ALA while virtually present at NECC (ISTE- International Society for Education) in Second Life. How amazing is that! Virtual worlds now allow us to multi-task in new ways never thought of before. I was able to network with fellow librarians, meet colleagues from SL in real life at ALA, and still organize and lead the virtual history tour guides for the Alamo Event in SL.
Category: Technology
Tech Tools
Every day there seems to be a new technology tool to learn! A librarian colleague just shared a great tool for sharing files that are too large to email called drop.io. You can send files and set them to expire… say next week or next year! How cool is that! I am placing my nephew’s pirate movie on drop.io as an example. But, hey a year from now, this link won’t work! Perfect (I was going to put a smiley face here for emphasis but I just don’t really like emoticons.) So- smile and learn a new tech tool.
(Note: I revisit in 2020 to edit this migrated blogpost which was originally on edublogs to embed the video which was directed by my 7 year old nephew. After 14 years- emoticons have become popular with all age groups! Children can create videos easily now on numerous apps and looking back at these old posts document the impact of tech in our lives.)
Vygotsky said "We learn through collision with others."
His words hold true as the online community collaborates in numbers so huge I can hardly comprehend them. The world wide web moves toward a new era with Web 2.0; and folksonomies allow people to share technology tools. I can search for other educators’ blogs and wikis, learning daily and testing my own “pseudo-concepts.” Wouldn’t Vygotsky love this?
Technology and Writing
Tomorrow I will be presenting at a writing institute with the titile “Technology-Enhanced Writing Workshop.” When I became a writing trainer, almost ten years ago, I never dreamed how much technology would impact the writing process. It seems people are all at different levels in their use of technology, both for productivity and for creative expression and entertainment. Integrating technology into writing may be exciting, but does not necessarily make writing better. Good writing will always be about expressing what is personally meaningful and the significant through effective means.
Technofrustration
I am so frustrated with my stupid videocamera! After a year of working with a digital video camera (between the full-time job as librarian, part-time job as choir director, pianist/organist, sunday school teacher, graduate school student, writing trainer, webmaster, school television show producer, student council sponsor, poet, composer, band leader, guitar player, gourmet cook, homemaker and so on….just to let you know why I haven’t had time to figure out the stupid videocamera) I still have not figured out how to use it!
I love my laptop but, I guess a laptop is just not powerful enough to handle huge image files for making movies. So, I will have to explore moviemaking on a bigger computer. I am venting.
OK, now that’s over. I suppose we all feel the frustration of ever-changing technology. We have to keep learning, always learning. That is what life is about…learning.