good old fashioned fun

Today is my first official day of Summer Vacation! Whee!!!

Of course, I have this class and then some and about a million other things to do, including trying to get to NJ before 6:30 tomorrow night, but all will be well, all will be well and all matter of thing will be well.

While I was waiting for a Skype call last night my roommate and I played Risk. This is one of my favorite board games of all time, and I did a terrific job of stomping on his ass. It was fun!


Image from Flickr

Of course, with this tech class on the brain, I wondered about how games like Risk and Clue and such fit into a classroom or the library classroom. In my library this year I had Clue and Parchesi though no one actually played it. I know that a lot of Public Libraries have had gaming events with Playstations and the like and I wonder about how those old fashioned games fared or fare in the library realm. Where do education and entertainment meet?

But me, I'm off to conquer the world one more time. Now that my roommate knows a little more about the game I suppose I should be a little bit worried, but I'm not. I'll take Australia, and then THE WORLD! (insert evil laugh here)

the better mousetrap?

I am only slightly proficient in several technologies. Apparently I've gone for breadth, and it makes me wonder if depth within technology is really possible. Learning one system well only leads to the end of that system. At the school I work at they went from web pages to moodle, and next year they are introducing edline. What does one do? I find all this very confusing. Also, it's hard to keep up. This is a very steep learning curve. I still can't manage to watch videos on my Firefox browser, and I wonder if that is due to security restrictions made long long ago to avoid pop-ups. True, I don't get pop-ups, but I can't watch videos either.

Friday, the Urban Dictionary word of the day was "digital immigrant." I would argue, based on the definition, that I am not one of these, but maybe I am. I know YouTube. I just don't really have much time to view items on it. (Plus the aforementioned browser issue). The site also makes me nervous as it is a breeding ground for copyright infringement, even by those with the best of intentions. Just check out the "March of the Librarians" or the montages made by Hank and John Green for Brotherhood2.0.

I admit it. I find the world of technology overwhelming. Just when I get used to one element, another tech-door opens. Now I have a new phone that can work as an mp3 player, when all I want is a phone phone since my whole choice of purchase was to replace a phone that was giving me bad reception to the max. Half my calls weren't going through. I have my ipod video for songs and movies. And soon, there will be the iphone. It sure is pretty, but...Does one really need a phone to play music? Of course, the ringtones on this phone are horrible and it makes me wonder if the mp3 option would improve that. All the photos on my old phone did not transfer over with my old phone numbers. Gone is the picture of my grandfather in a pilgrim hat. Nevermind the half-life of these toys, what is the life life? If they can transfer numbers, why not pictures too? Still for all the overlap, I can't help still wanting one of those swank PDAs so I could update my calendar with the swish of a stylus. This tech-desire frightens me.

Maybe the term for me is ludite-in-training. Of course, I'd be lost without my phone, my Mac, my digicam, my regular unlined moleskin...