I just clicked to learn more about the Yahoo time capsule’s creator, Jonathan Harris, and found his “We Feel Fine” site. WOW. Whatever you are feeling - happy, sad, bad, better, gloomy, alone, angry… - this site proves that you are not the only one out there!

We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs since August 2005. Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling”. When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the “feeling” expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). The blogger’s age, location, and gender are identified and recorded into a database along with their feeling. The database grows every day by tens of thousands of feelings! Harris built a Java applet-based interface that allows users to search the “madness” of the blogosphere for what people are feeling, at the moment, by location, gender, or the feeling itself. “Montages” are recently posted photos about feelings.

I personally love watching the “murmurs” trickle down the page every few seconds. It is comforting if you are feeling down to search by “sad” or “sorry”, and see millions of others who share your sentiment. You feel less alone and the world seems smaller, especially when you view the “madness” and see all the particles (which are posts) randomly floating around the screen. Someone in Scotland wrote “I would like to mark that today the 11th would have been ziggys 18th birthday and i have been feeling a bit sad today still missing him so much.” A male in Germany just said “I feel pukey but im not going to” and a female in Palm Springs wrote “I feel fancy.” It is nice to know that love and happiness actually IS happening out there “we have been through a lot together and it is a great feeling to know that we are still great friends;” 24-year old female in San Diego. You can click on the entries and go to each blog if you are so inclined.

Related Links :
http://timecapsule.yahoo.com/
http://www.wefeelfine.org/
http://www.number27.org/

http://pdfonline.com/index.htm

Make a PDF out of ANYthing!!

Use http://www.yousendit.com/ to send up to 1GB in file sizes to anyone you wish! You can easily send movie files and high res photos to people. Cool.

Ta-Da!

Microsoft unveiled its mysterious “origami” product today. Looks super slick - a paperback-sized pocket PC with 60GB of RAM and a touch screen interface with high resolution for video and heavy app viewing. USB ports for any peripherals, and a QWERTY keyboard on screen if needed. Oh, but it’s not called “origami.” It’s something even more hip-sounding : “Ultra-Mobile PC.” Oh, Bill. You are one cool dude.

Comes out in April!

…or at least your living room!

Today Apple Computer Inc. introduced a speaker system for its iPods and a Mac Mini computer updated with Front Row software that will let users access music, video and photos across their home networks. An added feature of the Front Row software will let users locate and share media content from other computers within a local wireless network. This means a user can play songs or stored TV shows that are pulled off a computer in another room in the house.
Cool!! Synergy is becoming a reality.

But of course, Microsoft is hot on the trail - Check out “Origami” on March 2!

I am not quite sure what I am doing but I created my first PODcast today. It was really easy. I went to http://www.garageband.com/ and set up a free account. Then called in my first clip from my phone. Logged in and published it to my playlist.

I can make a podcast to play my own recordings on my blog, but I can also simply use audioblogger.com to post them. Works the same way as GarageBand as far as calling in your message from a phone, but audioblogger posts it directly to my BLOG from the phone. GarageBand saves the recording in my master playlist, and then I have to publish it to my podcast later. With AudioBlogger, I can post ONE 5 minute message per post. With podcasting, I can post multiple messages into one channel which when published can be played continuously.

More exploring to do on this!

You can use a blog as a collaborative curriculum development tool!

My colleague and I are co-teaching our Media Seminar class to the juniors and seniors. Team-teaching can be as challenging as it is rewarding. One of the major headaches is keeping track of the awesome lesson plans and project ideas that we seem to change on a daily (if not hourly) basis. So I am blogging our lesson plans, and revising them as we reflect on what worked and did not work each day. It’s a bit of work, but I think it will pay off when we need to repeat the curriculum in the second semester (and in years to come!).

I am blogging our lesson plans here :http://tbamediaseminar.blogspot.com/

I am now starting Term 3 at TBA, and Semester #2 in the CTE program. This spring (how can I call it spring when we got another 6″ of snow today?!) I will be taking 3 classes, and finishing my middle school practicum hours. I am placed at the K-8 Driscoll School in Brookline - an entirely different experience from TBA! You can read about my reflections and work at the Driscoll in my virtial office in the TappedIn community of educators.

Click on “MyOffice” from the LKRdesign site, OR go to the TappedIn space and search for my office. TappedIn is an excellent space for educators to share and document their experiences and expertise.