Thing #15 of “23 Things”

What in the world is a Wiki?

I really liked Wikis. It is amazing how a simple idea can became something huge, like Wikipedia. I can see a lot of potential for Wikis now and in the future… too bad I didn’t see this years ago… I would be rich by now. But the hard thing is to see the reach of an idea before everyone else, not after…
Anyway, teachers can really use these "wikis" in their classroom (an obvious statement), especially history teachers, English teachers, social sciences teachers etc. I don’t think math teachers can use wikis now so much. The reason is because it seems there are no wikis where you can write formulas; equations etc (correct me if I am wrong). In other words, there are not public wikis with symbolic editing.
I would love to see a wiki created by one of the leading companies producing mathematical tools today, such as MathWorks which produces MATLAB and Simulink, or PTC, previously own by MathSoft, the creator of MathCad or Wolfram Research with Mathematica, or MapleSoft with Maple, or even Texas Instruments with their new TI nspire calculators (CAS and regular) with symbolic capabilities.
My wife and I own Maple and MathCad 14 and I have worked in the past with all of these software packages capable of doing much more than just calculations. They are programming/simulation suites designed for engineering and science at the highest levels.
It surprises me that these companies don’t have a Wiki friendly software package yet because it seems to me it is a great way to acquire users at early ages which is very important because these programs are not simple to use.
MathCad 14 (and also Maple) have a symbolic editor page which looks just like this page but wider, technically it can continue as far a you would go to the right (obviously there is a limit to this). On this “superpage” you can write whatever you want and anywhere you want… text, formulas, pictures, freehand writing (with an electronic pen or the mouse), graphs etc. This page automatically recognizes any math language an automatically calculates anything that could be calculated and if you need anything you just right click and ask for it to get the answer. Of course, you must know mathematics but it makes your life a lot easier.
Here is how MathCad looks in my computer.

Click on the image to see a higher resolution image

Imagine if you had a Wiki looking like this where you could leave not only text comments but also math comments. Imagine if there was a place on the internet where you could create a Wiki for your students where you could speak the language of math.
I visited the suggested examples wikis but none was about math. The WikiEducator link by the way takes you to http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/ just like “10 reasons why your next pathfinder should be a wiki “.
I also “explored” the APSU sandbox and it didn’t seem very user friendly. I created a new page named Ridelto and pasted and played with some text and then uploaded a picture file which did not go directly to my post as you would expect. Of course I didn’t spend much time on it but still…
Finally, I created my own Wiki located at: http://www.ridelto.wikispaces.comi/
I thought it would be a good idea to use a Wiki as a way for my readers (Do I have any?) to help me correct my grammatical and orthographical mistakes… Perhaps my professor will do that hehe. I even added a link to every one of my posts (which are repeated verbatim in my Wiki) to facilitate this “human spell checker”. Anyway, here is the introduction to my Wiki:
This Wiki contains all my answers (blogs) to an exercise for an Austin Peay State University class (EDUC 5540-81). The exercise is about the new trends and technologies used on the internet (Web 2.0); and it is divided into 23 parts or assignments named “Things”. The name of the exercise is “23 Things” and each “Thing” or assignment posted by Dr. Anne Wall can be found at:
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #18 #19 #20 #21 #22 #23

This Wiki itself is one of the assignments: Thing # 15 - What in the World is a Wiki?
The idea is to collaborate on this Wiki to correct grammatical and orthographical mistakes that I may have made since English is not my first language. I will appreciate any help from anyone.


