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)