Thang 16 - Worldily

I have just finished exploring the geotagging feature on Flickr.  At first glance, it seems like a good way to further organize and communicate about images.  It was also very easy to use and intuitive.  I watched the videos about them, but don't even feel like I needed to.  While I was tagging however, I could not help but to think about my 14 year-old, not very worldly stepdaughter.  It had to be explained to her that she needed to be careful of what images of herself to post on her mySpace and Facebook accounts and who she invited as friends, as there are sexual predators out there.  I appreciated the function that only friends and family can see these, but sometimes we are a little lax about who we call "friends" online.  I think about my Facebook account.  Though I have a lot of people on there, I wouldn't necessarily want them all to know where I live.  I imagine I would be rather careful, but on the geotagging, it only takes one small mistake for an unsavory person to know where to look for you.  I can't imagine encouraging my stepdaughter to use this functionality considering what some of my old high school "friends" are up to these days.

So without further ado... Thang # 16, Worldily!  He has been a lot of different places and has come back as a changed man, but you still need to be careful of the venom inside of him.  

Thang 15 - Poddily

So I looked up a bunch of podcasts, and I think I have now subscribed to about 30.  They are very seductive, and I am fairly certain I have gone a little overboard.  But as I write this, I am listening to an episode of "This American Life" that I find fascinating.  I do keep stopping to listen, so it may be a little counter-productive, but I also subscribed to a bunch of photography podcasts as well.  I found the iTunes podcast directory the most helpful, very straightforward in terms of useage.  I think it was the easiest of all the podcast downloads.  I looked up gcast, but it seems that it is too popular.  They are not even allowing any more new accounts, so they must be working with more than they anticipated. 

This is Poddily, she is a seductress.  Be careful you do not spend all your time on her.

Thang 14 - Calcki

Wow. This is so cool. Do you know what would be even cooler? If we had one designed for AiMN. Then instead of just research, we could have one about project management (the concept, not necessarily the class). Don't get me wrong, I think many of the students would benefit greatly from the research tool the way it is, especially if they are prone to get bogged down or procrastinate on big assignments. With the classes I teach now, however, most of the assignments are creative projects, and do not need much formal research. Instead, they need things like location scouting, getting models, getting permissions and drawing up shot schematics. Or a timeline for getting their website done, or their promotional materials, or etc. With the 2.0 experience, could the professor help design the calculator?

By the way, this is thang 14 - Calcki.  He is a stodgy and slightly crazy professor, but those wings will get you anywhere you want to go, fast.

Thang 13 - Producey

I tried several different things in this, as I keep thinking I will be more efficient if I can just be organized.  I actually tried "Remember the Milk" a while ago, and spent some time creating categories and various lists.   I also got really excited about "My Stickies".  The thought of putting post-its on sites so I can easily see why I had bookmarked them got me really revved up.  And I set up an iGoogle front page.  There are a few things that make these styles not work for me, however.  The first is that I have to coordinate everything with my husband, who hates being online.  This means that anything we have to plan ends up on the paper calendar in the kitchen.  If it is someplace else, it will be overlooked.  The second is that I have to-do notes on my phone which works very well for me.  I like that I always have a list in my hand and do not need an internet connection to see it (don't have a cool iPhone or anything).  I know that some of the lists will send to the phone, but many of the best require a fee, and my notes on my phone are free.  That kind of leaves "My Stickies".  I was and am still excited about those, but they do not seem to work with the latest version of Firefox, which is what I am running. Too bad, but I think I would be even more upset if I had taken the time to sticky several sites and then lost them all when I upgraded Firefox, which is something I had not even thought about.


So this is Producey, elephant ears and eyes on stalks to hear and see as well as possible, but with tiger feet, which makes translations onto a computer a little difficult.

Thang 12 - Yummilicious

The Delicious site is interesting.  In some way you can use it in a similar fashion as Stumble.  And the tagging seems like a good way to organize.  I just wish tagging was a little less time-consuming.  You need to think of all the ways you may want to look for that particular site so that you can find it again later.  But I do like the word cloud.  This is Yummilicious - Thang 12.  He is eager to please on the top, and looks a little like a waiter.  Watch out though, he still has penguin feet.

Thang 11 - Minnesota Foalie

So I built an eFolio website.  I did have to see the help page to figure it out, so it's not completely intuitive.  But it only took a few minutes to read that, and then it was simple.  I did like the easy opportunity to make a site that is just about my teaching.  I would have liked more options about the design, perhaps an Ai one?  Here is the link again http://sarahwhiting.v2efoliomn.mnscu.edu/Home.  This is Foalie.  You want him to be more flashy, but hey...he does have a tail.

Thang 10 - more flickerly

This is something I made as a little homage to my husband.  He is long-suffering, so he should get something out of the deal.  The additional flicker tools are cutesy.  Good for my teenage daughter; I will have to show her later.  For me, they seem an unnecessary distraction.