Linkedin/Plaxo/Personal Website

Through completing this assignment with creating three different venues to social connect on a professional level, by using either, Linkedin, Plaxo or your own personal website. I feel that the use of Linkedin is the most appropriate as it provides a way to network with other in your field. This is a great opportunity and site to use as many people and organizations are taking to the web for applications, resumes and job hunting. I also feel that personal websites such as Google Sites, where you can create a web page for free, allows greater access to your potential employers since you can post your professional portfolio on this site, and paste the url on your resume for them to view. Lastly is the Plaxo site which I do not feel is as helpful as the other two sites with job hunting or networking with people in the field, as this is similar to a contact list. If you have already established yourself within than they will be linked into your contact list.

With everything being said, I feel that Linkedin is the best way for job networking in the modern age of technology.

Mike's Library Thing Catalog:

Tonight I played around with "Library Thing" I believe it is a good tool for cataloging if you would like to distribute a list of books for an assignment. Teachers could type in books on various subjects and than email that list to their students to use. This concept is all part of the web 2.0 era.

I believe "Library Thing" can be very useful, however, I did not like the simplicity of this tool. I feel like the web designers could of created an easier to use search tool to find books, maybe I will get used to it with time.

Google Docs

With Google docs, you can share files easily without the use of an email. This tool is something extraordinary, aside from sharing a document from one computer to another, you can even type, like a word document, through the website and than have it transferred to another location.

In the article it states that this may be the future of word processing and may do away with programs such as word, however, I feel though it is a great tool, it may not replace MS Word in the near future.

Prior to this class a friend of mine who is a bit more up to date with technology, told me about Google docs, in order for him to transport a large megabyte file to me. He says that he uses it will all of his clients, since most of his exercise programs do not fit into the normal email capacity.

I am a fan of google, as I use it for almost everything, so I believe I think that file sharing with Google docs will be used frequently by me.

Fun with FlickR Jigsaw

For this weeks assignment, we were to upload a digitally altered photograph. After looking at several different styles of modification, I chose the jigsaw editor. This was easy to use and very easy to upload. This picture is of my dog Jasper, who is a pug/beagle mix and is 5 years old.

Youtube

Well Youtube, it is probably the one tool that I am most familiar with. Youtube has helped me in coaching in numerous ways. I have sent my athletes videos for instruction, as well as to acquaint them into the track and field events of the throws. Aside from providing my athletes with instructional videos, Youtube is a user friendly posting site in which you can embed videos into your own site. I have not tried to upload video yet, but in the future would like to.

Technorati

The use of technorati has been challenging for me, it is not as easy to use in my opinion as a search engine that I am accustomed to. I searched Kinesiology in several different formats, in blog posts, in the directory, and in tags. The results were mixed, in searching of blogs, I found over 1 million blogs, however, while using the blog directory I only found 1 and in Tags I was unable to find any. Even through viewing various instructional videos on the site, this still is quite confusing for a narrow topic. However, while viewing the various categories that were on the site, I was very interested as this provided, some amazing searches. I looked at Baseball and was intrigued by the different categories and blogs that there were.

Audible

Another interesting site that we just learned about that we didn't need to blog about is Audible. I found this site particularly interesting, due to the fact that you can now get books onto your mp3 player. I am constantly on the go with work, sports or travel, and now have an AUX adapter in my car. This would be a great add on to my mp3 player so that I can "read" all of my favorite books while on the go!

Video Editing

Though we did not need to blog about our experience about movie editing, I am particularly excited about this. For the longest time I have been playing around with various movie editing tools like window's movie maker, motionpro and various other tools. These internet sites will not allow me to upload video that I shot, and be able to play around with them and allow my athletes to view their practices, track meets, testing and other important events.

So I will use this and give sometime and see how it goes!

PodCast RSS Feed

Podcasts, well they are like TV shows without the picture. So we have an assignment about subscribing to a podcast using our Bloglines.com account. I feel that this was a very easy to use and understand tool, as Bloglines, has a search feature for podcasts. I simply clicked on the link and than used the search engine on the site to find a podcast of my choosing. At this point I went into the sports and recreation caterogery and found a podcast on my favorite baseball team, the New York Mets. I clicked on the link that allowed me to subscribe to it, I copied the link and went into my bloglines account, and added it to my RSS feeder. It was simply and easy.

Now that I have understood how to subscribe to podcasts, I have opened the door to listening to many different sites through the bloglines account with only a few simple clicks.

Del.icio.us

So we had to set up an account with Del.icio.us, and like many new technologies, I am skeptical and frustrated easily, that I have to add something new to my limited understanding of the web. Like usually I question to myself how will I ever use this, or why would I ever need this. Eventually as the tutorial progresses and shows all the ways that Del.icio.us, can improve our classroom as well as help manage everyday life, I begin to enjoy and understand all of these possibilities. Maybe I should just go in with the attitude know that in the end it will be exciting and helpful, instead of skepticism.

So what is Del.icio.us? Well Del.icio.us is an internet bookmarking site. So let's say you use several computers throughout the day and you have a website that you use, but you may not know the web address, well at least for me that happens. So with a Del.icio.us account all your bookmarks are on the net for you, there is no need to have to wait till your on your main computer. It is like using the bookmark button on the browser you already have, but this time you can take it with you.

What other benefits does Del.icio.us have to offer? Well you are able to tag your bookmarks so that you can easily find them in groups. So for me I use a lot of track and field webpages, so I may want a webpage for running, and one for jumping and another for the throwing events. With this even though all three websites may have similar addresses, their content may be different, so by adding a tag and grouping them in categories, I can now easily find the appropriate website that I am looking for.

Aside from personal use, you can create a class page, and for a particular unit, you may set aside various pages for student use. This will help the students perform better and more focused research.

Video Post

Here is a shot put video post of the top 10 throws ever in the world. A lot of the recent American athletes such as Cantwell and Nelson I was able to train with as well as compete against.