# 13 MySpace and # 14 Facebook

Well after much deliberation and psyching up I finally joined MySpace and Facebook, checked out what each of them offered. Checked out what other people had on their sites, then promptly deleted my accounts. I know that was wimpy of me but there is a reason I have avoided joining the ever growing numbers of people on social networking sites. Over the past few years I have been amazed by the number (and frankly the type of people who have wanted to 'friend' me). Surprise! Surprise! my friends have remained my friends even though I have not friended them on Facebook or MySpace

I have to say that I printed out the 5 easy steps to stay safe on Facebook, and followed them to the letter. I can see how people would get frustrated with this task and not bother, though when I looked at the default settings it certainly allows people to access just about anything. For this reason, I would prefer facebook over MySpace as it seemed to offer better privacy settings for the user. MySpace had a more appealing  homepage and I can certainly see it appealing more to the younger user with it's easy access to music downloads. Thanks for the articles about protecting yourself, they were very valuable.

Lots of my friends are on Facebook and find it very useful for sharing photos, especially when living/travelling overseas or organising group catch-ups. I don't feel the need at the moment to spend an inordinate amount of time seeing what others are doing. Maybe that need will present itself as my kids get older.

I checked out Ning but couldn't access it and had a look at Linked-in which looked good for those in professions such as teaching or education. Haven't had much time to investigate Twitter. What I saw didn't impress me much. However, I have enjoyed reading many people's "Twittered" comments whilst watching Q and A.

# 12 Flickr

Yipeeee! It worked!!!!

Imagine my surprise when I set up my flickr account and found not only did I already have an account (which I suspect a family member had set up) but that there were photos of my children on it that my brother-in-law had put on. I have uploaded photos to flickr and discovered that because I set my settings as 'family only' and not 'everyone', I was unable to post the pictures to my blog. At least I know how to do it if the need arises. I like how you can search for people by email or name. It's easy to organise into sets and collections of sets. the galleries are great for getting ideas. I loved the N-generation clip.

I got this from Dumpr. Love the way you can turn photos into sketches. I tried it on photos which I loved but didn't want to put photos on my blog. Here goes, let's see how easy this is to add to my blog.


http://www.dumpr.net/photo/e1c236ca0a5765e8/

oops will try again.

# 11 LibraryThing

Being an avid reader, I spent loads of time in this site. I set up an account and found lots of my favourite books quickly and easily. I was fascinated to discover that the Kite Runner had 29,859 people who had catelogued it. I spent some time looking at the different groups and thought there were some novel ideas eg the read a book with a fabulous front cover challenge. I can see how this would appeal to many people but do wonder where they would get the time to participate in challenges and group chats. I don't feel the need to have an online catelogue of books at this point, though I do feel it's a great way of keeping a record of fabulous books read as I have a terrible tendency to forget what I've read and then can't recommend them to others.I wouldn't think there's much scope for this in the primary classroom. If anyone uses it in a primary classroom, please let me know how useful it is. Checked out Yarra Plenty's new website. It was also easy to navigate. I'd love a job that involved writing book reviews!!!

# 10 Still Going

There surely must be a better way. Whilst I have enjoyed playing around with the each of the online image generators suggested for this week. I'm sure my limited capabilities are restricting me. I have decided to move on and come back to this when I have quite a few more hours in order to process the "how to' of attaching to my blog. I'm sure it's a easy as someone showing me the one necessary button to click.
Image by Cool Text: Logo and Button Generator - Create Your Own Logo

# 10 Again

Am trying this again to see if there is a better way of linking this image to my blog.
ImageChef.com Poetry Blender

# 10 Image Generators

No idea what I am supposed to be doing here. I seem to spend hours going the long way around things. Hope this works. I've made a word mosaic.

#9 Virtual Worlds

MMM not really sure where to begin here. I visited Second Life. Whilst it was fairly easy to check out what was involved and the various choices on offer (ie billions), I started getting more and more stressed about the fact that soooo many people, especially young boys/men would spend sooooo much of their time in the virtual world. My husband reckons he has enough trouble dealing with the real world. I immediately thought of our 5 year old son who began Kinder this year. He absolutely loves reading (says it's his favourite thing in the world to do - which I can totally relate to), and is already reading chapter books. I had images of him as a teenager happily ensconsed in the virtual world creating multiple Avatatars, totally oblivious to anything around him. Where has my beautiful articulate little boy with the love and awe of everything around him gone???? Am I just being old fashioned here? Or am I experiencing technology phobia? I am a huge promoter of social skill development and I do question where social skills fit in to virtual worlds.

I can see the benefit to Virtual Classroom with online collaboration tutorials where educational institutions such as universities take advantage of this platform to deliver content to a world wide audience at low cost. As a primary school teacher I don't see the value in a primary school setting. Fortunately the 13yrs plus age limit negates this anyway.

I think it would be great if I was learning or practicing a language. I can see the value of Exit Reality. As I am planning the building of a back deck for our home I can see great benefits if you were an architect.