Lots of Talk!

Today was an amazing day! However, I spent so many hours on this computer. From the moment I awoke at 6:30 am, I was messaging with Joyce on MSN. We then moved into a Wimba session and it was easy to compare the pros and cons of those two voIP software. I prefer MSN because you don't have to hold down a talk button, but MSN only allows voIP with two people and IM with a maximum of three. We were setting up times for our Twitter session and we both seamlessly went into the meeting planner at timeanddate.com and pulled up our respective time zones. I am amazed at the ease with which I move between all these applications as I'd never heard of them before this course. After spending a few productive hours at the college, I was back online with Chris W and Joyce on MSN, and then Skype. Skype won out today. We were able to hear each other clearly, for the most part, and you can conference with up to nine participants. I prefer Skype to Wimba as there is no hesitation while webcams change over to the speaker, there's no talk button to hold down, and the conversation just flows rather than being stilted. We carried on this wonderful conversation for 1.5 hours - there's nothing like learning from and sharing with colleagues all over the world. And we reviewed our session, jotting down minutes. My job was to post a poll on our Time Machine page asking whether or not Skype is a social network software. And again, with ease, I looked up how to insert a poll on KG's help page, inserted the poll, voted of course(!), and invited others to do so in the Shoutbox. I can't believe I know how to do these things! I wrote Peter requesting he insert the Glossary onto Moodle so I can see how it works, as Joyce said it's a really terrific glossary and perhaps I should use one in Angel.

I have been reading some wonderful articles to support my research for Assignment 1 and I just want to share them with my colleagues who have never experienced an online course. I get so excited when people are passionate about the Web 2.0 tools and 21st century skills we as educators need to equip our students with - to guide them into becoming self-learners, to re-tool', be adept at unlearning and relearning, and be comfortable with today's technology for tomorrow will bring new ones that we can't even imagine, and jobs that haven't been invented yet. That's why I am hoping my plan for them to teach each other all of this semester's software through a wiki will be successful. I know there will be moans and groans but that's to be expected. I must say I am happy to read the word "while" instead of "whilst"!! Just a hangup of mine, although I still say "full stop" instead of "period", a left over from my UAE days. Completely out of the blue - do you ever wonder why, although you say "Remember my password", it never does when you open a site again?? It's a mystery to me.

There have been tweets about Scrabulous so I joined today. I thought it would be similar to playing Sudoku online - just me and the computer. But alas - it is not. When I entered the Oasis room, I felt as if three heads turned to check me out and a sign said "This table is waiting for one more player." I panicked and left the room quickly. I think I'll wait until Don arrives and then we can play two against one!

Speaking of tweets, Twitter is amazing. People who are in another part of the world, who I don't even know but am following, are answering my requests. Someone tweeted asking for information on a professional organization which has positive comments about the value of social networking. I responded requesting the link too and almost instantly, someone sent it. And when 'elemenous' inquired as to who removed her post from Steve's social networking site, I asked for the link to the site and in seconds, it was there! Today I found a few 'mashups' created for twitter - twitter karma, twitter vision and twitter blocks to name a few.

Joyce told me she watched a little bit of the podcast "Women and Web 2.0" on EdTech Talk and suggested it would be interesting to watch. I just wish there were more than 24 hours in a day! Good night.