live tv

Miss Universe Live. That's what it said on tv tonight. I was sitting there thinking I was actually watching it LIVE with billions of people around the world. Exciting, I'd have to say. Let's do a little recap here.

• I was shocked when Miss USA fell on her bottom. I was talking about it with my boyfriend and he was saying that it'll be all over youtube by tomorrow. Right when he said that I thought of blogging about this! Silly, ain't it. He's right though, it will be all over youtube in a matter of few hours, or even minutes.
  
• Funny that he referenced to youtube too. Youtube seems like the place to go for updated news, could youtube one day over take the news channels? Maybe I should've titled this blog entry something related to youtube instead.
  
• Anyway, so in the middle of watching the Miss Universe, the tv in the living room decided to malfunction! What great timing eh? I saw it as a great time to go get some work done. I went online and saw headings of who Miss Universe 2007 is! Wow, that was fast!! I went to my dad's room and saw him still watching the show. How can that be? It's already out on the internet but they haven't even shown it on tv! For a split second I felt cheated. Live tv is no longer really "live". The internet is now the fastest source we'll ever get. Amazing. Scary almost.

Anyway, just something that crossed my mind at this point.
I did some search just now. Oh My Goodness, it's EVERYWHERE!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Universe_2007
Blog about Miss Universe
http://www.missuniverse.com/

Alternative Learning Environment

I'm currently waiting for the trial version of Flash to download on this computer. After sitting here for quite some time doing nothing but scratching my belly, I decided to do some blogging. Let's see, so my goal was to get as much done for all three of my courses before I become a hermit for the next two weeks. I'm actually going down to San Diego for the memorial weekend which means I'll be loosing my whole weekend of work that I could've done. Anyway, I wasn't able to get as much done as I wanted to on campus. My trial version on my computer expired so now I've hopped onto my sister's computer. Where is this going, really? Good question. I've actually started on the final project for 578. In doing some research and thinking about what would be a good presentation, I came across something that might just save all my headaches. Actually, my boyfriend pointed this out to me- the Cisco commercials. It's amazing how commercials can help me out on my final project here, never would've thought. I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to put all of these together but here are some commercials that I've found that I plan on incorporating into my final project- video conferencing.

Cisco Commercial
My Favorite Cisco Commercial

Second Life

Last night we all logged onto Second Life to take pictures of the places we went to as a class. I do have to say that the over experience was an interesting one. It's amazing how people can have an avatar that represents who they are or who they want to be, or even just a character for fun. I'm actually more shocked by the fact that people do this as their main occupation. I'm not sure this is a good thing for that matter. I mean, we do live in THIS world, not the world of Second Life. I understand that Second Life is set up to give people a "second change" at life but again, that's just escaping reality! Give me a break guys, wake up and live THIS life! Anyway, that's just something I wanted to share about Second Life in general.

As for Second Life being used for educational purposes, I'm still not sure how effective that is. Going around Edu-island and playing "follow the leader" wasn't exactly the easiest thing in the world. I found myself walking into walls, poles and falling in to the water for that matter. Actually getting to places was quite a challenge. The second time around was a little easier since we all know where we're going (sort of) and at least what we were doing at those locations. I know we visited museums of works of art that other students did, visited other countries that we usually couldn't afford a plane ticket for. Those were good aspects of the tour. I'm sure Second Life has a lot more to offer than what we were exposed to. But my concern about this is what real value does it have? How can teachers use this in their class room? And for what grade is it appropriate for? As graduate students, we were already having a hard time navigating around, or for everyone to be on the same location due to technical difficulties. How would this be like if it were used on primary and secondary students? I think in order for this to run effectively, members would need to master those beginning skills of navigation and have the same internet access to prevent lagging or computers shutting down for that matter. I don't know, I think I just like this present life I live in!

With that said, I want to be clear on the fact that I'm closing my doors on Second Life. I'm still open to learning about the effectiveness of Second Life. These were just some of my reflections on Second Life.