Thank you. Ridelto


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Thing #14 of “23 Things”

Go with the Flow

According to Wikipedia:
“A flowchart is a common type of diagram, that represents an algorithm or process, showing the steps as boxes of various kinds, and their order by connecting these with arrows. Flowcharts are used in analyzing, designing, documenting or managing a process or program in various fields.”
“A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.”
In other words a flowchart is a graphical outline of a succession of steps in a logical process such as a decision making procedure, a sequence of steps in solving a mathematical problem, the order in which some steps must be taken etc.
A mind map on the other hand is a simple type of flowchart used to visualize ideas or concepts to better organize thought as when brainstorming. Mind maps are visual lists or outlines of ideas.
I first used flowcharts in college to “plan” complex computer programs to schematically visualize the steps required to solve a mathematical problem without missing any. I have used them since mostly for the same task but also for other reasons. In the past I used Visio for complicated flowcharts or just drew them by hand.
Electronic schematics can be considered as very sophisticated type of flowchart where instead of a few boxes with simple meanings such as “if-then-else” or “Yes-No” boxes, you have pictorial representations of integrated circuits (IC) with very specific and complicated meanings that can be connected in a myriad of ways, all of which have distinct but predetermined outcomes.

I explored Gliffy.com and Bubbl.us

Click on the image to see a higher resolution image

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Thing #13 of “23 Things”

Web-based Applications

I am a big fan of MS Office, but I can see that Microsoft will have to freshen their approach and think of something similar to this ZOHO Writer, free, on the web, colorful, elegant, user friendly and fun, otherwise they will lose their grip and become part of the past.
As I write this blog I am expecting in-line spell check with word suggestions and sinonims and antonyms as in MS Word but so far I don't see anything happening. I read in the welcome document that ZOHO Writer has spell checker for more than 70 languages and that it checks for all those languages automatically. I misspelled some words on purpose but so far I don't see any corrections. I see… you must click on the button labeled "Spell Check"; it doesn't do it automatically. This is understandable since this application is on line and "in-line check" needs speed and resources not available to a web application. I spelled "sinonims" wrong and the suggestions were simonizes, simonize, singsongs and singletons. MS Word suggested synonyms, simonies and synonyms'. Clearly MS Word did a better job. The word "blog" was underlined as a misspelled word with 13 suggestions while MS Word acknowledged it as a correctly spelled word.
One thing I've been waiting for years is to have tabbed Documents in Word, but for some strange reason Microsoft has not decided to include this feature in their editor even though several other word processors such as this one and even MS Excel and MS Works have it. These last two had tabbed documents for years, way ahead of everyone else... but MS Word doesn't!

The three previous paragraphs were written using ZOHO Writer. They were made public and can be seen here: http://writer.zoho.com/public/ridelto/Thing-13

Obviously ZOHO Writer is a good solution for those who can’t afford or just don’t want to spend money buying MS Office and with time is going to be a very strong contender of MS Word. Microsoft already has a strong competition in OS. For example, Linux, an open-source OS with many variants, some of them actually with a price tag, or Open Office which is a free open-source software suite similar to MS Office. By the way, if you are a student you can buy MS Office (and other software) for a fraction of its price (see http://www.studica.com/, http://www.campustech.com/, http://www.academicsuperstore.com/ or, in some cases, at http://www.amazon.com/
Online applications are not a new thing. Ten years ago it was clear that one day will came when all applications will be online with perhaps some exceptions for security and high speed reasons. We used to imagine an internet where the computers at home were just terminals connected to a supercomputer, the internet, running all kinds of web programs free to everyone or available for a small monthly fee. Something like Netflix, which lets you watch any movies (in their repertory), but better.
Of course, ten years ago that was impossible because the internet was too slow (dial up). We used to talk about a wireless internet with access directly from our brains… well; we still talk about this one, but as a future technology. However, the wireless internet is already here. Amazon Kindle is a good example.

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Thing #12 of “23 Things”

Google is Not Just for Searching Anymore


Before this class I used Google almost daily to search the internet for pictures, videos and information in general; for maps and to play with Google Earth looking at places of interest from the sky or from a bird’s view. It turns out Google is much more than that. Now I am using it to compare prices of products that I am interested in buying by using Google Shopping. It almost always finds better prices for me; sometimes considerably better. I am beginning to use my Gmail account (Ridelto@gmail.com) and now I know how to search for images that I can use without worrying about copyright problems.
I spent a great amount of time playing with the “more” and “even more>>” menu items of the Google Classic Home Page. Surprisingly, I found “even more” stuff to incorporate to my list of useful tools.
I discovered that the iGoogle personal customizable page is like the “private web site” that I was looking for in Thing #10. I created my own iGoogle personalized page and began to use it right away because when I click on Google on my toolbar it now takes me to this personal page and from there I can click on Gmail on top of the page to go to my Gmail email account or to go anywhere since this page is very easy customizable and I can add links to the internet or to my own computer folders and files. Here is a screen capture of my monitor showing my iGoogle page.

