Simply Del.icio.us

I have had a del.icio.us account for a couple of years now, but I only used it to bookmark my favorites and didn’t explore the social aspect.  I am thinking that this will be a great resource for the group project and much simpler and less clunky than blackboard.  I also think the class tagging assignment will be a great way of sharing information with each other.  This has also led me to think about how glad I am that I am going to library school now rather than 10 years ago.  All of this technology makes everything easier.  Yes, there was e-mail and IMing ten years ago, but it hadn’t really become integrated into a lot of people’s everyday activities.  And now there is so much more–so much more we can do and so much more we can share. 

Oh, and how great was it to play around with IMing in class?  I never thought I’d see the day when I was IMing in class and not doing it on the sly.  I can see myself doing IM reference work.  I think it’s something I would really like to do. 

I’m also looking forward to using a wiki for my group project.  I had looked at wiki software before but never had a reason to use it.  Again, it seems like it will be much better to use than blackboard.  I will gladly say bye bye blackboard and hello del.icio.us and wikis. 

Anne’s Virtual Life

The above picture is my weemee (different from wii mii).  I use her as my avatar for aol instant messenger.  I’m sort of amazed at how much she looks like my 8 year old self, despite the fact that she doesn’t even have a nose. 

It has gotten to the point that, even though I wasn’t a child when I had my first virtual experience,  it is hard to remember a time when I haven’t been virtual.  My family got a computer in 1987.  For the first couple of years, we used it for writing papers and maybe playing a game or two, but in 1989, with my own money, I bought a modem and the Prodigy software.  From then on, I was hooked.  It started off with some music bulletin boards.  I still remember one particular girl on one particular band’s bulletin board, who was like the keeper of the band.  She thought she knew everything and had a deep spiritual connection with the band and, boy, you better not say anything bad about the band, or you would have to face her wrath.  It’s funny that it seems like no matter what virtual community I’ve encountered since then, there is always someone like her. 

Anyway, from Prodigy, I moved onto AOL.  I remember staying up until the wee (unfortunately I didn’t have a weemee in those days)  hours of the night chatting with people (those were the days when random strangers would somehow find you) on instant messenger.  I also played moderated trivia in the chat rooms. That was a lot of fun.   

I sort of flitted around aimlessly after that, landing in this community or that and not really finding a home, but in the late 90’s, I got very active in the Buffy on-line community.  I’m not even going to get into that as I could write a whole book about that experience. 

 Then about 5 years ago, I started blogging.  I have 5 or 6 blogs out there in cyberspace.  One is very active in that I post on it every day.  Others are just floating around sadly inactive. 

I also am very active in an artist’s community.  Just about every weekend I participate in something called the Weekend Drawing Event.  Each week a member posts photos and then we all choose what we want to draw or paint and then post the work and comment on each other’s work.  It is something that I look forward to every week and I really have to say that finding this community has had a significant positive effect on my life. 

Anyway, I know this post was supposed to be about our first virtual experience, but I couldn’t just stop there.  Even though those earliest experiences were the most exciting, it has been the most recent that have had the biggest impact on me.