Reflect

I really enjoyed learning about the online tools. I think it would be nice for our system to decide on a few standard tools. Like which im program to use, a wiki provider, and maybe something like Zoho. If we knew that our colleagues were using the same services we could make use of some of these for work. But with everyone having different account on different services, we haven't tapped the potential of these.

This was a great series. I liked the pace and the size of each lesson was work appropriate. I would certainly choose to participate in something like this again. The weekly dosing with an e-mail reminder was vital to my steady progress. This felt well organized.

Mapping

I found Google Earth several months ago. My parents moved from Everett to Texas and this was very helpful in being able to demonstrate to my 5 year old daughter where Grandma and Grandpa were. They then later moved to Chile for church missionary work. I can zoom in close enough to see the street where they live. That is great fun to demonstrate how far away they are. When the volcano erupted in Chile last month, we were able to zoom in and determine they were out of any danger.

Gaming

I enjoyed the list of things kids learn while gaming. I do think this is true that there is value to games that translate to life. I am currently in the process of joing a Rotary club to increase my contacts in my community and feel that this is also alot like gaming. It reminds me of those quest games where you have to wander around a town or countryside and you have to click on people to ask them a question and see if they will reveial a clue. Each of these conversations have a goal and there are many steps along the way to fulfilling the quest.

Real Networks has a nice gaming portal as well. It looks and functions very similarly to the Yahoo one. PBSkids.com also has a very nice portal to online games for children.

Living in SL

I first became active in Second Life in 2006. In fact I attended some of the first in-world meetings to organize the library presence. Unfortunately, my computer at home has issues running Second Life and it caused frequent crashes so I have remained inactive now for some time.

The learning curve for SL is steep. But the experience is really like wandering around inside the internet. After my next upgrade, I should be ready to spend more in-world.