Click on the picture to see the actual screen capture from my computer
With so many new things to keep up with, organization is the key word and Google realizes this.

I have Daily Literary Quotes on my iGoogle page, Art of the Day, Puzzles, News, Jokes of the Day among other things. A page like this one could be used as the perfect home page for school computers with only those gadgets of interests to the students and teachers showing on the page.
But this is not all. I looked at every one of the “even more” tools. In previous posts I either talked (or they are self explanatory) about Blog Search, Books (they are not free), Custom Search, Earth, Images, Maps, News, Product Search, Videos, Web Search, Blogger, Gmail, Reader, SketchUp, etc.
So I will talk about those tools that got my attention. I installed and used Google Chrome in my desktop PC. It is nice, but as all new software, it is not yet supported by everyone and therefore I rather continue to use MS Internet Explorer 8 with its wonderful tab system. Google Alerts is not my thing; I already have plenty reaching my several email accounts (I do check all of them daily)
I didn’t look too much into “Checkout” but I use “Shopping”. Google “Desktop” is very handy when you cannot find a file that you know you have somewhere in your computer but you don’t remember where. It is a local (to your computer) powerful and fast search engine.
Google Finance must be useful for those who have business or investments… not me! I cannot see the use of Google Health, Toolbar and others.

I’ve been programming computers for years and therefore I subscribe to some developers’ forums which usually are good enough, but I can see that Google “Code” can be a powerful tool for software developers in search for code or solutions to their coding problems.
I didn’t spend much time exploring Google Labs… not enough time! There are some new and useful tools to explore and use in the future. Google “Calendar” is wonderful (and free), but I use my cell phone (basically a handheld PC) and outlook so I don’t need another calendar. Same thing with Google “Documents”; I use MS SkyDrive and I don’t need another place on the internet to “hold” documents, but this tool is great for those who need a place on the internet to have their documents and access them from anywhere. Of course I also recommend SkyDrive. One important difference is that SkyDrive gives you 25 GB with every hotmail account and clearly shows how much you have used. I didn’t see any usage indication in Google Documents.
Google “Groups” is another surprising tool that I see myself using in the near future. You can search, find and join groups according to your interests, location, language… according to anything you can think of.
Picasa is just another powerful picture sharing/holding/editing place similar to the ones previously discussed in “23 Things”
Google Talk is great for texting from your computer. My cell phone has a keyboard but my fingers are too big therefore I hate texting. Google Talk promises to change that for me.
Google Translate must be used with caution. If you think that you can understand another language just buy using these automatic translators think again. Use it only to get an idea. I have seen many and very important mistakes made by these translators. Of course, they will get better, but they are not there yet.
The last useful tool that I am already using is GOOG-411. It is the Google equivalent of dialing 411, the phone directory feature of the telephone companies, only free, better and with a more motivated customer service.
There are some many options in Google More that I am sure I will be coming back again and again in the near future and Google will find the way to add more exiting and attractive “things” to keep everyone coming back.

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Thing #11 of “23 Things”

