getting started

I'm going to start with Google since I use it so frequently. The first step is to go tohttp://www.google.com/ig and login. If you don't already have a gmail (Google mail) account or other account with Google you will be prompted to create an account. This is as simple as providing Google with an e-mail address, username and password. Once you have a username and password you can begin selecting content. Be sure to click on "choose from the entire collection," to see your many, many options." In less than 10 minutes time you can come up with a somewhat useful page so it is worth checking out if you are interested.

Personalized start pages

My new topic for discussion is personalized start pages. A personalized start page is a web page you may personalize so that many of the sites and tools that you use daily are available at your fingertips. So, for example, you launch Explorer and your Yahoo start page appears. It is dark and light pink, your favorite colors, has an icon displaying your local weather and an RSS feed for your favorite news broadcast. It might show the time in analog and digital, have a link to your Flickr photos, and allow you to create “to do lists.” Actually, I’m not sure if the Yahoo start page will allow you to do all of this. In my upcoming blogs I’m going to explore start pages. I will be trying out and reporting on Yahoo and Google, plus two smaller start pages, Pageflakes and Netvibe. About three years ago I had a Yahoo start page but quickly forgot the password and didn’t find the service valuable enough to bother with. I wonder if my experience this time around will be better. A quick look tells me that start pages have more to offer these days.

Some final words on virtual museums

It seems that virtual museums are, for the most part, not taking advantage of cutting edge technology to become more than an online pamphlet. At the same time though they are still a solid resource for educators. Some schools are reluctant to accept technology such as blogs. Still others lack the funds for tech support, making it difficult for teachers to have plug-ins downloaded or to get support for interesting features. Virtual museums are a source of information that teacher can rely on for accuracy and usually for quality. Education World has a small but high quality list of Virtual Museums for teachers to explore with kids at http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/sites/sites083.shtml

Podzinger

I was interested in checking out Podzinger. It is a site that searches the text of podcasts and was mentioned to us by one of our classmates as a part of this week's discussions. I tried searching on the terms "letterpress" and then on "typography." "Typography," brought up more hits than "letterpress," though still not close to the number of hits I thought I should have gotten. I will probably keep playing around with it. If I were searching on a topic of really vital interest I'd be glad if I got even one hit. Did anybody else try this search engine out? Anybody else out there download podcasts?

virtual reality

In the article "Virtual Museums," by Wally W. Conhaim, found in the December 2005 issue of Information Today, Conhaim states that, "The Web has been used for exhibits that cannot be shown in other environments and, in conjunction with virtual reality, to reconstruct ancient artifacts too delicate for archaeologists to unearth."
Take a look at

www.virtuallyhistorical.com/downloads/952%5fWroxeter%20Roman%20City%202.htm

for a vision of a Roman city buried beneath the English town of Wroxeter.

RFID

I have to admit I had a very hard time getting into our discussion about RFID. The privacy issues related to attaching it to people or things that people carry are so creepy. I began reading articles online about retailers like Wal Mart and Marks and Spencer in Britain using or testing RFID on products. It was hard for me to move on and think about the positives of this technology.

virtual museums created by k-12 schools

Another take on virtual museums is the virtual museum created as a school project. I like the idea of collaborations among several grades at a school. Here is a site that indexes school virtual museums.
http://www.fno.org/museum/oldies&goodies.html
Though the creators of the site have included space for museums from around the world most of the sites here are from the U.S. The ones that I like best are museums that focus on a concept like the Peace Museum or on some aspect of local culture. Some of these museums, such as the Peace Museum, invite submissions from contributors. That seems to add to the quality of the site plus the educational value.
The Peace Museum
created by Indian Hill Primary School
Cincinnati OH
http://www.ih.k12.oh.us/mainpage.htm

Del,icio.us

For a few months now, I've been thinking over putting my bookmarks in Del.icio.us but I keep holding back. I think it is because I would like to be able to see categories in my bookmarks quickly. If I can't have folders then it would be nice to be able to color code. Is there some way to do this that I've missed?