Twitter

Armed with a bit of knowledge about what Twitter is all about, share your thoughts on this fast growing online phenomenon. I'm still not sure that I understand Twitter; it's very similar to thoughts that people post on their walls on facebook but much less personalized. It is apparently quite a hit with people but I can't say that I'll be joining the twittering crowd in the near future.

Library Thing

Do you see any practical applications for LibraryThing either at home or at work? Will you start using this site? I'm still finding out the different capabilities of Library Thing but I am looking forwards to trying some of the recommended reads that have come up now that I've entered some books and can see this would also be extremely useful with reader's advisory at the library.

Online Productivity Tools

"Do you see yourself using these tools or will you stick to more traditional methods." I'm not certain about more traditional methods however, I am very attached to my iPhone which has many of the same functions. There's an app for everything! "If you were to use one of these tools regularly, which would it be and why?" Perhaps I would use the google calendar on with my phone and my computer but I think for now I'll stick with my more 'traditional' methods.

Flickr and YouTube

"Comment on Flickr and YouTube. Were they user-friendly?" Both of the sites are quite user friendly. To be honest I really don't understand why people use Flickr...you can share photos just as easily on Facebook. Perhaps for photograhpy aficionados?

Picture:

http://www.buckeye.com/Portals/0/Internet_Pep_Images/CartoonPersonQuestion.gif

RSS feed

"Were you able to successfully set up your RSS feed?" Setting up the RSS feed was a quick process. What took me much longer was going through the different sites that they recommended according to the interests I selected and discovering whether or not they were sites I was interested in monitoring on a regular basis.

"If you were successful, does this make information-gathering more convenient for you?" When I work on the internet I don't tend to visit the same websites on a regular basis rather I tend to be trying to find information on a specific topic. At this point in time I don't see that it is of great use to me but time may tell!

Google Universe

Recently I had the students in my classroom design their own "Dream Homes" for a mathematics measurement unit. After we had completed the project one of the boys in my class suggested that we create the homes on Google SketchUp. I spent some time testing the product out before we spent a morning as a class using the product. It is a really amazing product which allows you to design a 3-D home and even upload furniture into the home. It is fairly easy to use but it does take some practice. One of the biggest problems with the product was using the measuring tape. We wanted to be able to use the same measurements that we had on our blueprints and build our 3-D models to scale. The measuring tape is not very well designed and creates many challegnes. The picture here is a home someone has designed on Google SketchUp; what is incredible is that you can go inside the home and tour around! Would I recommend the product to friends and colleagues? Yes, it is a lot of fun and could be useful if you're trying to decide where to place furniture in a space in your home or how to design a space in your home. For fans of "The Sims" well, you could spend hours designing your dream home!

Facebook

I have had a Facebook account for many years. Having gone to school in the states I find it a great way to keep in touch with friends who are now scattered all over the world. For you, is Facebook useful or a time-waster? Facebook is a little bit of both for me; it is a wonderful procrastination tool when there is something important that I should be completing on my computer but it is also useful in terms of helping me keep in touch. If it weren't for Facebook I probably would have lost touch with a lot of people!

Wikipedia

After reading a number of articles on topics of interest and finding no need to edit them I decided to try looking for obscure topics. Were you able to find a topic obscure enough that Wikipedia doesn’t cover it? I actually did find a number of topics which weren't in Wikipedia; specific schools in Calgary and musicians who are well-known in Calgary. I decided against publishin an article on them as I am definitely not an expert on the subjects.

Social Bookmarking

Interesting that Social Bookmarking is our assignment for this week as I am just preparing to teach a class about Web 2.0 and spent some time on our best websites before reading our assignment for this week! What are the advantages of storing, sharing, and tagging web content this way? What are the disadvantages? The major advantage of storing, sharing and taggin web content this way is that these bookmarks are available to you on any computer. You don't need to be at home to access your favourite sites. Right at the moment I cannot think of any major disadvantages although many people might have concerns about privacy.

Starting Out

I'm quite intrigued by the number of subjects which people find to blog about! Do all of these blogs really have readers?