New Leaf

I was reading in the January 2008 children’s magazine Odyssey, about Second Life, mashups, etc. It mentioned that while multitasking, which we all do out of necessity, our brains are not retaining information in the section that lets us hold on to the information. I knew this of course but I did a quick search and found a few blogs, studies and information. Even a discussion on Flickr!

This is so obviously my problem. I am constantly multitasking. There is probably not a minute of my day (or night) that I am not doing more than one thing that requires complete and unrelated attention (Watching a Web 2.0 training video and listening to my 4 year old and cooking dinner.) Learning this Web 2.0 info or even playing with it really requires doing nothing else simultaneously. You’re doing enough multitasking just playing with mashups and photo albums.

I realized that I was getting very frustrated by the technology and was not enjoying the journey so I made a resolution (it's still January!) to slow down, try to find the enjoyment factor, and just obtain the knowledge that these things are out there even if I can't make it work for me. On the plus side, I'm trying to keep up with my Google Reader though it seems to work differently each time I open it on a different computer. I am using the Google Notebook to keep info from the Google Reader that I might want to revisit when I have the time. No guarantee that the time will appear but we all have "To Read" piles. And I am eager to look at the Comic Book Creator, etc. that others have already posted about. I said my hardest habit was play!

But I will carry on, I will just allow myself not to GET IT all the time.

Thing #7 (for real) - Google

I google therefore I am. I do believe that you could spend a week doing nothing but exploring Google and still not see it all. I have been to other trainings, conference sessions and looked at things that were not part of this exercise. I've been using the advanced search for a few years to pull up powerpoints on lessons that I'm working on to see what others have done or to get some background info. I'm pretty sure I learned that at the TCEA Conference which everyone should have a chance to go to someday. I set up some Google Alerts but I realize I have no life anymore because there wasn't anything I was interested in enough to really care about being alerted to it! However the emails have come in and I see what it is about. I showed my UT student husband the Google Scholar about 2 months too late but there's always this semester. I set up a public Picasa Album which I can't seem to embed even though I can read and follow directions just fine. After fighting with it for 40 minutes, I'm done. It's public, see if you can find it. It's called Evolution of a Reader.