Lost Treasures: Skype and Instant Messages

Remember when instant messaging on Yahoo or AOL was cool? I hate to say it but I think that those days have long passed us by...judging by the look my teenaged daughters are giving me, they're long gone. 

But, back in the old days before KIK, and things "going down in the DM" (direct message for us old folks), instant messaging was the fastest way to get a message to somebody without picking up the phone. Yep, it was not done on the phone, it was done on the computer. Now that everyone has text messaging and all kinds of other ways to communicate quick fast and in a hurry, Instant messages has fallen away with the likes of the Zune music player (my girls still laugh when I talk about how cool THOSE were). 

There are still some places where instant messaging plays a nice role such as Microsoft Project which has instant messaging capabilities so that people that are working on virtual project teams can communicate in real time about their work. KIK is also a nice little instant messaging program that a lot of people use. It allows for people to message each other without having to give your phone number to do it....when I was dating, KIK was a really great tool to protect me from giving my number out to people who I may be interested in but time would later prove that they weren't for me. I could just delete and block them from my KIK...no muss no fuss.  For much else, I don't see the widespread use anymore as most people have moved on to text messaging and direct messaging in sites like Facebook and Twitter. 

Skype is another site that I used to live by, especially during my deployments. I used it to communicate with my kids while I was gone and it was a big help in keeping us close. Being able to not only speak to but also see the person was such a great tool in keeping the moral high. I haven't used it much since I've returned home except for a long distance job interview when my family moved from Georgia to Kansas a few months ago. I think I was more nervous on the camera than I would have been in person but I appreciate that these types of technologies are being more widely used in those kinds of situations. I think that the use of Skype has started to fall away with he emergence of FaceTime and other like options for the Android...again, I think that it falls into whether or not someone can use their phone or tablet versus sitting down at their computers.

The Wonderful World Of LinkedIn

When most people think of social media or social networking, I don't think that LinkedIn is one of those sites that immediately comes to mind although, for those of us that may be out here trying to find our next professional opportunity or have something to offer our peers in a particular industry LinkedIn is the right place to be. My experience with LinkedIn started about a year ago when I was transitioning out of the military. I decided that, now that I have some control over what career field I wanted to get in to, I was interested in project management. I had lots of experience as a project team member and manager as many of us do after we leave the military but I had no idea how to make it a civilian career...enter LinkedIn.
At the advice of everyone at the ACAP, I started a LinkedIn page and began networking with project managers to see what it was going to take to make that my new life...I met with a nice person who suggested that I look into professional certifications since I was lacking in the degree department and THAT led me to meeting the woman who would become my instructor in a PMP bootcamp which lead to the most stressful 2 months of my life applying, studying for, and passing the PMP exam.

One great thing that I am grateful for on LinkedIn is the professional groups. There is most certainly a group for just about every career field. While I was studying for my exam, I got a lot of help form others who were in the same boat in a PMP study group on LinkedIn. Not only were there lots of great questions that got asked but we also congratulated each other and supplied the group with a sort of lesson learned so that others would know what to expect. Of course, there were no questions from the actual test being put on there but the sample questions as well as being able to get clarification from people that had already taken the exam were HUGE for me.

Now, that I've got the certifications and have progressed nicely in my efforts to attain my degree, I am still networking to find my next opportunity and I always encourage others to do the same...you never know what you have to offer the people in your network!

The Top 3: Compare & Contrast Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram

Ahhh...social media...my favorite time suck of all time! Before we even begin with this week's assignment I have to admit how difficult it was for me to even start it. I have accounts with all three of the social media sites that I decided to compare and contrast but to be honest, I'd never really taken the time to really investigate all of the features on any of them. I kind of just stumbled my way through each of them, collecting friends and followers, never aspiring to be "social media famo

us" or anything like that. I just wanted to be able to swap funny stories, recipes, and keep up with people that I don't have an opportunity to see as often as I'd like. With that being said, I do spend a shameful amount of time on these social media sites and, like to today, I'm not very focused on getting anything productive done.
So, without further ado lets get the comparison done so I can get back to wasting time (lol).....

