Skype

I noticed that I had Skype already on my laptop but have never used it. Now I can see why. I started by watching the Youtube video on how to Skype, How to Make Free Calls and every screen that he was displaying, I could not find. I don't know if I was at the wrong place or not. I could not find where to add contacts as he did. I did find my son, but do not ever recall him talking about using this program. No one in my circles talks about this one. So then I proceeded to keep pausing the video and going back and forth between my Skype tab and the video.
I finally was able to get my profile picture set, but still cannot figure out how to find more contacts. I was not able to play around with it as I cannot find anyone that uses it. My son states that he never uses it either, just created the account and that was as far as he went with it.

Instant Messaging

I use Facebook Messenger all the time. I have a constant group chat between me and my two sisters and another one between me, my husband, my sister and her husband. I find that I use that more often than calling people as it just seems easier and I do not like talking on the phone as much as I used to. I can do it from anywhere and anytime as I don't have to make sure I can hear them as with regular phone calls. It is just more convenient all the way around. You can attach photos and I often conduct business that way as I am able to show my clients different things when they want to create a special order for a shower or party favors. An alternative to this would be emailing, but it is not fast enough for me. One thing about FB messaging that I do not like is that once you send a comment, you cannot delete it or retrieve it somehow.

LinkedIn

I have had a LinkedIn account for quite a while and as I tried to figure out it's purpose before, I quickly lost interest. Even though I have a small business now, I really do not know how useful it would be to me. I consider it for the white collar business group for that is the group that is known for making connections and networking in that manner. For my type of business, I find that the larger social networking sites as in Facebook and Instagram would be more useful to me.

Comparison & Contrast for Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram

I chose Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram to compare and contrast. Even though all three are capable of posting photos, they are quite different in their own ways. Facebook can be both text, photo or combination of the two. To me, it is the more commonly used way to interact and keep up on the interactions of your personal life. You can create albums which I commonly use for when I have more than a few photos. I recently posted an album of my two sons' Prom of this year. I cannot do that on Instagram or Pinterest. I use Facebook for business also, and find that their algorithms are so strict for business pages that if I do not post regularly, my fans that follow will not see any of my posts in their feed. I mainly use Instagram for my business and it is a better forum for marketing and advertising new products. It normally gets a lot of likes, especially when I enter my relevant hash tags to each picture. I use Pinterest mostly for searching for product pictures. I also use it when researching a new recipe or packaging for some new products. I believe that it is a personal choice and everyone would have their favorite social networking site depending on what they want to achieve.

Podcasts and Web 2.0 Podcast

Fresh Air

I found the Fresh Air podcast hosted by Terry Gross. The one I enjoyed the most consisted of a musical interview with Rhiannon Giddens where she interviews her along with playing some of her music where she sings and plays banjo. It was very interesting to listen to. Other podcasts have Gross interviewing different people such as television actors and short story writers to name a few. If you are interested in different types of interview from a variety of different people, you will like this.

Freakonomics

This podcast was different and the name sort of intrigued my interest. I started by listening to the first podcast entitled Food + Science = Victory. It was quite interesting and when looking over the other podcasts that they had to offer, there were a variety of different topics. It spans from food to economy to music. If one has multiple interests all in one spot, they would enjoy this podcast. From what I have heard, there are usually more than one person and multiple views on the subjects, so that makes it a plus.

Coverville

I found this podcast and immediately was drawn to it for my love of the oldies. It features many podcasts with some popular names in the music industry and contains cover band music of those musical groups. It will begin with talking and then the cover songs of the musician being featured. If you like groups from the past, you will like this as you learn some tidbits about them and hear other groups performing their songs.

Podcastalley.com and Podcast.com

I went to both sites and prefer Podcastalley.com over Podcast.com. I was not able to add any of the RSS feeds to my blog from Podcast.com podcasts. I kept getting an error message so that made it made decision up for me of which ones to post here. I did find some interesting social media marketing one over there and will most likely subscribe to them, but for the purposes of adding the feed to my blog, I will definitely be using the one that is successful. I liked the looks of both of them and they both obviously have their strong and weak points. On Podcastalley, it was confusing on where to go to search for podcasts, whereas Podcast.com had it right at the top of page.

Web2andwikis

My wiki can be found at http://web2andwikis.wikispaces.com/
I found that it was super easy to create a wiki. All I had to do was make a title, write and post it. I find that it was very similar to a blog except even easier. I like the idea of collaborating with other people and I think that this way creates an open forum for discussion.

The Essential Shift

This wiki is from a Graduate student that has teaching experience and knows that changing it up is always important. I agree that it is always important to adapt to the changing times and teachers should know how to adapt to each group of students. Everyone learns in different ways and as the newer generation ages, it can become more of a challenge.  With technology advancing all the time, the educators need to be up to date on those advances.  With the abundance of educational information online these days, the students can use that to learn and gain an advantage. One commenter noted that the students often remind the teachers to keep changing and not to stop growing.

Shifthappens.wikispaces.com 

Personalized Learning

I read this wiki and even though it was pretty short and sweet, it made so much sense to me. The creator noted that technology is always changing and this can be used to create new and different content to help teach the children. Even though it can be quite challenging to keep up with the changes, it can make them better at how they teach also. One comment that made me really think about all this is that technology is good as are the changes that go along with them. They keep them excited about teaching. But, along with the use of technology comes the decrease in interaction with real humans. And that is not always a good thing.
Shifthappens.wikispaces.com

Preparation of students for the future

The original discussion post on this wiki was created by a Kansas school teacher. She wanted to start a discussion to see if others thought that children were prepared for the future. Does technology play a role in ensuring that the children are prepared? Are teachers using technology in the classrooms to teach the kids? I agree with others that posted that technology can play an important role since that is where it is all at right now. If the kids are going to use computers and smart phones in their personal lives, why not use them to teach and prepare them for what is to come. Social media alone should be able to keep them informed and it is something that they are quite familiar with anyway. One point that was made was that the children should not be restricted to produce assignment and projects with just pen and paper. If they can create a presentation on their smart phone that displays the message that the instructor is asking for, then why not let them do it this way. The main thing is that they are prepared and how they get there should not matter.

Shifthappens.wikispaces.com