Links:
Second Life Website
Second Life for Educational Purposes
Second Life Wikipedia

School of Rock

There's just way too many things to do with such little time. I can't believe this quarter is almost over! I'm beginning to feel the pressure so what do I do- I hide back in my denial cave, reluctant to do any of my work last night! Hah. Well, I did print out some articles to read for the final project for the 578. I was sitting in my room for the whole night and decided to take my studies to my bf's house. The bad part is, I took my articles along with the "School or Rock" dvd. My sister got the dvd as a xmas gift last year. She never opened it and I figured I'd do the honors of opening it for her! =) Anyway, needless to day that I spent the rest of the night watching the movie instead of doing research on the project. I've never seen the movie before and I have to say, it's not a bad movie. The great thing is, I can blog about the movie since it has a lot to do with technology- well, to some extent. I was amazed to see how these students utilized technology to set up cameras to watch out for the principal coming down the hall. Even so, to set up the lights and coordinate it to match up with the rock piece the students are performing. Yes, yes, it's just a movie but I'd like to think that there are some kids out there who actually know how to use technology to produce such great masterpieces like these kids in the movie. Kids never cease to amaze me.

I was looking for links that I can include for this post and found this lady's commentary. After I read this, I feel that she's right on so many levels. It's really just an entertaining movie. I guess I'm not too harsh on movies since it is just a movie and not "real". One thing I was thinking about through out the movie is how many law suites there would be for the school if this was a true story. Surely the substitute would end up in jail probably for "kidnapping" and the bus driver wouldn't even take the kids with out an adult figure in there, and to drive to his house? I don't think so. Then of course the principal not catching on to the fact that this substitute isn't the real one that she wanted to hire for the job. I mean, can you really be that naive to not know especially after speaking to him and even sitting in on one of the class sessions? Anyway, I can go on and on about this but see it that it's just a movie, I won't. I'll just take this movie for the entertainment value of it and my post was really just to share about the technology part that the students has access to!

Mouse vs Mice

I just re-read my previous blog and it triggered a memory of mine. I remember one of my students few weeks back asked me a related question. He said, "Ms. Grace, if you have one computer mouse you would say "mouse" but what if you have two? Would you then say mouseS or mice?" I thought this was an interesting question and didn't really have an answer for him. I tried to look it up and didn't really find an exact answer either?

2 mouse
2 mouses
2 mice?

Which one is the correct usage of the word?

Highlights

Remember when you were little and the greatest thing to get in the mail were those Hightlights for Children magazine? So the other day, I stumbled across one and it brought a smile to my face. I flipped through the pages and as I did twenty years ago, I skipped all the long stories and went straight to the hidden pictures page then to the matchings. Somethings never change. Highlights still have my childhood favorite sections! Yay!

Towards the end of the magazine, there was a picture of a little boy on the computer. "Computer Mice Point and Click" is the title of the article. Since my mind has been filled with elearning lately, I stopped and read the article. It talked about what a computer mouse is, how do you know that a mouse is being moved, how the computer actually counts the number of turns the rod made and how the computer actually know where the pointer is. Amazing! It's great that they're integrating technology related stories into the magazine now. I mean, I didn't even know that optical mouse actually has a camera inside which takes picutres to keep track of the direction and the speed of the mouse. Or how the light beam I see in this mouse I'm using right now is not just there for decoration. In fact, it's there for the computer to count as a detector. Silly to say, but I see my mouse in a whole new "beam". Har har. Ok that was corny.

New discoveries everyday, even a a children's magazine. I love it! Even so, they have a section to teach kids how to make a mouse counter. It breaks apart a real mouse and mimics the parts by the use of straws, paper clip and aper! Simple as that. Wow, I'm amazed. I'm reading this magazine in a different perspective- the adult's eye and I see that there's a lot of substance here. No wonder I turned out the way I did growing up on this magazine! JUST KIDDING.

Domain

Friday night and I'm here at home trying to be productive. I feel a little bummed out since everyone is out celebrating the end of yet another tiring week. Well I guess at least I should be proud of myself, trying to actually get some work done. So anyway, I logged on yahoo to check my mail and there was a news article about six new domain names that will be added on the Internet. How great would this topic be for my blog right? Anyway so as I read the article, it came to my attention that with more domain names, it makes it harder to distinguish good sites from bad sites. I remember as an undergrad student, the library had this workshop where they taught us how to distinguish the legit websites from others based on their domain names. At that time I remember thinking how hard it' d be to remember all that. With newly added domain names, wouldn't this cause more headache for educators to select good sources from others? Anyway, that's all I'd have to say about this topic.