Thing 41..... Arkan.. how to make order from disorder

Arktan enables you to segment your aggregate digital activity by topics, mix, curate, share and re-publish it and discover your friends’ activity.

There are lots of content aggregators as listed by "More things", but very few offer ways to easily segment your content into interest groups or channels. Arktan is designed to make it possible to aggregate not just your existing social media data and profiles (like bookmarking lists, photos and Twitter feeds), but to easily add that information from your friends into specific channels too.

What I really liked about Arkan is that I am able to add in my friends without forcing them to sign up for an account. If I want to follow some of my family’s Flickr accounts, Twitter updates and maybe some blog posts, I don’t want to have to rely on them to sign up for the service. That doesn’t mean they might not get added value from Arktan but it is nice that that isn’t a requirement.

Arktan is still evolving — there are some user interface inconsistencies and I had a difficult time adding some types of accounts — but I like where this is headed. There are so many services focused on content creation and aggregation, it’s nice to see a service designed for better organization and segmentation.

Thing 40.... Mashups

I always thought of Mashups as taking two unrelated issues and putting them together. For example, Actor/Singer/Writer Miles Fisher has created a pitch-perfect American Psycho themed video for his own take on the fantastic Talking Heads’ tune “This Must Be the Place”: In other words, a Mashup of Talking Heads and the film American Psycho.

Then the embedded vid on More things talked about linking of any two issues. It made me start asking, how is this different then linking a Google map with any form of plottable data?

I'm not sure how sites like "Timetube" are Mashups. It is cool, and I will use it as a resource, but not really a mashup, as far as I can tell.

YouTube: Talking Heads on Dipity.

Again, not really sure how adding "bubbles" to photos Or putting your flickr photos on a map is a mashup. I found the exercises to be a bit off and not really bringing two separate and often disparate groups together. Isn't this really a repeat of Thing 32?

Thing 39....Digital Storytelling.. or not.

The directions are to play with photos gain and put them in an album... which I did for a previous blog.

but then it has you connect this with VoiceThreads. Although I would love to play more with voice threads. I am going to play with Moonfruit.

Moonfruit is a "design your webpage" app. It is free and far more indepth than any of its competitors.

I am just beginning and don't really have a page developed... but over the next few weeks, as I play and learn, please feel free to take a peek and see what I have accomplished.

see my page here :)

Anyway.. I decided to go this way because Erik Lowe (my teaching partner) want to do some differentiation with an assignment and instead of having kids make a video documentary, they could build an interactive webpage that documents their service.

So, I am learning how to use the program.

Thing 38... JING! $$$$

I love Jing. I just never had the time to really utalize Jing. Now, I have all the incentive I need. With a new year of Moodle I need some instruction vids. Here is the first of four.

Thing 37..... Photos and whatnot

I see no need to use Flickr when I can use Picasa. So here is what I set up using Picasa.

I was in Oaxaca for the 6th time. When I arrived it was a few days after 100,000 protesters where physically removed from the streets and then the protesters came back into town with a vengence. It was quite a different experence than my other visits to Oaxaca.

I hope you enjoy.

Thing 36... cartoons and other play things

I was having a really good time playing with this one. It took me forever because I was playing.

But here is a few samples of my pla... many I hope to use in the classroom:

Made this on Strip Generator. Was Playing with ToonDoo but didn't have the time to make all the toons. A great site but too much to learn in this limited amount of time.

I had a great time with these and see a lot of class opportunities to use this, but don't have the time to play :(

Thing 35... Internet v reading material... or is it vs?

I often hear the angry grumblings of people saying the internet is the death of reading. However there has been more published and more books/magazines read than ever.

I found this exersize to be terribly fun and addicting.

I knew about and often give reference to resources like Shelfari.

This kind of post also had me thinking about the virtual books, books on your ireader or for portablility you Kindle or even your iphone. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I like a paper book. That doesn't mean that e-books are bad, I just don't enjoy them.

Then the site had me explore some great websites like Booklamp! Wow! what a great web site! I also really liked, what should I read next. These two sites are exactly what the book world needs the internet to do. They are creative and use the power of mass databasing and easy accsess to their advantage.

Unfortunatly I now have 8 more books on my to read list. But thats not so bad, we have a library very close :)