There is so much more to compare than I could put in the table...or maybe it is that The comparisons and contrasts can be seen a little better outside of a simple excel table. For Instance, I think that it's interesting when you think of your Facebook "friends" versus your Instagram and Twitter "followers". Most of us on Facebook have some our distance family and friends that may have moved to a different location on our pages but on Instagram and Twitter, many times, people who are "followers" may have never even met you in person. They can just follow you unless you actually take steps to make you page more "secure". The reason I put the word secure in quotations is because I sometimes question how secure a social media page really is...I was recently hacked, someone out there made a fake Fb page using my pics trying to friends some of my people who alerted me and I was able to get it taken down pretty quickly but...it was kind of freaky that someone would take the time to actually pretend to be me...

All in all, while most of these sites have lots in common the also have some pretty marked difference...just a few are outlined in the table above. I believe your level of satisfaction and use of these social media sites all depends on what it is you want to share. If you want to share EVERYTHING Facebook may be your speed while Twitter's 140 characters may be more attractive to people who like short bursts of communication, and Instagram is somewhere in the middle with the  sharing of pictures and short messages. 

Hey let's Voki

This is my attempt to get the voki avatar into my blog as assigned...I'm not sure if this is going to turn out and I can admit that this has been probably the most frustrating part of the assignment for me. I watched the video that was linked in the classroom and thought, "This will be a piece of cake"...umm..no!
Setting up the avatar and getting her to speak was pretty simple BUT when it came time to put her into this here blog...that's when things went wonky. When I went to publish I got a screen politely informing me that I would have to come off some coinage in oder to do what I wanted. No bueno!

Her eyes go wherever I had my mouse at the time which is why she's making that crazy facial expression! haha

So, I signed up for the free two week trial thinking that it would solve the problem. I ended up having to recreate the avatar and trying the process again...only this time the darn file wouldn't save (if you listen to the audio portion of my forum post I'll describe how I was STILL waiting at that point).
What I am attempting to do now is to embed the link to my original avatar and hopefully that will work.
If any of my fellow classmates have a way for me to do this differently I am all ears my friends!

*UPDATE* My attempt failed so now I'm just gonna post the link here:
http://www.voki.com/site/pickup?scid=12756724&width=575&height=323&chsm=911051e7fe7ebd78053a71a111f92522

Someplace We Can Talk: My First Podcast

I feel like such a baby lately...I have been having a lot of "firsts" over these last few months...My latest first is this very simple podcast about well...what a podcast is and how it fits into web 2.0

Podcast Alley vs Podcats.com

Now that I have a chance to really look at both Podcast Ally and Podcasts.com I have to say that I am a total fan of both BUT Podcasts.com comes out as the winner in my opinion. I found the site to be really user-friendly and have more than enough content to satisfy any listener. The content ranged from people who obviously know what they're doing to brand new beginner newbies (such as myself) who still have a lot to learn about the "art" of podcasting. There were somethings that I did not like. I had to actually create a username and password to subscribe to a podcast when all I wanted was the link to the RSS feed...not sure that it was something that I did wrong though so.....

Other than that, again, there was a great assortment of podcasts to pick from and they even had some PM Podcasts which I can listen to to get those pesky CEUs to stay current on my PMP credential (yay!). 

All in all, I really enjoyed this week's assignment...much more than last week and I look forward to creating my own podcast!

Until next time....

