Striking & iGoogle

So, the faculty is on strike and now I have some time on my hands. I've decided that instead of spend it worrying about what will happen with my student teaching I'll try to use it in a productive manner. After all this is meant to be a summative reflection on the year.

I've just been zoning out on iGoogle. This is another second discovery for me in this class. I found it first when I was in New Brunswick working in a French school. If I was caught up on my prep for the day I would quite often find myself wandering there. I'd prettied up each page with appropriate backgrounds and themes. The best was the Legend of Zelda theme for my games page. I can see how the idea of having all of your favourite sites and important information on one page would be beneficial.

No Picture? http://sha3teely.com/?cat=8&paged=2

However, iGoogle has never been more than a passing interest for me. I could be writing this post in my blogger gadget on my page, but here I am in blogger typing away because I find a lot of the features of gadgets are pared down. I can't attach files in the blogger gadget, nor the gmail gadget either. I'm not always going to want to put a picture into a blog post, or attach something in an email, but since I often do, I go to the actual site automatically. Why get halfway through something only to have to switch to finish it how I want?
I'm running Windows 7 on my laptop and have many gadgets running as part of my desktop display. Why open iGoogle and check the weather when it is already being displayed on my desktop?
One thing that does hook me is games. I can search through and add games I like and then just have them together on one page always. I don't have to go to popcap for one game and shockwave for another. As a result I spend hours going from one game to another being quite unproductive.
In the end, I believe I don't stick with iGoogle because I'm an inomad. I like to wander from site to site, to have many tabs open. I like typing in URLs or following link trails. When iGoogle brings everything to me I feel like I go nowhere. I want to be up and moving, to be dynamic, digitally fit one could say.

http://www.google.ca/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=Tyler+Letkeman&oq=Tyler+Letkeman&aq=f&aqi=g-v2&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=2796l4499l0l4811l14l12l0l4l4l1l265l1257l2.3.3l8l0

My Digital Footprint

For the most part I'm rather proud of what comes up when search myself online. None of the facebook or twitter results are me. My flickr profile shows up, so people can see pictures of my travels. If I keep scrolling down my placement in a high school Canadian Association of Physicists exam shows up (17th in Canada, woot woot!).

However, there is one area that gives me concern. In high school I read a lot of fantasy novels, I still do I guess, but I combined my love of this genre with my love to draw and created an account on elfwood, a sci-fi/fantasy fan art site. My profile is still there as are my pictures. While nothing of mine on this site is inappropriate, I do find it somewhat embarrassing. Looking back at these pictures I no longer consider them the height of my artistic achievement.

There doesn't seem to be a way to change this though, as the email I used to create my account no longer exists so I can't reset my password and the forum to contact the site moderators is down and under construction. I guess I'll just have to live with a little embarrassment in my digital footprint, knowing it's much better than having to scour and remove inappropriate content.