Week 3, Thing #5, #6, #7

Flickr is lots of fun! I have actually used several different photo sharing sites in the past since all of my family and many of my friends live out of state, and they don't get to see my family on a regular basis. I have received photos from Flickr, but I haven't uploaded pictures to Flickr before today. I thought it was easy, and I created a set of pictures of my 15 month old son. I didn't upload this picture of my son directly from Flickr because of filtering issues, but I am assuming it is an user-friendly as the rest of the site.

What I like about Flickr are all the 3rd party mashups and services that people are creating. How neat! I created a Warhol-like mosaic of my son on Warholizer and a six sided cube of my favorite pictures on another "toy" offered by a third party site. Most of them offer the basic service for free, and you can get enhanced services for a fee. The amount of things you can do on your own with pictures is completely amazing. I remember being on the yearbook staff in high school, and we had to work very hard to accomplish special effects. We had to take hundreds of photos to get a "good one," and we wouldn't discover that it was good until a week after we took it because we had to get it developed or develop it ourselves! Digital cameras have really changed photography in a major way.

When I was growing up, I always wondered what would be the big invention of my lifetime. For my grandparents it was transportation and for my great-grandparents it was electricity. I truly believe that computer, digital, wireless (etc.) technology will be mine. In the last 10-15 years, we have been inundated by the amount of information at our fingertips. We can communicate messages, photos, and videos in an instant...and I LOVE it. I love teaching our students about it, and I love learning about it from them.

Week 2, Thing #2

After watching Seven and 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners, I realize that although I love learning and being a student, there are certainly some areas that I could strengthen in order to be more effective in my quest for knowledge. I love creating goals for myself, so Habit 1--beginning with an end in mind--is probably the habit that is easiest for me. When I do not create goals, I do not complete anything. Checklists and goal lists work wonders for me. But, I do have trouble with Habit 3, viewing problems as challenges. I tend to get involved emotionally, which in turn causes me stress. The stress sometimes causes me to not see the problem as a challenge, but instead as a burden. I need to see problems as potentially positive experiences so that learning will be a fun process, even when situations are tense. I look forward to learning about Web 2.0 and all the challenges it may bring!

Week 1, Thing #1

I am so glad to have the opportunity to continue my education about Web 2.0. I feel that we educators need to know what our students use regularly. I want to shorten the gap between the technological knowledge of our computer savvy students and the people who teach them on a daily basis, so I am starting by educating myself. My husband thinks I just never want to quit being a student. He's right!