Where did all my pictures go?!

Shame on me. I'm so disappointed in myself right now. I've been utilizing my social media sites (MySpace and Facebook) to house my pictures. Not a bad plan, except that they changed the formatting. I can't move pictures from those sites into my NEW flickr account.

So why, oh why, have I never used a free photo sharing site? I had pictures stored on a desktop computer that died. Those are gone. I put pictures on MySpace that are now gone. Literally gone, all I see are ? where pictures used to be. I have pictures on Facebook that are from my various escapades and they are STUCK in Facebook.

My daughter used Flickr and she told me how cool it was. But, she's young and not so bright. Right? Absolutely wrong. My digital native daughter should have been a bit more forceful with her mother. I would have had my Flickr account and not lost all my precious pictures. Deep sigh.

The past is the past and it's time to look forward to the future. Get over what I've lost and look to what I'll gain. So why in the world would I choose Flickr over Picasa and Shutterfly? I honestly thought I'd select Picasa because it popped up when I signed up for my Google Reader account. I even reviewed Shutterfly to see how that looked. But, when I looked at the upload features on my phone - there was the answer. Flickr was preloaded. Decision made. Yes, I probably should have done a tad bit more research. But, in my defense, my phone is my camera.

I started loading pictures into Flickr and became completely wrapped up in loading the pictures I had on my old laptop. The next thing I know, seven hours have passed. It was fun looking through my memories once again. I had the most fun adding pictures to the map! Now I have a challenge to go through and scan pictures from when my family was stationed at other bases and the fun places we went.  I still need to work on my Flickr page and make sure I have pictures tagged and in the proper set.

I believe it can be used in an educational setting when doing research for a school paper. You can search through your friends and see if they've been to a location. Then you have someone with first hand knowledge. Not only that, you'll have brand new media to preview and use. I need to work on my tags and get them all set. As I was working through this assignment I kept thinking about the William W. Winpisinger Education and Technology Center in Hollywood, MD. It's the IAM's educational facility and in my other class I really talked it up. I want to share that set of pictures with everyone in my class. :)

Enjoy flipping through my memories!!

Update: I created a slide show through SlideRocket. I hope you enjoy.

Delicious!

Ok, so maybe that should read as del.icio.us. Or perhaps not, after all that spelling is so 2007 and we are clearly in 2011. :-) I opted for delicious and I'm still working on getting it all together.

This week's assignment was to dive into social bookmarking. I had seen the "share this" for Facebook, Twitter, Diig as well as del.icio.us but didn't see a point in the bookmarking aspect. Usually, when I get a new computer I just transfer all my information over and wa-la, no problem. But, there have been times that I was away from home and I've needed to get to a bookmarked item and I couldn't because it doesn't come up on web search. (Companies are so weird with their intranet sites!)

Even with that prior experience, I honestly didn't see the point in bookmarking my bookmarks on a site. That is, until I was reading Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, by Will Richardson. In Chapter 6 he described the point I was missing. Imagining the Internet as a giant library, the way to link to applicable sites could work best when users set the tags and NOT the developers of the sites. It was through that mental picture that it came together.

If I want to find the most bookmarked page (and possibly, the most useful) for writing a paper in proper APA style I would go to "Home" and then on the right side, type in, "APA." Once I hit enter it gives me the most recent entries, but I'd prefer to have the most popular, so I click on popular and it re-orders the results. What is interesting to me is that it didn't give me the most bookmarked item first. But, when looking at how many bookmarked a site, I could see which one is the most beneficial to me. I don't like "bots" creating my bibliography. It doesn't matter how many times I do a research paper, I always have to refer to the Internet for examples so I can write it properly. I want to do the work - not just feed info into a bot. Of course, the fact that I'm not retaining the information leads me to wonder why I don't just go the bot route? But I digress...

Now that I can see the potential, I can definitely see how it could help in a classroom setting. I think we should set a tag for our class and when we do find something of interest, add that tag. By doing that our instructor will have information for his next class and it could be continually built on. Actually, not just by THIS class, but for the COURSE. Yeah, lots of emphasis - but I'm an emphasis kinda person. :)

I can see where my tags can make a difference. Adding the word cloud just emphasizes what the main words are, it could help determine the best tag for your site or blog.

Hmmmm, I need to work on not using "just" so often. 

I'm now excited at the possibilities ahead for delicious and tagging! 

RSS - Really Simple Syndication

Many years ago, when I was still learning the ins and outs of the Internet, Yahoo.com was the premier search engine for me. I had a "My Yahoo," page and it worked really well. I enjoyed seeing the daily news and updates that I was interested in. I still surfed the web for more information - but it kept me updated! When Google came around, I switched my loyalties.

Through Google, I created my own news aggregator. It was and still is wonderful! It searches for stories on the following items for me: Local news for my city and state, Machinists, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways, AirTran, Delta, and Alaska Airlines. I search for the airlines because they are all (except AirTran and Delta) airlines in my Local Lodge. I want to be up-to-date on anything at our airlines. Station closures, possible openings and hirings, just basic information that can help us through our different 'struggles.'

Now, through the most recent assignment, I have advanced to the Google Reader. I am still learning the best way to utilize the reader and most importantly, to share it with my classmates (or anyone else interested in what I'm interested in). I've had a gmail account for almost four years and I'm still enjoying the Google brand and the inner workings of it. The Reader encouraged me to create a Google profile (thought I had one) and to describe certain things about myself. So, I gave that a go. 

Now? I still can't quite figure out how to share my Reader list. And that is rather frustrating. The good thing is that while I was creating a Google profile, it showed linking to PicassaWeb. (Good to note for an upcoming lesson) 

After I created my Reader, with profile, I set out to find that lovely little RSS symbol. But, web pages that I frequently visit are not RSS equipped. I e-mailed the web master (a friend of mine) and asked him if he could add it. He told me he had previously tried to figure it out, but was unable to do so. He asked for my help and I literally laughed out loud. Seriously? Me??? Help??? Hello!?! I am a digital immigrant and I'm trying my best to understand how to muddle through this stuff! But, there must be an answer on the web... right? Lo and behold, there it is. A WIKI!!! I sent him a link and told him that I had no clue how to write html or any sort of web-based language. After he read it, he thought it would be "easy," to write. (Once I get the hang of sharing... you'll be able to see that in my Reader feed)

As an educational tool, it seems the Reader would be an excellent addition for updated information available on the web. Imagine if we were still on the weekly news cycle by the weekly paper? Or even the 5pm news? Or the daily paper? Thanks to Ted Turner's CNN we have dedicated news channels (I'm not goin there on the Faux News). But, that's not good enough for the Information Age! We want it now, at our convenience, and without any unnecessary pop up ads or videos. If I want commercials, I'll watch TV! Oops, I digress... I don't think the attacks on labor in WI, IN, OH... would have had the impact a week later. 

"As we went to press, Governor Walker, was struggling with a state budget with only one recourse in his mind. He would need to renegotiate contracts with Wisconsin public worker unions." HA! Thankfully, we have Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Yelp... in addition, there were moment-to-moment updates available online through the various news outlets. Thanks to the Reader, I will only have one place to go for my daily news - and the only ads I will see are the ones I choose to click. The Reader, while making the world smaller,  is making our contacts and ability to motivate - much greater. 

I'm going to go ahead and post this. But, I'll be updating it once I get that sharing figured out!

****Update**** I figured it out! I hope you enjoy. My Google Reader shared stories.

****Update**** Even more so... check out the left side of the page, you can view portions of my Reader easily through my Blog. I set the layout so you could see who I am, read my previous Blogs, subscribe, follow and then my Reader feeds.