This week in ECMP 355 we have been sent out to investigate our current digital footprint.

When I first search for my name in Google’s search engine, only one link relating to myself shows up.  It is a link to Dan Meyer’s blog post, Redesigned: Kyle Webb.  Everything else on the first page does not relate to me.  Page two is a bit more of me.  My Flickr page, Vimeo page, and Twitter page all show up.  So far there have been a few Facebook pages for other Kyle Webbs, but not me.  I quickly clicked through pages 3, 4, and 5 but nothing showed up.  I was pretty disapointed that my blog hadn’t showed up so far.

My digital footprint is hard to find (from Flickr)

Next I searched for “Kyle Webb Canada”.  The first thing that appeared was a LinkedIn page, which I did create a while ago but haven’t really used.  Also on the first page, was a link to my Twitter page again and a link to my profile on the Educator’s PLN Ning Site.  Page two had only one link, to one of my mentor’s blogs where he talked about the math problem I created.  Pages 3,4 and 5 again had nothing about me.  At this point, my Facebook page still hasn’t appeared.

I then attempted to search for “Kyle Webb Saskatchewan”.  Finally my Facebook page appeared.   Nothing else really showed up.  I am also a hockey player so I searched f or “Kyle Webb hockey”.  It turned up a few league sites (QVHL, PJHL, SMAAAHL).

Perhaps my name is too common for items only related to me.  But, I was really disappointed that my blog did not show up.  When I go to apply for a position as a teacher, I want that to be one of the first things that shows up when I’m Googled.  I did not find anything that I wish wasn’t on there, which is a huge relief.   However, if anyone else did find anything they didn’t want to appear, they should check out this article I found through a link on Twitter: Un-Google Yourself.

Screen Shot from My Picasa

Recently,  after being immersed in the wonders of Google I found out I could upload my pictures to a Google site called Picasa (much like you can with Flickr).  I then got into it and noticed that it was taking forever to upload them through my browser and noticed that I could download a program that would upload them for me.  After downloading the Google Picasa program I quickly realized what a discovery I had made!

It was really easy to use right from the start.  It automatically started importing all the images on my computer into it and organizing them into different albums.  This took a little while, but saved me the hassle of doing it myself.   I noticed I could “Sync to Web” where it would upload my pictures to my online account and every time I changed the album, it would update them automatically.  It also had the really cool option to “Create a Collage” which would throw all my pictures from specified albums into a collage that I could rearrange any way I liked.  You can create really cool borders this way.  There is also a “Create a Movie Presentation” option that I haven’t tried out yet.  It will also let you do all sorts of photo fixes (contrast, redeye, retouch, etc).  If you have Google Earth installed also, you can tag on a map exactly where the photos were taken; I haven’t used this yet but I intend to once I find some time.

The most impressive feature I found is that it will recognize all the faces in your pictures and once you start tagging a few people it will automatically start detecting who people are in photos!   Find out more here.  It blew me away and made going through all my photos to tag people an effortless process.

The best part of all?  It’s FREE! (Can you tell I’m a poor student?)

I would definately recommend everyone to check this out.  I’m not sure how well it works on Macs since I’m on a PC, but I imagine it would work just as well!  If you want more information before downloading take a look at the Learn More page or watch this video!  (The video is talking about Picasa 3.0, I have 3.5 which has the face/name tags)

I think Picasso would have used Picasa. Let me know if you find it as handy as I did!

Screenshot of my iGoogle Page (click to enlarge)

After Lisa Thumann introduced my ECMP 355 class to iGoogle, our class went out and started exploring it.  After playing with it for quite a while I  created a page that included pictures from my Google Picasa Web Photos, my Google Reader, a to-do list,  a Google Scholar search box, my Google Docs, my Delicious bookmarks, the Environment Canada Weather for Regina, as well as some news feeds (Edublogs – teacher and student blogs, Educational Technology, and TechLEARNING.com).

iGoogle is now my new homepage as it has everyone I need right in there!  I like that I am able to change the theme if I’d like.  It’s so handy to have everything I regularly use all in one spot that I can customize myself!  I hope to explore iGoogle more and let me know if there are any great gadgets that I’m missing out on!

I want to get a feel for how others study.  What seems to work and what doesn’t.  I’ve created a quick survey for you to fill out.

Thanks! I’ll share my results as soon as I get enough information!