Weekly Review #8

This week we have covered a decent amount of things, but the main topic has been ways to stay real online. The new vocabulary words this week are represent, persona, avatar, anonymous, and inhibited. Our web 2.0 this week was Glogster.com. Also this week we did a DDL(Digital Drivers License), we haven't done a DDL in several weeks so there's a little change. Another thing we were asked to do is to think up 5 ways to "stay real online" and put them into a glog. Finally I did a article on a new robotic toy called an Attacknid(this link goes to the original article.)

As always I will start with defining my brand new, super awesome vocabulary words.

Represent- How you present yourself to others. A good way to visualize this is lets say Bob is a nice guy, but on World of Warcraft he represents himself as a jerk.

Persona- Image or personality you portray to others. This is kinda like represent, but it leans more towards changing your personality not just your actions.

Avatar( no not the blue monkey people)- An image or graphic that represents you online. A good example would be the little picture you always see when you look at my blog.

                                                      little kitty avatar, found here, 6/1/08


Anonymous- Hidden identity. This could also be me because I don't put any personal information on here.

Inhibited-  Being careful or restrained about your actions or impulses. A good example would be someone not texting in the middle of class because he/she doesn't want their phone taken away.

Then we were asked to go onto Glogster and create a "glog" using a list of ways to stay real online that we had to think up. Mine will be posted at the end of this blog.

Now to address the little issue of what I think about Glogster. I think that it is a good tool to use for poster/flyer making and maybe as far as concept/mind mapping, but if you want to use it to like make slideshows this would not be for you. I personally am more of a transition person, so not being able to hop from slide to slide got aggravating. Also I didn't like the feel of the way you created/edited the glogs. So, for a quick recap, Creative? Definitely. Has more than just a few ways you can use it? Not so much.

Next, the DDL topic this week. The topic for this week was Digital communications and safety. The lessons included ways we communicated digitally( cellphones, Instant Messaging,etc.), and it included ways to spot fake emails that want you to disclose personal information.

Lastly my blog I did on Attacknids. These new robotic toys look like 3-4ft tall spiders with armor. From what i read they are pretty cool. Apparently they were built to fight each other. They even can shoot projectiles( right now they are just foam discs but later they are supposed to be darts as well.)

That's all for this week. Be sure to come back next Friday for another installment of Payseur Weekly Blog.