blog that I just read by Rick Anderson, this library is doing it right! They are taking their services to the consumers, rather than having the consumers come to them. This was a great wiki!