Finding Good Feeds

I began really early in the morning to work on this Blog (around 6 AM). Three hours later I was still looking for good blogs, reading and watching videos which came back on my searches. This is the problem with searching the internet – you will find all kinds of things that will interest you and you will “spend” time on it without even noticing it. Once again I forced myself to stop and just do my assignment.
Syndic8.com has an unattractive interface but will give your results from different countries (10 random countries) clearly marked plus the newest sites, newest users, most popular etc. It even gives you some statistics.
Thechnorati.com has a more attractive interface with lots of options. Because of this I think it is less intuitive that Google. This one is more like a search engine similar to Google. You can search videos, photos, blogs, news etc.
I could not connect to Feedster.com therefore I can’t say anything about this one. Topix.com looks like an electronic newspapers with ugly and very distractive ads which made this site not appealing to me. When I try doing a search a popup window appeared (even though I block popup on my browser) advertising screen savers. A second search returned zero results but a lot of new adds.
Google Blogsearch is the simplest of the three but more powerful as you would expect from Google. To compare Google with the rest I did a simple experiment. I searched for apsu23things with all of them. Only Google found a lot of stuff – many APSU students’ blogs. It pretty much found everyone’s things including Dr. Wall’s
Then I search my name thinking that perhaps Google will not find me. Surprise, Google found my blog and my other websites. Google is the winner! But we already knew this right?
I added to my Blogs Google Reader:
· Edublog Awards since there are many more Blogs that I would like to read.
· Always Learning by Kim Cofino in Thailand.
· Clif’s Notes on Educational Technology somewhere in the US I think by unknown (Clif!)
· Learning 2.0 by Jason (He is from Texas but also Blogging “Things” like we (APSU) are.
What I like about reading blogs is that Blogs are more personal and can be local. It is like having many friends and being able to talk to them even though sometimes they don’t talk back or even listen. It is like listening to friends without interrupting them and participating in the conversation only after they are done and always when you are ready to say something.

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Thing #10 of “23 Things”

Set Up an RSS Reader and Add Feeds

I chose to set up an RSS with Google Reader because it was easier since I already had a Gmail account, but also because I know that Google is not likely to go away anytime soon. Also because Google has proven to be good, i.e., user friendly, innovative, inclusive etc.
Here are the 5 feeds that I chose to subscribe to:

1. KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News
2. Learning 2.0 - 23 Things for Teachers
3. Sylvia's 23 Things
4. Texas Tornado
5. KStanley_EDUC 5540

RSS are definitely a good solution if you are fallowing several “Blogs”. It works as an email account which only delivers selected emails with updated information about your topics of interest. Most prestigious websites do allow you to choose them to send regular emails with their updated information. Many let you decide how often you want the updates and those which add a lot of information daily, will let you choose what information you want them to update you on.
RSS let you see changes on any website or blog, leaving the owner unaware of this. I like Stephanie Gottschalk’s (Texas Tornado or Miss Texas) definition: “It's like creating your own newspaper of your interest” “…your very own customized newspaper.”
I think the best part of this activity (and the 23 Things in general) is all the questions it raised. As I was thinking about this tool, I remembered two books that I read a couple of years ago by Ray Kurzwail: “The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” and The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. Ray Kurzwail is a famous American scientist, an accomplished inventor and more importantly a visionary. His main idea (he has many!), explained in “The Singularity is Near” many years ago, in a nutshell, is that technology is approaching an explosive moment, a singularity, at which point new discoveries and new technologies are going to happen on weekly, daily and even hourly basics. We are seeing this happening already! So much is happening on the web that we just can’t keep up with everything. According to him it is going to get worse. RSS is only one of many desperate solutions humans are using to keep up with this explosion in information.
I think (I suppose I could cite Kurzwail here!) that the solution is going to be Artificial Intelligence. Funny, yes, these are my own thoughts thanks to him and many, many conversations I had with many, many smart and not so smart people over the years since I was in college, in the eighties, when I used to argue with philosophy students, physics students and math students about the future, about today and tomorrow, about computers and AI, the universe, astronomy (not astrology please) about consciousness, extraterrestrial life, multiverses and even the supernatural… yes, all these questions in the eighties. In other words, at one moment we will not be able to keep up with all the new technologies, discoveries, ideas etc and we will have to rely on AI solutions – Software that searches, chooses, summarizes and even make decisions and creates for us. This is where we are heading folks (read Kurzwail and many others in his references!). If you pay attention you will see that it is happening already.
I can barely keep up with all my passwords, my email accounts, my websites, my pictures… even my friends and family members! Not to mention all the things that I must and want to learn, the games that I like to play, or the books that I want to read. To all these I just added these 2300 things that I am working on for this class which, I must say, has given me all kind of new ideas. Hey, I am even thinking about writing a book on line. Imagine that… no pressure, no deadlines, no API references, your own format… no profit? Most likely, but definitely, a lot of fun and a medium to reach anyone, especially my family. It is like publishing for free (It seems to me that formal papers will became less important in the future).
To answer the question “How can teachers use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?”- I think teachers can use it the same way everyone else is, to organize themselves and their students. Perhaps teachers could teach students how to organize themselves in cyberspace.
One final thought: I would like to see a place on the internet where I could create personal hidden websites, private websites, places that only I can access. I would use this website to collect in one place all my website links, all my email accounts links, all my passwords (not sure about this one), names of friends, addresses, phone numbers etc. If anyone reads this blog and knows of anything similar please let me know (Update: iGoogle is a partial solution because... Wikis could be a better solution).

