Joe 2.0 Ripples in Cyberspace

         I love the picture of a drop of water hitting the smooth surface of the pond and the ripples begin. There is no stopping the ripples. Each time we post something in cyberspace we are creating our own ripples in cyberspace. We can’t stop them, but we can have some control over what ripples we create.        

         Five weeks ago I was tasked with doing a Vanity Search of my name and blogging about what I discovered. The past five weeks I have been busy making ripples centered on the study of Web 2.0 technology tools and my ETEC 527 Web 2.0 class. This week I have been tasked with looking at the new ripples and reporting how they have changed.

         What I have noticed in my new Vanity Search was many new ripples that have to do with teaching, technology, and technology tools. A much more interesting set of ripples to be sure. Now I am overloaded with things to read, watch and study to help me become the very best teacher I can be in this new world of teaching with technology.

See ya in class,

Joe

Joe 2.0 and an Adventure in Aggregating Pages

         I must admit, I had never heard of an “aggregating page” before I read this week's assignment. YouTube and Twitter are both familiar to me, I just never thought of them as Web 2.0 teaching tools. Now I know differently about both of them, but my adventure into aggregating pages was an adventure to a place this man had never gone before. I did manage to figure out how to sign up and create a public page using protopage and netvibes. Start your own aggregating adventure by clicking on either link!

         I now use a protopage as my start page when I open Google Chrome to browse the Internet. I used to have Chrome open two or three of my web pages at start up, but that proved to be a very slow boot process because it was opening three tabs every time. Now with my protopage I get so much more information on my home page, links to my pages, my favorite bloggers, news feeds, weather and just about anything I can think of, or would want to learn about can be right at my fingertips when I open my browser!

         I personally found protopage a bit more user friendly than netvibes, but that may just be me. I can see how either application would be a great organizational tool for students, teachers, and other superheroes and it might even be a fun tool for average every day mortals! Check out both my pages here:

ETEC 527 Joe 2.0 and the other ETEC 527 Joe 2.0

See ya in class,

Joe

Joe 2.0 and the YouTube Adventure

         I would not call myself a YouTube expert, but I posted my first video four years ago and I have been following the YouTube pages of my favorite artists, authors, teachers and celebrities ever since. YouTube has become one of the first places I look for practical instruction, comparisons, and music videos. This week I have been searching YouTube for insights about Twitter, Twitter tools, Wiki’s and ways to use YouTube in the classroom. One thing I learned this week is that there are more Twitter tools than you can shake a stick at! I have been stumbling around Hootsuite, Zite and Everypost, and quizzing every, real, live, person that I know what they use with Twitter, if they Twitter at all.

         I discovered something these past couple of weeks. I am old. The best information I am gleaning from my friends is coming from my friend’s kids, or from the techie teachers that I know. Very few of my contemporaries spend my time in the Twitter-verse, or using many of the apps I have been learning about in class. I asked a contemporary to share with me her Instagram information and was told, “Instagram is for kids!” Well, someone told me a long time ago, “Wanna stay young? Work with kids. Wanna die young? Try and keep up with them!” The team members in my work group are all young enough to be my kids, and this week I learned so much from all of them.

         I started a new YouTube channel for this class and began creating a new playlist of my favorite Teacher Notes; I hope ya’ll enjoy some of my all time favorite videos and the new favorites I am discovering in the world of teaching and technology.

See ya in class,

Joe

Joe 2.0 and the Twitter Adventure

Do you tweet?

Is that a personal question?

Before my current graduate school class, I had a twitter account. I had made a couple of tweets, but mostly I used twitter to follow people and topics of interest to me. I never looked at twitter as a technology tool for education. Nor had I ever used twitter as a means of communication for social interaction. I never thought of twitter as a Web 2.0 tool.

         This past week I have been on a twitter adventure with my entire class. I now have more articles about teaching and technology in the classroom than I will EVER find the time to read! I have added several educational writers and speakers to my list of folks to follow and I actually had my very first personal communication on twitter! I never knew you could actually have a conversation with one person on twitter. I always thought that twitter was a way to post something for your followers to read and hopefully, they will re-tweet to their followers, and then soon your words of wisdom become a trend and instantly you are famous in cyberspace!

         I guess I have always looked at twitter as a tool for the rich and famous to manage fan clubs and make outrageous comments to keep themselves in the news. I know it has been used extensively in the Arab Spring uprising a few years ago and has been instrumental in the rise of “flash mobs” to make YouTube sensations but I never realized how twitter could impact my life as a student or as an educator. My wife has been at teacher in service conferences that have made use of twitter to post back channel discussions, to poll the audience or answer questions. This was my first exposure to twitter outside of being a tool for the rich and famous. This past week has been a very enlightening experience for me. Twitter has more uses than I could have ever imagined and I saw online this week that twitter is adding a new feature that allows the broadcast of live events through twitter as well.

         I have recently downloaded a few apps that my Professor had recommended that worked with twitter, Hootsuite, Everypost, and Zite. My wife asked me to join her on Waze, and I already had Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts that all play nicely with twitter. I have discovered that several other apps I have on my phone have twitter links as well. I have a Bible app, BrainyQuote, Dictionary, and The Weather Channel all on my phone and all have twitter links.

My Twitter Adventure has only just begun!

See ya in class,

Joe

Do you have a Digital life?

Footprints

         Every person on the planet earth leaves a footprint. Digitally speaking, you can follow your own footprints in the sands of cyberspace, thanks to Google, and probably a hundred other search engines. Someone told me once that what another person thinks about me is none of my business, but Google is kind enough to save, file and make available everything that has ever been posted or published about me anywhere in print or online. Do you really want to know? I hadn’t really given it much thought, since my life is pretty much an open book, but this week my Master’s class had an assignment to do a “Vanity search” and post a blog about what you discovered in the results. I learned a lot about me.

         My name officially is, Joseph L. Percevecz on all of my identification cards, bank records and such, but birth certificate, passport and really official documents list my full middle name. When I searched my full, given name in parenthesis I came up with only 9 results. Joseph L came up with only 5 results. Most people know me as Joe Percevecz, so I gave that a try and came up with 105 results. My wife likes to call me by my given name and Joseph Percevecz is usually the way I list myself on any form that asks me to put down my name, so I was not surprised to come up with 634 results for Joseph Percevecz. My Facebook page uses this name, any social media has this name listed and I own several domains that popped up in my Vanity Search.

         Family friends that have known me since my mother was alive sometimes call me Joey. So I did a search for “Joey Percevecz” and actually came up with 320 listings. This kind of surprised me, until I started reading the list. I have a couple of email addresses that use onejoeyp or 1joeyp and my E-portfolio is on my web site at www.onejoeyp.com. My blog is on Google at www.onejoeyp.blogspot.com so I have a lot more exposure to Joey than I realized.

         Do you realize how much exposure YOU have on the World Wide Web?