Pros and cons of digital portfolios

As I was working on creating a website (google sites) for my professional portfolio I realized how much work and effort I put into it. I'll tell you it was a lot of work! I wasn't sure exactly how it was supposed to look so I took a lot of time with it. The other types of portfolios from Plaxo and LinkeIn were somewhat easier to handle as they resembled something like Facebook. However, with your own website you can design it however you like because it's YOURS. Creating your own website takes some informal training, but you can make it public to the whole world wide web. The other sites are only visible to those who have an account, but they seem to be a lot easier to create. Of the three I really like Plaxo because it directed me through all the steps and is very user-friendly. The biggest advantage of using any digital portfolio is that it is accessbile to more people at any time because it's on the web. Creating this portfolio was something new and overall I enjoyed the experience! If you want to check out my website click the link below.
https://sites.google.com/site/dianasdigitalportfolio/home

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/D_Ortega

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/D_Ortega

What a cool idea this was. LibraryThing helped me search for memorable books from elementary and high school (To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies). This online library is especially helpful for those booklovers and you can even look at other people's catalogs to see if you like anything that they have. I could see a lot of similarities with this and Facebook except for the fact that it's for books. Instead of connecting with friends of the past you get to connect with old novels. :)

Generator Blog: Personalized Money - US $100 (2003)

Personalized Money - US $100 (2003)

Everyone's always wanted their face on some money so try it out! This generator was so easy and you can upload any image. There are other currencies to choose from so have fun with it. I picked this generator because the other ones sounded lame and not very tasteful (if you know what I mean). I would definitely use the Generator Blog in the future to make some gag gifts or send funy messages to friends. Enjoy!

NIKE JOGA BONITO - TALENTO

These guys are sick with the ball. I can get down with the ball just not like them! Check it out...

You probably can tell why I chose this video. They move so natural with the ball it's amazing.

Podcasting

I just added some new feeds from the podcast search site that I thought I could use: Highland Training Power Yoga and Fit4LifCenter. These feeds were easy to find with podcast.com and there are many other useful podcasts, just depends on what you are looking for. The power yoga offers some mini yoga lessons that can be used as a daily practice session. The Fit4LifeCenter is a radio show that offers health tips and information. If I used podcasts on a daily basis I could see myself using these feeds and looking into others that interested me. There were lots of radio shows and I was able to find some WorldCup news and dessert recipes (yum). But as I mentioned before I am new to podcasts and will have to play around with them first before getting hooked.

YouTube

YouTube is fun to use because there are so many random videos to find. You can learn new dance steps, find dinner recipes, learn how to make paper mache, or just laugh at all the fools who posted their videos. The content of the videos is open so people need to take caution because anything will come up. Using this site for classroom purposes would be a great tool to help explain or demonstrate an activity/lesson. YouTube is easy and convenient and kids are very familiar with it so it can be highly useful for any classroom. For learning how to create arts and crafts projects or class activities there is TeacherTube which is teacher version of YouTube. I have used this tool and it is great because real teachers post their videos of different activities.

Technorati

Some of the directories that we've been using in class lately seem all the same to me. The latest was Technorati which is a huge directory for tags from blogs and posts. There is so much information out there that I think it's helpful to have a management tool to organize it all. I'm not sure if I would use tool again in the future but it I can say that it was fun to explore. There wasn't a lot of information related to kinesiology--unless I didnt't search correctly. On the other hand I did find a lot of tags related to celebrities and the Android. The popular tags and searches were mostly about new technology (iPad, Android), celebrities, sports, and politics. There is endless information to find with Technorati and those who are interested in this stuff would definitely have fun with it.