Building a Website

Once upon a time, I had a MySpace. Like most people I know, though, I eventually dumped MySpace in favor of Facebook. The reasons for me were numerous. First and foremost, I joined Facebook because it was where my little sister was sharing photos of her family. I began receiving friend requests from random strangers, and quickly discovered the plethora of 30-50 year old men who were only friends with 20-something beautiful women. It creeped me out that people were looking for booty calls on MySpace. I was there to keep in touch with my friends and family.

But the real clincher was the simplified format. I never knew what to expect visiting someone's profile on MySpace. Some people's pages were so loaded with graphics and fancy formats that my poor little computer could barely load them. Some of the formats even made certain buttons invisible, or stretched the width of the page so far you had to scroll back and forth to read each line. What was a good concept to start off with (both the social networking utility and the ability to really personalize your page) just turned out bad.

When I had an account with Verizon, they offered a free website with their service. It had limited design options, and though I set it up, I almost never used it. I have played around with a few different websites such as Box.Net and Posterous, andI finally settled on PBWorks to create my ePortfolios.

What really draws me to one host or another is the ease of use. PBWorks, I felt, had the best format of the pages I tried. Where Posterous and Box.Net were more about just file-sharing, I like that with PBWorks I could actually put together a professional looking site, with a front page and a site-map. And then, of course, there are my blogspots.

Of the various sites suggested this week, I am choosing Google, Yola and Wordpress. Google I like because it is attached to my Gmail account. Wordpress is a host with which I am familiar, as it has it's own StumbleUpon channel. I have found so many great and interesting blogs on that site, including some sound academic work. Yola is completely new to me, but so far so good. I haven't really gotten too far with any of these pages yet, but so far they seem pretty accessible. I'll let you know when I have more to say on them.

I'd like to take a moment again to say how simply amazing it is that the internet has become so much a part of our lives. There are so many sites out there that let you just build your own blog or web page, for free, with almost no strings attached (save the ever present "Terms of Service" basically saying they own your content and you won't post anything raunchy. Oh, and the good old limited liability clause). While there is so much concern now about our complete relinquishment of privacy, the fact is that anyone now, anyone with internet access can have their 15 minutes of fame. Of course, since the internet is theoretically forever, it's probably a lot more than fifteen minutes...

Thanks for reading,
Katie May

The Next 5000 Days of the Web

Here is what I imagine... what I want from technology if it insists on pervading our lives and delving so deeply into our personal business...
I imagine a life where all of my financial information is connected. I have ordered my preference for the payment of my bills, and the web takes care of the rest. It sees when bills are due, it assesses how much money is in my account. It knows my credit rating, which is much improved since I no longer have to remember to pay my bills.
I go to work and my hours are clocked. Everything in my life is clocked, in fact, on a small implanted chip. I go to drive my car, I scan my chip and the car starts. The car has mechanical trouble and it knows my preferred mechanic. It gets me a price quote, checks with my budget to see if it's affordable and it makes itself an appointment. It tells my calendar and my alarm clock so that I can be awake to take it in. It first checked with my calendar to make sure there was no scheduling conflict. Moments later, a car arrives, my car, in it's poor health, called a driver for me for today, so that it wouldn't have to. I go to use the computer and I scan my thumb chip. This turns on the computer to my personal settings. There is a list of things wanting my attention. I have prioritized this list. First on the agenda, view new photos uploaded by my family members. Second, discrepancy in the finance department of my life, review and decide. Third, jobs matching recent search queries have opened up in my area. Credentials have been sent, interviews set up. Note times.
As you can see, what I am picturing is not all that far off from what Kevin Kelly described. The web is everywhere.
I was thinking to myself today, as my laptop is undergoing repair, that I live more than half my life online. Most of my communications, my education, my socialization, my finance, and (some of) my leisure activities are dependent upon my having internet access. Short of breathing, eating and sleeping, I could conduct most of my life without ever leaving the computer screen. Of course, that thought scares me to death, and I hate it. I don't think we're quite headed for a life of complete stagnancy. We as creatures of nature recognize the value of unplugging once in a while.
But wouldn't it just be easier if instead of worrying about Credit Card fraud and identity theft if I had my own personal chip in my thumb. Go to the store, scan your thumb... go to the movies, scan your thumb... gas station, thumb. Greenhouse, thumb. Farmer's Market, thumb. McDonald's or Chez Paris, thumb. You'd never have to worry about it. So long as you weren't overspending, which you'd be alerted to well ahead of time, you'd never need to worry about tracking your finances, paying your bills or your taxes. Paper money could be a thing of the past. All trade will be in goods and services. Like one giant web monitored barter system. Now if only that thumb chip had a speaker for my music files...
Katie May

Instructional Technologies for Teaching- Week 1

Goals for the class:
I have grown up in the age of technology. I have been using computers for about as long as I can remember, and I have been using the internet since it became available to the average person. I have learned a lot in my school years about how to find information, and how to validate that information, on the internet. I've written dozens of papers and essays, and have enjoyed my education immensely.
There is a big difference, however, between using technology and teaching technology. If I am to be a teacher in today's classrooms, I have to be able to keep up with today's world, both material and virtual. I hope to learn in this class are methods for teaching others how to use technology properly. I hope to learn in this class better ways of understanding how to implement technology specifically for use in the classroom, i.e. lesson planning, idea sharing amongst professionals, presentation preparation, etc.
So far, I have already learned a few things that will save me a lot of time in the future. Much of what was reviewed in the Internet Detective tutorial was old news to me, but I certainly picked up a few gems of knowledge that I had clearly been missing out on. Intute, for example, seems like a great resource, and one that I had never conceived of before taking this course. Also, while I knew to look for things in the URL of website, and to check for sources and peer-reviews on articles, I never thought to check the mailing address or registry of a website to verify it's contents. Furthermore, the examples they provided (www.gatt.org vs. www.wto.org) were startling!
Lastly, at risk of sounding a bit brash, I really have no hesitations about this course. I am comfortable with technology, and I am comfortable with online learning.

Thank you for reading, come again soon!
Katie May