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Thing #9 of “23 Things”

Online Image Generators

Ok, I must stop now. This is really addictive. There are literary hundreds of tools on the internet that can be used to customize pictures, texts, videos and, I am sure, music and other stuff. This is addictive because is a game. Unfortunately, as any game, it is mostly a waste of time. But it was fun! Hopefully I will stay away from it as I do with my favorite game – The Sims!

I went to so many “places” that I don’t remember most of them now! Let me see… I decided to make the Header on this blog with http://www.spiffytext.com/.

I selected a cool background and some cool font but when I uploaded it onto my Header I noticed two things. First, the banner would not stretch all the way across the page (it was not wide enough). Second, the picture had their internet address embedded into it on two opposite corners. I decided to fix this. To make sure I am not ignoring any copyright rule I want to make this clear: I made the banner shown on this page with spiffytext.com. Please visit this website to make your own banner!

Then, thinking that perhaps I will have to get rid of this banner anyway, I decided to make my own. You can scroll down to the End of this page to see it.
I continued to play for a few hours making useless creations. Someone said that art is supposed to be useless so I don’t feel too bad about it. Looking at different text generators I found one that I thought would be interesting: Confucius Says Generator. I thought this tool shows Confucius quotes randomly, but it is just a caricature of Confucius with a text on top which can be customized:

I thought the coolest think was to make a caricature from your actual picture. Don’t go to www.Zwinky.com. This website says that you can create a cartoon of yourself for free but when you click on “Let’s go”, it just closes the tab on your browser and who knows what else it does.
I was determined to make a cartoon of my picture so I continued to try different sites. I found a promising one: http://www.cartoonme.com/. I entered a fake email address (baba@hotmail.com) and uploaded a picture of Eintein and this is what I got:

I couldn’t find anything for free so I gave up.

By far, the best picture effect that I found was how to make a 360 degrees panoramic picture with a normal camera. You must take several overlapping pictures turning around less than 90 degrees every time until you turn all the way around.

Then you load all the pictures with a freeware (http://www.photo-freeware.net/autostitch.php) and wait a couple of minutes. The composite picture is saved in the same folder where the rest of the pictures were with the name pano.jpg

After you make the panorama picture, open it and zoom in to see the height of the pano-picture as wide as the height of your computer monitor and then begin sliding the button slider of your picture viewer to have the same feeling as if you ware turning slowly around and looking around yourself 360 degrees. Here is My Barrio: (Click the picture for better resolution)

For step by step instructions on how to make this panorama picture go to this internet site:
http://eventhorizons.wordpress.com/2007/12/20/make-your-own-360-degree-panoramic-picture

I’ve been thinking about how to use these tools in my classroom. I teach mathematics in a high school so I don’t see much use for Them in my classroom. I can see how teachers in elementary and middle school, and even teachers of other subjects, can use these tools. Art teachers could use all of them. Obviously, as a way to enhance the classroom website, these “image effect generators” and “Text generators” are very handy. But I cannot think of anything else for mathematics. Perhaps math teachers could use them when they are making a new PowerPoint presentation to animate some math explanations or to create some drawings related to the lesson at hand. I personally do this with MS Paint. I never do anything complicated enough to require a better image editor such as Adobe Photoshop.

