Thing #8



My Currahee Rendezvous



For my learning activity I used a mosaic photo sharing application. The pictures in my mosaic carry on the theme from my previous blog about my adventure to Currahee Mountain. The 3 mile run to the peak of this mountain provides some interesting scenery and beautiful landscapes. The application itself was extremely easy to use, and best of all required nothing to download to my computer. I find that in the past, when I’ve attempted to use software that must be downloaded, my computer always becomes infected with some undesirable viruses. Two ways that the mashups presented in the learning 2.0 exercise can be used in the classroom are tools for large class projects such as online murals, and geography map quests. The advantage to utilizing such online tools over traditional means is two fold. First, these types of projects are eco-friendly since they use no actual paper, paint or other materials normally discarded following the projects completion. Second, the fact that the project is online allows for expanded collaboration between classrooms which results in the input of perspectives from many cultural influences. Personally, the mashups are a great way for me to share family photos, personal stories, and other shared endeavors with those who are important in my life. For me, sharing photos online does present some feelings of apprehension about privacy. The level of security of such mashups does help to ease this feeling, but one can never be completely sure that photos shared via the internet are going to remain private. Teachers must be concerned about this issue because sharing such private pictures of seemingly innocuous activities may be perceived by others as unacceptable and result in problems in the workplace. The best advice I could give is to always be aware of your surroundings, and cognizant of your behavior when deciding whether or not to use such photo sharing applications online.