Sue's+place

I tried to create a page on my laptop this afternoon, but it apparently didn't save or upload...so here we go again. My husband and I just got back today from a 6 week long vacation across the country. We went to 18 states and rode 11 trains (he is a train fan). It was a fun trip, but good to be home.

Here is a link to see a few pictures from our trip (we only brought 5 cameras between the two of us!- our souveniers). You can also check out my profile.

Major Project: (Oct. 5, 2007) I am planning to create a Travel-log in the Resources page on the class wiki for Web 2.0 uses for Christians. What are the possible uses? Are they Biblically based? Are there things to avoid? I will be travelling to different Web 2.0 applications and trying out their Christian links. I will write comments on usage and provide snag-it snapshots from each location and links when possible.I began two days ago by checking out social communities. See the Web 2.0 Travel-log link on the Resources page. I will be completing this on my own- I have no collaborators with this project. For the project presentation I will create a PowerPoint version of the travel-log to share within our classroom site.

Personal Journal- (10/14/07) I began several weeks ago to travel through various Web 2.0 sites (see resources page). I started with social communities, since that was what I was most familiar with. MySpace seems to be the easiest to navigate and offers the most resources- from both Christian and worldly viewpoints. It is geared more toward the younger generation. Facebook has a narrower audience, as it is broken down by campuses. I did find several other resources on MySpace that I plan to check out. Does anyone else have experiece- good or bad with social communites: MySpace, Facebook or Live Journal that you would like to share?

Personal Journal (10/17/07) I found a Christian search engine advertized on MySpace that is called ChristianGo.com- it is apparently sponsored by Google. I plan to do several searches with this in regards to Web 2.0 uses for Christians. I will report my findings on the Web 2.0 travel-log site.

Personal Journal (11/3/07) You will find some new information about GodTube on my Travel-log this week. The Grants Pass Daily Courier had an article in Friday's paper about it- quite interesting. It is amazing how fast a Web site can grow. I believe he began GodTube in August and by October it had 4 millions viewers. The seminary student who started it is having to take time out of his traditional pastoral goals to run the site. Looks like God steered him into a different pulpit than he had in mind.

Personal Journal (11/7/07) Checked out several other students' pages in this class to see what was being done. Some interesting projects are out there. Also looked for teacher resources in Web 2.0 via Google. Posted a few on the resources page that I found and looked over. These look like some promising resources for teaching ideas and connections with Web 2.0- as well as a magazine to stay abreast of changes.

Personal Journal (11/18/07) Checked out my MyChurch.org page to see if any action had occurred. So far there were no responses to my previous blog, but I did have an e-mail welcoming me to the site. The other girl who is a member of my church had not contacted me either. I then posted a new blog entry on my profile page asking about the site and how long it had been active. I received a response within the hour- it has been going for about a year. I then copied some Snag-it pages to add to our Wiki pages. I also checked out the new resources on our Resources Page. I would like to be able to save this page or set of resources somehow after our class ends. Is there any way to keep our wiki going? There were a few links on the resources page that I tried and was not able to find or view the videos- don't know if their connection to the internet page expired or what. Jeanette's article about the survey of Christian social networks was interesting- I liked all the little pie charts. Tried to watch the diigo video of the high school teacher teaching- but was not able to get it to play that video. Also, Cheryl's link for the article on technology from the 1950s did not appear either. Am looking forward to what some of you have done.

Personal Journal (11/23/07) I looked over the Classroom 2.0 Ning which looks like a good resource for K-12 teachers, but did not find much connection to Christian living. I then tried to subscribe to the Church Ning Scot has posted on his wiki page. They had me fill out a profile and apply to be accepted. So far there were 5 members- but I was not able to go in and look around without joining. The site said they would review my profile and let me know when I was accepted via e-mail. I have been waiting for almost a week and have heard nothing yet. So we'll see if I am able to check out this last Web 2.0 site before our presentations are due.

Personal Journal (11/30/07) Still no word from Ning about my church membership. This is one I may have to continue checking out after Christmas, along with Second Life.

Comments on Classmates Journals: Jeanette's Journal- I learned that there are faith/prayer based social communities out there. Jeanette is going to join a prayer group sponsored by Guideposts.com. It is apparently in a new format and the experienced users are somewhat frustrated by the new format. Tricia's page- Tricia is going to use Moodlerooms (the same as Moodle?) to conduct a discussion with high school students on religious views. She tried using Moodlerooms with staff before, but was not as successful. High school students will probably be more energized by the format.