A free program which claims to be “just like Photoshop but free” is GIMP. I haven’t used it but on a first look it doesn’t seem to be able to do “panoramic stitching”

In conclusion, free image, text, video and sound editors are a lot of fun and very handy to create attractive documents such as web pages, PowerPoint presentations, papers, custom books etc.

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Thing #8 of “23 Things”

Flickr Mashups

I was somewhat disappointed to find out that most of these Flickrbits can be used only with Flickr. In Thing #7 I chose not to open an account with Flickr since I was given a second option and because I already have my website with family pictures. Therefore, it took me a long time checking all theses kr-tools and find something interesting, useful and of general use. Also, I could not get over the lack of intuitiveness in these names. Names like Gickr, Chasr, FlickrSLiDR don’t say anything, they just don’t stick and nowadays is unnecessary to give names like those. It reminds me the days of DOS with black and white screens (or black and green) and names with maximum of 8 alphanumeric characters and one three-character extension. Almost all of these gadgets do things that you can do at home with pictures from your computer by using some freeware from the internet. In my opinion the flickrbits keep the users entertained with Flickr pictures and forget about the rest of the internet. Also, you will never use any of the picture editing flickrbits if you have Photoshop.I decided to look at Mashups since they are more independent than the kr tools. Of course, many Mashups in Flickr let you use only pictures from Flickr. The idea of a Mashup is to combine information and functionality from two or more sites or sources to create something new. For this reason Mashups by nature are site-independent. A useful and commonly used effect is “slideshow” of pictures. You can use this effect in your home computer as a screensaver or you can “embed” a slideshow html code into your blog site to show pictures to your visitors, one at a time, every few seconds. Most of the popular picture posting web sites let you choose this effect when you are creating your album, but blog sites require you to add it by yourself (update: There is a Gadget here at Blogger.com which allows you to add this effect to your blog without effort - Slideshow). I found a kr which does exactly this: http://www.gickr.com/First I selected family pictures, pictures of flowers etc and transformed them with Photoshop by using mainly one effect, the smudge tool! Truly, I had done this before to make tiny wall pictures for “The Sims”, a game that I used to play when I had time. If you look at these pictures long enough you will see a picture of my family (not smudged up!).

Make your own animation

The next thing I did is something that may be useful for anyone, especially for lifelong learners! You can use this at school with your kids or at home for yourself. I am sure there are similar slideshows out there that do the same thing: Show words with their definitions as a screen saver one at a time.

Make your own animation

To do this I selected the words that I wanted to learn. I used a collection of words from a pack of flashcards that I found in my daughter’s room. You could subscribe to http://www.dictionary.com/ and choose to get the word of the day or get the word of the day for the last 10 – 15 days etc. Then I used an old electronic dictionary that I still use today made by Microsoft (QuickShelf 2000) to find the definitions of the words. After I find the definition I press the key PrtScn present on all regular PC keyboards. PrtScn stands for Print Screen. Pressing this key on a PC is the same as copying the screen with the copy/paste commands of any program. I never remember the key combination for a Mac (it is not as intuitive as PrtScn)… but Dr. Wall told us the other day! I use both Macs and PCs, but I prefer my Vista Desktop Computer. I prefer this one for many reasons, some of the main ones are:
. My Vista desktop PC never crashes. I had this computer for 2 or 3 years and I don’t remember it crashing even once.
. I made it by myself (secret: it is very easy to make a PC) therefore I chose my own monitor (I bought a 32 inches LCD TV at Best Buy), amount of RAM memory, hard drive, motherboard, microprocesor etc.
. I have bought over a hundred programs and I keep buying the newer versions. These programs are always released for PC first and a few months later, if ever, for Macs. Many of my programs have compatibility problems when installed in a Mac.
. There is by far more software out there (free and not free) for PCs than for Macs.
. I like Tablets (Tablet PCs) but Macintosh doesn't make Tablet Macs (Update: They finally do!). I bought my first Tablet Laptop in 2004. Now I own a Slate (a Tablet PC with detachable keyboard)

