Generational differences

I have 3 family members that are in a movie to be released next summer. The movie is based on a cartoon called "Avatar". All 3 of these family members are over 60 years of age and had absolutely NO idea what Avatar was about. When they told my daughters and I, we knew right away! Hopey ran to the computer, put up YouTube, and found an interview with the director of the movie and the creators of the cartoon up in no time for everyone to watch. Then she played one of the cartoons for the "older" ones to watch so they can have some idea of what they are participating in. Funny how using the internet to find information about this movie never occured to my "older"family members, but was immediate for my younger daughters.

Widgets

Many years ago my daughter wanted a gigapet. Since she wasn't allowed to have any "real" animal as a pet, I allowed her to buy a gigapet. She had a blast with it! It was funny for me to see her interacting with this virtual pet because she'd get frustrated with it, be proud of it... it was cute. The newly posted panda widget... to the right and down of this post, reminded me of our gigapet days. It's fun the way it's head moves to follow my mouse. I can even feed it bamboo. It takes the bamboo and rolls over onto its back to eat it. Now this is my type of pet! No mess to clean, no money to spend... :)

Star Trek

Talk about how far technology can go! I am, and always will be a HUGE sci-fi fan.. so, I simply loved the new Star Trek movie. Because of our current class and how it's got us focused on using web 2.0 tools in our classroom, home, etc... I found myself, throughout the entire movie, looking at how they used their "technology". Fake I know, but exciting to me! One down side throughout every Star Trek, is the computer's ability to locate you whereever you are on the ship. Will there be any privacy in the future? Facebook and Twitter now, computer's ratting me out in the future?!

Avatars

I am not a gamer, but I have family members that are. They create an avatar for themselves and then play a game online. For some unknown reason, I have a fascination with avatars. I found an avatar site that actually allows the avatars to be embedded into blogs, Facebook pages, MySpace, etc. . These avatars can even speak using the creator's voice! I did create an avatar, and have tried to embed it into this blog with no success. I can't wait to succeed at this.. who knows, maybe next time you're reading this blog, my voice will greet you to the site.

Again, redundancy?

Over the weekend I went out to breakfast with my husband and two daughters. As we were waiting for our food, Hopey announces that she may begin to tweet. Of course my older daughter and I know what that means. My husband, however, who only uses the internet for his fantasy football and baseball responded with "What the hell is a tweet?". (Don't worry, Hopey gives him points for each curse word... he's down quite a bit!) After Hopey's intentionally confusing explanation of "tweeting", I proceeded to explain to him that it's the same thing as Facebook, basically... of course he doesn't know what Facebook is. Now he thinks he needs to be on either Facebook or Twitter. So far, at the writing of this blog, I have successfully prevented him from signing up for either.. a self-preservation move on my part (he's terrible with the computer!). Some day I'll have to help him sign up for some social networking site... until then, he seems pretty happy just blogging to his fantasy sport teams.. even though he doesn't know what blogging is.

Ohh what to choose!

As I peruse the multitude of web 2.0 tools, I find that so many of them are redundant (I feel like I've said this before!). None are necessarily superior to the next one, just different colors, maybe a new or different option. Take two story making sites: Story top and Kerpoof. Both offer basically the same activity, making a story. The pictures, backgrounds, etc are different, but the main idea is the same. Facebook, myspace, twitter... do they even matter? Too many tools doing basically the same thing, and too much being with others... even if it is in the virtual sense. My daughter would disagree on my last point. She lives and dies by facebook. She wakes up, and within one second knows what friends are up, what they are doing, how they are doing, what they will be doing... and the list goes on and on and on. In contrast, I wake up to quiet, have no idea what even my daughter's are doing at the other end of the hall, and love every minute of it.

web 2.0 tools

The number one fustration for me with these web tools, the free ones, is fear. I have fear that every time I go to download something I get a virus or throw my computer out of whack for some other reason. Marc showed me a site today that doesn't require downloading, Storytop.com. It was great! I registered, played around, and had no difficulties. Now to work out the kinks in our project... hmmm what direction will it take? We've already played around with two different topics, at least four different ways of presenting the info, using the tools... a work in progress!