Technical Difficulties..please stand by...

In reflecting upon this class...all I can say is "Technical Difficulties..please stand by..." LOL. Eventhough I have learned a great deal and enjoyed being able to be in class with fellow learners, I can truly say that I will not miss my skinny Second Life Avatar. This was definitely an adventure for me. I have never been fond of group work but I did learned to enjoy being a part of a virtual team. It has made me more aware of the quality of work that I do and I am able to communicate better. I hope to be able to pass on all that I have learned in this class to my future students. Thank you Dr.Ellis :-)

Week 8 Reflections- Drowning in Second Life

I enjoyed meeting with the class in Second Life. It was definitely out of my comfort zone. I really did feel like I was actually there. I was feeling some of those artificial emotions that Dr. Ellis spoke about. I am still getting familiar with finding destinations. On our field trip assignment I was completely lost. I ended up in an ocean, or maybe it was a lake....at any rate I was in a large body of water and I literally felt like I was drowning!! I am looking forward to learning how to find my way around in this virtual world.
On a personal note Jaleigh has missed two days of school this week. Was in the Dr's office with her this morning. Nothing serious, just a bad cold and a little fever. She is at Grandma's house today, and somehow that makes everything all better :-)

Second Life Avatar

My avatar is encouragment for me to stay focused on my weight loss goal. I have gone from a size 22 to a size 14. I have long brown hair, however, when I reach my goal I plan to cut it similar to my avatar's. Like my avatar I am most comfortable in Jeans. My favorite color is red, hence the red shirt. :-)

Wordle

Delicious,Flickr, Facebook & Twitter...OH MY!

As you can see I am catching up on my weekly reflections. Sometimes I feel like there's just not enough hours in the day! And....Jaleigh starts Fall Ball (Soccer) this week. She looks forward to playing and I love going to her games.

Delicious and Flickr were very easy to use, I don't know that I will use them often, but it is good to know that I can.
I'm not a big fan of Twitter. It gets to be a bit much at times.
Facebook....I'm addicted. Enough said about that.

:-)

Podcast & RSS Reflections

This week was very interesting. Researching Digital Natives and learning about RSS feeds seemed a bit overwhelming to me at times. But I finally pulled it all together...I think.

Many companies use RSS to promote their organizations and many different causes. Here is an example of how a popular Newspaper uses Real Simple Syndication... http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html

Podbean.com proved to be very useful in completing my podcast. It was surprising easy to upload my podcast..I hope I did it correctly.

So this week was very busy for me to say the least.

Digital Native vs. Digital Immigrants

http://gingers.podbean.com/

Blogging Reflections

I enjoyed creating this blog. I dabbled in it a little before. I enjoyed seeing others blogs and look forward to following them. I know that I have only scratched the surface of blogging and I look forward to using it often and learning about all it has to offer.

It's All About the Wikis

In the article, No Rest for the Wiki, Rachel King discusses the world of corporate wikis.  Many successful companies have collaborated with wiki to engage their team member while also reaching out to the most important part of their company, the customer.  According to Andrew McAfee, a Harvard Business School professor, "If you did a comprehensive survey of Fortune 1,000 companies, you would probably find some sort of wiki in all of them."  Although may employees are not happy when they are edited by colleagues the popularity of the wiki overrides that. Intelepidia, created by and Intel engineer, has 5,000 pages of content and 13.5 million views. 

While many employees are reluctant to accept wikis, they are a very proven tool in aiding with decision making. For instance, investment-advisory firm, Manning & Napier uses wikis that quickly alert employees to a trend affecting the fortunes of many hospitals. This helps shape the companies vital investment decisions. 

The world of wiki will continue to grow,change, and connect people globally.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2007/tc20070312_740461.htm

I'd like you to meet Jaleigh

Hi! The Daily Jaleigh will attempt to keep you up-to-date on the latest in classroom technology and Web 2.0 applications. I will also be using this as my weekly journal for BITE 5389.
Jaleigh is my seven year old daughter who knows almost as much about technology as I do.  I will share many of her homework assignments here and share the technology that she is being introduced to in her second grade classroom. Her first impression of the word "BLOG" was...."Mama that sounds scary". That is a very common reaction in children, and many adult learners as well. I agree that technology can be very scary, and intimidating if you've never used it. I am brand new to blogging, by the end of this semester I'm sure I won't be as intimidated as I am right now. I am also a die hard DUKE fan!! So as college basketball season approaches I will be blogging about those DEVILS!! Welcome to my world.

Some of my favorites website:

http://www.epicurious.com/

http://www.goduke.com/

http://www.funbrain.com/

http://www.vh1.com/

https://www.facebook.com/

Viddler on the Roof

This week I used viddler for the first time to create a video introduction for BITE 5389.  It was quite simple and the site http://www.viddler.com/ is very user friendly.  I enjoyed meeting my classmates in this virtual enviroment.  Right now the only Web 2.0 application that I use, like most of the world, on a daily basis is Facebook.  I am very excited about this class because I will be forced out of my Web 2.0 comfort zone and forced to try new things. I hope to learn new applications that I can apply on my job and introduce to my students.