10-26-08
I am expanding my horizons. I am on an airplane using a computer. A “first” for me. Before leaving home, I downloaded a number of the MILI “23 Things” to my desktop and I am reading them here, where I have time and no distractions. It is 6 AM EST and I am not sure my sleep seatmates are too pleased with me, but I am feeling very smug.
I’m now an hour into the flight. I read 3 of the “Things” documents and kept cutting and pasting into a Word document. It has been interesting, informative and just a bit frustrating. I am amazed at how I take for granted that I can log on to the Web whenever I want. I want to RIGHT NOW, as I did not put enough of the linked pages onto my desktop before the flight! Kevin Hodgson’s Darfur project with 6th graders—how inspiring! I want to check it out as soon as I get home.
By the way, the reason I am traveling was to visit my ailing, aging parents outside of Boston. A sister from North Carolina and another from Albany, New York joined me. We haven’t seen each other in a year, and that time we had very extended families with us, so this visit was quite different. I pulled out this laptop to use YouTube to share videos of my grandchildren. The 3 sisters ended up sneaking into the kitchen where we shared outrageous YouTube videos our children had shared with us. Picture three
50-something year-olds laughing until tears ran down our cheeks, trying to croak out “Don’t wake Dad” in a cautionary whisper, but not being able to get it out for the laughter, and our poor mom, in her 80s asking if she can come into her kitchen. So we invite her in and she starts with the “I can’t hear” and “What are they doing” and the sisters collapsing again. It was a nice visit. Back to MILI
I added a blog by a non-MILI participant to my Reader account. I have sent him comments and communications. It was fun to send him an article that I read in an online publication and have him blog about that! Turns out that he had interned with a contributor of the article. Small world.
Interesting side note—When I put the download on my desktop, each page came with a folder of the pieces, the files, from the web that created the page, so there is a listing of gifs and jpegs and such. I did not have time to open the folders before the flight, so I thought the folders might contain more of the documents. QUESTION: what is a widget?,
2 comments:
Lynette,
Its fun to watch you explore the "technological" world. Pre-downloading material, computing at 30,000 ft, posting links on other people's blogs, sharing your knowledge with others. Seems like you're right on target for what the MILI grant is all about. Well done.
Sara @ Washburn
Wow, Lynette, how cool that you were using your computer on the plane! :) I know your frustration with not being able to be 'connected' whenever you want! I'm not sure how to answer your question about downloads, though we can take a look at it at the meeting. This might help: Macs save everything you open, so you periodically want to delete unnecessary materials from your downloads and desktop in order to keep your computer working smoothly.
As for widgets -- it the term used for a little icon than contains a tone of code for an application. If you use igoogle, they are called "gadgets". To the average user, they are the curtain the wizard sits behind.
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