Yacking and Supporting

Well, it's been quite a day! Going backwards, I've been reading up about YackPack, signing up for an account and experimenting with it. I was introduced to it by Chris Woldhuis, one of my colleagues on my USQ course. YackPack is a very useful application that is so easy to use. Users can have live synchronous chat sessions and for those members who are unable to attend, they can sign in later and pick up a recorded voice message! There's nothing like the sound of a voice - the intonations - the emotions, and I find this application would be extremely useful in our Office Procedures course. I notice that it is integrates with Facebook so now users can have live chats with the help of the Walkie Talkie widget. I recorded a message and sent it to Joyce and also invited Chris to join in my Yack room! As you can see, I've also put the Walkie Talkie widget on this page. I am excited about this software and have commented on Chris's facilitated page. I was originally looking for Chris's room so I skyped Joyce and asked her for it. She was at work! Every day I am amazed at the people I communicate with all over the globe.

Today was a great day at work. The students really enjoyed the Angel orientation and I received some very positive feedback by email. They liked the IM feature and the Live Office Hours and Chat features. It'll be great to use the virtual classroom on Tuesdays - then we all can stay home.

There's an article in The Record about Facebook. Can't believe how much has been written about Facebook. Apparently the University of Guelph is using it as a marketing tool. They have 22,000 registered users. The benefits of using Facebook as a marketing tool is that it takes less time to set up than a college portal, and although it has the same amount of information, it reaches a far wider audience!

All for now - too many late nights so I'm going to have to quit now. Didn't even get time to tweet. Which reminds me - it was a balmy 12 degrees today, the snow is melting and the geese were in the pond. Oh....Joyce signed on to Skype and suggested we Yack. We used the Walkie Talkie widget on her PB Wiki site. It works/sounds much like a Wimba session in that you have to hold the button down to talk. But it' works well - sound is clear - it's just strange talking into a wiki!!

Life is good!

I have so much to write about and I keep making mental notes about it, as everything I learn is so exciting these days, and when I finally have time to write - I forget it all! Don and I shared a virtual New Year's celebration thanks to MSN and our webcams. At 2:59 pm on Monday afternoon, we were online, synchronized our laptop clocks and called out the countdown together! And then I cried - never thought we'd be celebrating together and there I was celebrating the arrival of 2008 with him! I was going to close my Facebook account because I never use it. Two of my friends wrote to tell me they were closing their accounts as well. I'll write more about that on the Facebook KG page. Later that afternoon, the phone rang - it was from my friends in Al Ain calling on Skype! Couldn't believe it. Then on New Year's Day, to my surprise, I had an email from Shawna Corbett, married daughter of my childhood girlfriend Maxine, who died a few years ago. How wonderful to catch up with her and the family after all these years - ah, the power of Facebook and social networks! Later in the day, I checked out Kwout. You paste an URL into the box, it brings up the page, you choose an area to cut out, and it converts it into embeddable code. It has its drawbacks - it doesn't allow you to click into pages on the second level of a site. Then I listened to a webinar entitled Integrating LessonBuilder content with Angel Learning through the magic of scorm. It was very informative - they use Sofchalk, one of the alliance partners, but unfortunately we're not getting Sofchalk or Wimba with our package. It was amazing to see how a traditional lesson in Word could be turned into a three page interactive lesson. The graphic of the eyeball was turned into a diagram that the student applied labels to which was a scorable learning activity. As I was just finishing the Webinar, the Skype window opened and it was my friend from Al Ain. I asked him how he accessed it since it was a blocked site, and he told me about Anchor hotspot shield. I immediately got on Moodle and posted in the forum in the hopes that my colleagues in the UAE will be able to download Hotspot shield and subsequently, access Skype and Twitter. Not sure where I read about Tribbit, which is a free online card that many people can sign. You can embed music, videos, a voice recording, words and include photos. I know this will be of great use in our office. and will save us rushing to the store to buy a card because we forgot someone's birthday!




"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."

Courtesy of my dear friend Jax, quoting Neil Gaiman on his blog. (http://journal.neilgaiman.com)