Geeky Girl Gets Her Geek News

For this final installment of this week's blog posts I went back to Podcast Ally to see if I could uncover any more hidden gems or anything that interested me and I found something pretty much right away. Geek news central is hosted by Todd Cochrane the topic of the broadcasts range but mostly they're about tech gadgets and things like that. The podcast that I am currently listening to is episode 1114 titled Shame On You Apple (!). Todd Cochrane talks about how Apple iTunes is deleting music from the libraries from their users which I have personally noticed or (something I also hate) is if there is another mix sometimes Apple will replace the original sone with a mix. I have noticed it more with the lesser known artists but still.... NOTE TO SELF: Say no to Apple Music and you must back up your library...it's pretty annoying when you download a song that you liked in it's original form only to hear ever so slight difference.
All that said, this will be something that I will be listening to and learning from in the future.

Comedy on Podcast.com

So after listening to one of my favorite writers Malcolm Gladwell on Freakonomics, a podcast that I found off of Podcast Alley, I decided to venture over to Podcast.com to see what they had to offer and I was pleasantly surprised at the selection that I had to choose from. I decided that I wanted to get away from the more serious news and politics (although it was my first instinct as I LOVE new talk radio). Instead I decided to look into the realm of comedy podcasts to see if there was anything worth my subscription.
I selected the podcast It Is What It Is...It is NOT something I would typically listen to but these young college students (Nick and Matt) talk about popular culture subjects such as popular music, tech gadgets, dating....things that are affecting the young 20 somethings...
I will admit that there production quality is kind of low...you can tell that they are learning as they go...there's a bit of background noise and their voices are just...well...untrained but I could see some young people really getting into it.
Here is the url for this podcast as I couldn't figure out how to get the RSS feed to work with this particular one...I have subscribed to another one in it's place so that I could be subscribed 3 in total.
http://www.podcasts.com/it-is-what-it-is-podcast-93

Podcast Alley: Right Up My Alley with Freakanomics

 So, I have to admit that I was kind of looking forward to this assignment for a couple of reasons...I actually subscribe to a couple of podcast. None of them are very fun, I started looking into them when I was studying for the Project Management Professional (PMP) credential exam. Listening to professionals take on the standards and ins and outs helped me to understand the things that I'd read in the study guides. I'm happy to say that this assignment gave me an opportunity to get away from the more technical stuff and look for podcasts that genuinely interests me...enter Freakonomics.
I chose to visit Podcast Alley first to search for a podcast that wouldn't put me to sleep and I came upon the Freakonomics podcast. Whats' so great about it? Well, they recently did an interview with one of my favorite writers, Malcolm Gladwell! It was a bonus broadcast from May 1st....making today my lucky day!
Their typical broadcast topic is about, as the name suggests, economics but it isn't some guy boringly drowning on and on. The Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's,  broadcasts are fairly short ranging from about 30 to 45 minutes on a pretty good range of topics which means that you can listen while on a run or doing chores as I am listening to the Malcolm Gladwell interview while I write this...
For people that are interested in a range of topics in the area of economics Freakonomics may be just the ticket!

Shift Happens Part 3: Why Not Wikis?

As I read through a lot of the discussions posted on the Shifthappens wiki site a lot of the topics brought up were teachers discussing the use of technology and web 2.0 inside of the classroom. Many of the posts were in favor of the smart use of technology in the classroom as a way to better prepare students for what is to come in relation to the future that they may face once they leave the comfy confines of the classroom. There were a couple of voices that urged for us to go back to the "good old days" and renew the concentration on the traditional subjects (those voices were very few).

This is the conversation that I chose as may final discussion summary. I liked this topic as this guy seems like a very informed teacher and he wants to gain even more knowledge by seeing what other educators and school systems are doing. How great is that!
Five teachers contributed to the conversation offering questions on how to make wikis work inter classrooms. There was one sixth grade teacher asking how to keep up with the history of the wiki to keep track of who is making changing...Again, my ignorance was showing because I didn't realize sixth graders were getting instructions on wikis(!). There was another teacher who gave advice on the  matter (check the history link...that'll tell you what changes and who made them) and he also gave the advice of giving parents the url so that we can also see what's being taught and see changes as well.
All being said, as a parent of a middle schooler and a high schooler I'm glad that there are dedicated teachers out there teaching our kids about technology present and future.