After I copied the whole screen with PrtScn I opened Paint, a program that always comes with any PC because it is part of the Windows OS, and pasted it there with the regular key combination “Ctrl + V” or click on the “Edit” pull down menu item and then click on “Paste”. Then I selected the area of the screen that I wanted to crop with the “select” tool. Next I did “right click” on the selection and clicked on crop from the popup menu that appears when I “right clicked” on my selection. Finally I clicked "Save As..." from the File pull down menu item and I saved it as a .jpg file choosing JPEG as the “save as type” (click on the right arrow to see all the file types available). After I have saved 10-15 words that I wanted to remember, I created a screensaver slide show. There is no need to use a third party application to make a slide show of selected pictures in PCs (I don’t know in MACs). In vista: Right-Click on the desktop, select “Personalize”, then “Screen Saver” and “Photos” and change the “settings” as pleased. In Windows XP: “Right-Click” on the desktop + “Properties” + “Screen Saver” + “My Pictures Slideshow” + customize settings as pleased. In Windows 98 and older versions is similar to Windows XP. This will give you a “Vocabulary Flashcards Slideshow Screensaver” in your PC. To get it here I just used http://www.gickr.com/.
I liked some other tools, such as retrievr, mappr or colrpickr. Here is one more reason why I didn’t like Flickr – While playing with colrpickr, one picture got my attention. When I tried to see the picture I got this message:

I don’t like control either! Here is a partial snapshot of my screen at this moment (via PrtScn + Paste in Paint + crop + save as).

Can you guess what picture they wouldn’t let me see? (Note: The lady is not naked) I would continue to do things here but it is already Sunday and I have classes to prepare, HW to grade, grades to enter etc! Until the next thing! Ah! My feelings about personal pictures - I think they are clear from this blog! I normally keep family pictures to the family. I don’t post anything that I wouldn’t do or say in public, but for example, my daughters don't like some of the pictures I have posted of them; therefore I would avoid upsetting them by not showing those pictures to everyone who knows them, other than family.

Note: Please email me if you see grammatical and/or orthographical mistakes in these blogs (I know there must be many!). My email address is Ridelto@hotmail.com

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Thing #7 of “23 Things”

Explore Flickr

I thought about opening an account in Flickr and upload some pictures, but I already have a website with family pictures in Windows Live SkyDrive, so I decided to just explore Flickr, search for an interesting picture and comment on it here.
In the Army I was an Apache helicopter armament/electrician, therefore I searched for “Apache helicopter” (AH-64A). This search took me to a ton of good pictures, but one caught my attention:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wparsons/3911403106/ by Warren Parsons

Warren Parsons labels this helicopter “Apache AH-64A”, but this helicopter is a “Longbow AH-64D”. I worked with both of these helicopters.
This picture is special because it is not easy to take a picture right under the helicopter when it is landing right on top of you or when it is hovering only a few dozen of feet above you. Only the soldiers who work with these helicopters are allowed to stand on the pad when it is landing; and not all the soldiers; only the “armament guys” which are ready to run towards the helicopter and begin loading/unloading the missiles, rockets and the 30 mm gun. Not even the pilots are allowed to do that. The enemy never gets to see the Apache this close… normally they die without ever knowing what hit them. The “fuel guys” must wait until the Apache completely lands and is properly grounded. The armament guys are there, waiting by the ammunition boxes and are always too busy and tired to be taking pictures of this nature.
Another reason why this picture is so difficult to take is because during the landing, a “shower” of debris flies towards you. On top of this, the “wind” created by the blades of the helicopter which is much stronger during landing can throw you off your feet. Usually the armament pad chief, with one or two soldiers, waits for the landing squatting down and facing away from the helicopter.
I also searched for Apache pictures using Google to compare the results. I went over 30 pages of pictures and I couldn’t find one similar to this one.
I had the rare opportunity to take pictures in 1997 during a training exercise. I was a Specialist then and my platoon sergeant let my take pictures for an hour. I had just bought a new digital camera and since in 1997 digital cameras were a “novelty”, everyone was interested in seeing the results. In one of the pictures you can see the rocks flaying at me. I jumped right before they reached me and the camera!

