Filling Up My Toolbox

This week’s assignment has so far proven useful in helping grow my technology bag-of-tricks.  I especially liked creating a QR code!  This is something I have been meaning to check out for some time and now that I have, I see all kinds of possibilities for its use.  My classroom is primarily decorated in movie posters because I teach mostly digital video and media-type classes.  Using Delivr.com, I established an account and created a code for a specific poster in my room, “Hollywood Land.”  When students scan the code, they are taken to the yahoo website about the movie, including synopsis, actor bios and box office stats.  I originally wanted to link to the imdb site for the movie, but the webpage kept coming up with an error code.  I can now create a code for other movies, specific directors and musical artists (I have albums hanging on the walls, as well).  I actually want to code everything now!  At home, I am imagining coding the corners of my dogs photographs, where visitors who scan them will be taken to YouTube videos of their antics.

The URL shortening helpers were not quite as exciting, though I can imagine their use if done properly.  I started with tinyurl.com and tried to shorten my Wilkes class blog address, http://mrscauffsclasses.blogspot.com.  When I had the website come up with a shortened name for me, it produced http://tinyurl.com/ah58gtm.  Keeping in mind that this should be something easy enough to give a friend over the phone, I thought maybe I could try coming up with my own, which would have been CauffsClasses.  But when I plugged this in, I saw the tinyurl.com would still have to precede my idea.  This meant that the original address of 36 keystrokes was only narrowed down to 32.  Thinking maybe I was doing something wrong, I next tried using goo.gl to shorten my address.  The address I got back was definitely shorter, but not one that would stay immediately with me: http://goo.gl/t5pJv.  Being new to URL shortening, perhaps this is the way the whole process works.  I will be curious to read my classmates’ posts to see what kind of luck they had.  (Interesting footnote: the tinyurl link works when you select it from this post, whereas the goo.gl link works, but says my blog is blocked through the school’s filtering system.)  Once I figure out how to correctly use shorteners (or perhaps I already have), I could use them to make my Flickr and PhotoBucket accounts more easily accessible to my relatives.

The bookmarklets were also hit or miss for me.  I was new to Quietube which, like its description, was a very plain, basic and unimposing-looking website.  Right on the top of its page was a shortcut to add the site to your browser bar.  This was the same for Keepit.  However, when I tried to grab them both and add them to my bar, I got a “won’t run JavaScript error.”  I think this may be because of our computers at school and their lack of Java updates, as well as the filtering of YouTube.  Pinterest did not have a special shortcut that I could see, but when I grabbed its logo, it immediately asked me how I would like to save the site, let me customized what I called it and then snapped it to the browser bar.  I will try the first two at home to see if I get better results.  If I do, all three of these sites will be welcome additions for both my schoolwork, as well as personal endeavors.  I especially think the Keepit site will help me greatly by being able to download “how to” videos onto my iPad, so that I can view them when I am not near a wireless connection.