For the second part of this week's assignment I have created a wiki and you can find it at http://creatingnewcontent.wikispaces.com
give it a visit and tell me what you think of what I had to say...

Shift Happens Part 2: Wiki vs Moodle?

Can I be honest here? I've never heard of a moodle? At least not one that was actually called a moodle...I've been an online student for several years and today i learned something completely new to me. Why they would call a virtual classroom something as wonky (and decidedly NOT scholastic) as a moodle...it just sounds made up...that's just my personal observation.

Apparently, I am not the only person who has some confusion as to what the term "moodle" was all about. I like that several people answered his question again, without being disrespectful or belittling him or her. Several people answered the question, provided definitions for some of the corresponding terms such as SCORM packages, how discussion board work for both wikis and noodles, and even attached links to some of the wikis and noodles that they work with as an example.
It's kind of surprising how willing to share information people are...maybe I shouldn't be that surprised but I am. All we hear about these days is how greedy and mean people can be BUT being people asking honest questions and getting good answers in return makes me hopeful.

For the second part of this week's assignment I created a wiki that you can find here:
http://creatingnewcontent.wikispaces.com
Give it a visit and tell me what you think about what I had to say about wikis!

Shift happens part 1: You Can't Please Everyone

Hello all! For this week we are carrying on with the web 2.0 theme that has been the focus of the class and with that we have moved into the world of wikis. I have kind of a strange relationship with wikis as I have used them many times to settle arguments  ahem, debates with my husband quite a few times. They can be a great source of information however for my academic studies the use of wikis is often frowned upon. I get it, because the information can be edited by anyone that can leave the information vulnerable to tampering and therefore may not be the MOST reliable resource out there. 

With all that being said, after I watched the (kind of outdated) shift happens 2.0 video I went directly to the shifthappens wiki and tried to join as directed in the classroom. I joined the wikispaces website fairly easily but when I went to join the shifthappens wiki I received an email from Dr Scott Mcleod and Karl Fisch who informed me that the site was only for archives...I'll have to think of a work around for that...

Moving on, I still had quite a bit of work to do to get this week's homework done so I moved on to reading some of the conversations posted on the site. One of the first ones that caught my attention was one titled Profoundly Upset By This Video 

I have to admit that a part of me kind of shared his sentiment. As I watched the video I wondered where they got the stats from since there were no sources cited and I wasn't the only one as someone actually made a similar comment on a post.  Later, another individual came along and posted a link to the sources n a separate discussion. As far as this conversation, I appreciate that although this person posted a negative discussion the people that replied were respectful in their disagreement with him. One person commented that although he didn't believe it was propaganda he could see how someone may have taken it that way. Another commenter posted that even though she "loved" the video she also welcomed hearing both sides of the argument. She went on to say that if he felt that wikis weren't the answer, what did he suggest in their place.

Too many times nowadays, when people disagree with each other on social media the conversation often breaks down and turns into personal attacks. I really appreciate that everyone in this discussion treated each other with respect.

For the second part of this week's assignment I created a quick little wiki that can be found here:

http://creatingnewcontent.wikispaces.com

give it a visit and tell me what you think!

Del.ici.ous

This just in....Del.ici.ous is actually up and working! Just in time for me to post a quick review of the site, Del.ici.ous another bookmarking site much like the site Diigolet that I reviewed earlier this week.
It works much in the same was as Diigolet allowing users to bookmark and tag their favorite websites along with the ability to see what others (friends or whatnot) bookmark with similar tags.
Again, I didn't see the value in it at first but as I have become more aquatinted with the site, The more I really like it. I especially like that no matter what device I use, I have access to my bookmarks. The site was super easy to navigate and very visually appealing. It will definitely be one that is now on my my daily visit list!