Flickr is a good service for picture sharing and it is evolving to include videos. I really liked the “Flickr Services”, especially “Retrievr” and “Mappr”. Retrievr “lets you search and explore in a selection of Flickr images by drawing a rough sketch and then seeing which of our interesting photos come up as a match.” Mappr “makes it possible to map photos with geographic location tags.” You can also do this with Flickr Maps.

Perhaps the most useful feature in Flickr is the ability to form, joint or search groups. Groups “are a way for people to come together around a common interest, be it a love of small dogs, a passion for food, a recent wedding, or an interest in exploring photographic techniques.”
What I don’t like about Flickr is that you are restricted to find pictures within the Flickr communities as opposed to the freedom that you have when you search pictures using Google. You are guarantee to find a lot more pictures with Google than with Flickr. The downside is that with Google you can find pictures that you don’t really care to see. This is obviously a bad thing, if you want your students to use it. For example, while searching for “Apache Helicopters” I came across some really gruesome pictures (and videos) of Taliban insurgents beheading Russian soldiers during the Afghan-Russian war of the eighties.
Another important thing to consider is the amount of maximum space to upload pictures. Flickr give you only 100 MB per month for pictures while Microsoft Windows Live gives you 25 GB with each hotmail account (I have 4 hotmail accounts). To get an idea, 25 GB is 25 000 000 000 bytes and 100 MB is 100 000 000 bytes, that is, Windows Live gives you 250 times more space. At 100 MB per month it will take you 250 months (20 years!) to reach the space given by Windows Live with one account… a considerable difference right! Of course, for $25 a year you get unlimited space in Flickr.

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Thing #6 of “23 Things”

Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

I picked YouTube! After considering a good number of these Award nominees websites I realized that I wasn’t getting anywhere in my decision. Most of these websites are good at what they do. I liked how easy it is to create a page ready to go with iGoogle. I would like to study Portuguese and Italian, therefore I decided to take a look at Mango Languages. It is a good idea but it costs 350 per course or 12 months subscription. I even thought about using a different web site not on the list, for example http://www.howstuffworks.com/ which is an excellent source of knowledge and a great resource for educators, or http://www.secretoscuba.cultureforum.net/, a site where Cubans from all over the world and people with an interest in Cuba post pictures, blogs, videos and news about Cuba and stories and facts from Cuban history. A forum where Cubans do what they are denied in Cuba: Free speech. But as I said, these weren’t on the list.
Then I noticed that YouTube is on this list. I picked YouTube because I believe is a great source of knowledge and free information for educators and long life learners. If I want to cook a Cuban dish I don’t need to call my sister in Miami, I just search in YouTube and I am certain that I will not only find the recipe, but probably I get to see some Cuban vet actually cooking it. I often search for songs of my childhood and youth and even shows that were never aired again on TV but someone, moved but old memories, decided to upload on YouTube. The other day I got a root canal on one of my molars. My dentist explained the procedure when asked in less than 5 minutes; therefore I had a vague idea of what he did in my mouth. When I searched in YouTube I got to see exactly what the dentist did. I even saw an animation which further clarified the procedure.
I found some mysterious mounds in my front yard. I obviously suspected they were made by some sort of animal, perhaps a tarantula, or a snake… but there was no visible entrance. When I searched YouTube for “mysterious mounds in yard” I not only learned that they were made by moles, but I saw various videos made by expert exterminators on how to get rid of them. I did.
You can use YouTube to learn from experts or people that just have their own ideas about the theme that you are researching. You can watch reviews and demonstrations on almost any product out there. If reading a product review in Amazon is a good thing, to be able to see a video demonstration of the quality of the product is impossible to beat.
This is why I decided to select YouTube… although everyone knows YouTube! Then again, I think that we all know about most of the other good sites on that list! That is one of the reasons why they are good sites in the first place right?

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