Wish Map

I love to travel. This is my first attempt at a map in Google Maps to lay out the journey. Use the link below the image below to see the full version of the map including a listing of my cities.

View Future Cross County Trip in a larger map

Geotagging. I'm it

This week, my assignment was to tag some of my images in flickr with geotags. You can see where they fall on my map by clicking here.

I love the geotagging aspect of images. Honestly, I have never used it until now though not sure why. I also give my images tags, but never scrolled down further and assigned geotags. I love that my images can show up on the map of their origin.

I added 5 images - Greensboro, NC, Winston Salem, NC, Atlanta, Georgia, Salt Lake City, Utah and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Searching in my head for instructional uses of this medium. Maybe an art class. Maybe a history class can create their own version of a walking tour. Maybe this is an icebreaker assignment to get students talking about themselves. Maybe a college can start this tradition and encourage students to do the same.

Then, we watched the brief presentation on Ted by Blaise on Photosynth. This "software" takes tagged images and links them together spatially. So if I took an image of a location and you took an image of the same location, then we both geotagged it correctly, our images could be related in the future and form one mega-image. It demonstrates how contributions to all of the endless social networks are not in vain. Of course, it does make you think before you tag your next digital image. Do I really want to stand in front of this famous building and pretend like I am holding it up? Where could this image end up?

Finally, I was asked to review the EXIF information on my data. I could not find that data on my camera, but my camera software on my computer is updated regularly. When I uploaded my images to flickr, flickr figured out what kind of camera that I was using and tagged my images automatically with this information - even down to the type of Canon PowerShot. Very cool

WordSmithing

This week, we were asked to worksmith a document with our class in Google Documents. I use Google Documents a lot thanks to work. Without it, it would be impossible for us to get anything done.

I often give my students a wiki to use to prepare for group projects and I can't for the life of me understand why they have such trouble with it. The idea of lots of people editing the same thing can send a student into a tail spin. Most online documents and wikis have a history feature that allow you to "bounce back" to an older version if someone makes a mistake and deletes your creativity.

Usable Non-Copyright Images

I found a great site - Yellowstone Digital Slide File. Owned by the government, great images from the park have been scanned and placed here for both the media and the public to use free of charge with proper credit. They are public domain.

Here is a link to an image that I used on my website.

For educators (developers), this is a great resource. The images are beautiful and high quality. The only concern about these images is that since they are scanned, they are quite large. Once someone shows you this website, you need to learn how to resize it properly.

Meetup

Ok, I confess that I was shocked that D.I. challenged us to use the Internet to meet with someone in person. Argh. The Internet is great, but it's also a super scary place. You have to be careful. So, I hung back and watched my classmates take the lead on this one. Most of them were joining meetup. So, I took the plunge and joined the Triad Hiking and Outdoor Group on meetup. Huge group! They have over 800 members and they use the site a lot to organize events.

I decided to take the plunge and go indoor rock climbing with this group. I posted my plans on Facebook and my friend Becky wanted to join me. Why not? So, on a Wednesday night, the two of us ventured into the Ultimate Climbing Gym in Greensboro. This place has been here almost 20 years, but it has been on my mental radar less than a week. I RSVP'ed on meetup and went for it.

Brad (red shirt in photos) was the organizer for the event and the person at the gym that I knew to find first. He helped Becky (green shirt) and I (purple shirt) do our first climb. We climb like newbies. We want to pick up one foot, place it somewhere and then lift the other. We were muscling the wall too much with our arms and not our legs. We weren't sure how much to trust the belay. If you looked around the room in contrast, people were diving, bouncing, standing on one foot, etc. These fears kept us from reaching the top during our first climb.

After our first climb, Becky and I stood back and stared at the amazing strength of the people in that room. Two of the photos here are of a man climbing the CEILING. Yes, he is upside down. I call him, "The Stud". After I took my final photos of him, he literally dangled from the ceiling with one arm. (Ladies, that sight was worth the price of admission alone.)

Brad introduced Becky and I to Sara, a relatively new person to indoor rock climbing. She has been doing this for 1 year (though her arms say much longer). She's a mother - her son can be seen in the first shot in the background in brown climbing the wall. She had such patience with us and told us exactly where to place our feet. With her help, we made it to the top of the wall and rang the cowbell. It was amazing!

I thought Brad was going to be my "person that I met" for this assignment, but it was Sara. She is the one who really talked me through how to do it. My photo of her is at the very end.

Now, I am glad that I had to do this assignment. I am really planning to attend several hiking events with them once school is over and work calms down. My next adventure with them must be riding the zipline! I want to do the super fast one in Asheville this summer.

Fun project

I will confess that I love Brooke's idea of a lip sync video for YouTube. I say that we go for it.

My original thought was all of us taping ourselves in Second Life doing something and connecting them. The action could be either be one person does step 1, another person does step 2, etc. I can't find examples of what I have in my head on YouTube. It's like a baton race of sorts that we combine together.

BUT....

If you take Brooke's idea of lip sync and combine that with Second Life, we could lip sync with our avatars. I found a video on that in YouTube.

Objectives Gap

This week, we were asked to revisit our initial objectives for this course, rework them if necessary and provide a gap analysis on these modified objectives. You can see that information on my website.

I realize now that my initial objectives were too specific aimed at my need for tools at that moment. I rewrote my objectives and how well our class has addressed them to this point.

It's important to note that we are studying a moving target. As soon as we learn a tool, another tool that does more things is being introduced. It can become frustrating if we focus too much on a specific tool. Instead, we need to have a broad understanding of these new tools and how to evaluate them. There are MANY tools out there that will never stand the test of time or traffic. As professionals, we need a way to evaluate the validity, purpose and abilities of future tools.

Evaluation abilities come from dialog. Having a variety of people look at the same tools and provide analysis. We have achieved that in this course thanks to the blogs.