Reflection on Google

For class on Tuesday night, everyone created a Google Group. Creating the group was easy for me. Then we had to collaborate within our individual small groups and do some "chores" through one person's group. This was kind of confusing for some people, but I think we got it all worked out in the end.

As a learning tool, I definitely think that using a Google Doc is easier than using a Group. I say this because in a Group, only one person can edit a document at any one time. It can get frustrating to be "locked out" of a document because someone else in your group is editing it at that time. With a Google Doc, multiple people can edit at the same time. This is especially useful if there are many people in your group.

TV

I am watching Bill Nye the Science Guy. I used to watch this show when I was younger, but it is no longer on outside of late night/early morning TV. Bill Nye makes science cool and interesting! There are kids who actually do experiments to show the viewers a concept, such as plants making oxygen. The episode that I am watching happens to be on plants. In this episode, Bill Nye talks about concepts such as plant defenses and photosynthesis.

Did anyone else ever watch Bill Nye?

Photo from: www.kaeberleinlab.org

Newsworthy

I was watching the 5 o'clock news on KCCI last night and they were talking about this site called Elf Yourself. On this website, you can upload a photo of yourself to be placed on the body of an elf. You then record a message and send it to somebody.

Holiday Music

Christmas music is back! Hooray! (Although I do think they should wait until after Thanksgiving.) The radio station that I listen to is Lite 104.1. If this station is not broadcast in your area, you can always go to the website and listen to the music there. Just click on the red ornament in the top right corner that says "Listen Live". It is continuous holiday music until the day after Christmas, when they go back to their regular programming.

Religious YouTube?

Yes, there is a religious version of YouTube out there. It's called GodTube. I saw it on the news the other night. You can subscribe to this site the same way that you can to YouTube. This site contains religious music videos by such artists as Lifehouse and Casting Crows. Other user videos talk about defending the bible and different views on religion. There are also channels, just like on YouTube. Some of these channels include Hour of Power, Catholic Church, and Bible. Here is a link to an interesting video that I viewed. It's called Mathematical Proof for the Bible. I also found a funny video. It's called The adventures of Bible Answer Man.

The Kindle

I was watching Iowa Public Television (IPTV) and I saw this program about The Kindle. The Kindle is a wireless, portable reading device. This device will allow you to download a book to it, look up words, and save your place when you are reading. You can also be reading more than one book at a time. Using this device, you can carry around an armful of books in one hand!

The program was an interview of Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com. The video clip is here. Just to warn you, it is about an hour long.

Here is the product page at Amazon. It's a little pricey. Put it on your Christmas list!

YouTube Craziness

I was playing with YouTube and I remembered this video that a friend of mine showed me (because we're both in music). I think it's pretty neat, so I have included it for your viewing pleasure. The guy who does it is a comedian/musician. He's got other videos on YouTube if you'd like to see more of his work.

Widgets!

So we learned what a widget was last night in class. If you go here, you can read the definitions of widget. The one that pertains to this class is probably the second one.

We were introduced to a widget web site that you could probably spend hours on looking at all the cool widgets. There are games and pets (just to name a few) that you can include on your Facebook or MySpace pages. You can even add them to your blog, so a visitor can play Tetris while reading all your interesting postings!

I experimented with some widgets and chose two that I thought were cool. You can see one of them on my sidebar (that would be my virtual pet, Inkblot) and one of them at the very bottom of the page.

The Reading Corner

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behind in life

I feel that I am really behind in a lot lately. However, I did find the time last night to join Twitter and YouTube. My Twitter name is gemini85 in case anyone is interested.

I also found out yesterday that my computer is too old to support UNI wireless! Hooray for having a laptop that is 4 years old...

new tech stuff

I have found this blog (see here) and it's really cool. It talks about different technologies. The one that made me say "Wow, that's cool!" is Google Sky. This program could definitely be used in science and astronomy classes! It would be much more interesting to be able to see a constellation or particular star that was being discussed in class rather than to just talk about it. That's what I think anyway. Feel free to leave a comment!

Class

I am sitting in class. I have just merged this blog with my new Gmail account. My first post was from way-back-when (last year). That's all I've got to say.