Chatter On The Interwebs

Video chatter that is. (So clever)

I decided to chat a couple of times. My family is rather spread out now with people in Utah, Minnesota, Virgina, Maryland, and Ohio. We still like to keep in contact though. So all of us who are in Utah for school got together to chat with my parents who are all alone in Minnesota. It was wonderful. We have a good time together and even though it wasn't quite like being in the same room with them, the video chat didn't impede us in showing our true personalities. My sister started making faces at the camera, which my father then took screenshots of, which were then photoshopped to make her look like a vampire, which she then got angry at, which we then all laughed at. There weren't any hiccups that we could find in the video chat. Gchat seemed to work out just fine.

However, my brother is currently in a long distance relationship (she moved back to England) and they chat all the time (well at least once a day). They find that Gchat has better sound, but that skype has better video. So they open up two separate chats to use google's audio and skype's video. Even then there are many hiccups and freezes in the images or mike feedback. So while the development of video chat is becoming quite amazing, there is still a lot of progress to be made.

Project #2 Status Report

It seems like it would be rather simple to come up with a topic to do for this project because theatre is all about performing. However, for some reason it was rather difficult to come up with something. I think that right now I'm looking at teaching the principle of montage. While this seeps over into the world of film, I think that as a high school teacher, it would be perfectly acceptable for me to have a film class or two. So, doing it this way will give me a chance to explain it to them using pictures and also to use the medium to give a demonstration of a final product.

Today I discovered the joys of Google's Sidewiki project. It seems like a great idea due to the fact that there have been a number of times that I want to tear a website's layout to pieces (that is, if anyone is actually listening). But beyond that this could easily be used in an education setting. If the students are assigned to work on a project but they are having a hard time meeting they could just post as much of their work online as they can and use google sidewiki to comment on changes that need to be made or things to be tweaked. I am currently working in a group for one of my classes and we've got Google docs down pat, but as for comments, generally we will email them to each other. This Google sidewiki would allow us to make the same comments but to have everything on the same page.

Also, the pages in the google groups is much simpler to use than one would expect. It's just like making a google doc but it allows for different categories and people don't have to be invited. Brilliant. I'm thinking of ways that I can use this in my major now! There has been a lack of communication and order amongst the students and we have been looking for a way to organize. I think that I now have some fairly useful tools.