Thing 13: Reflection

The 13 Things projected provided creative and interesting multimedia outlets that will be of much use in the workplace, and even personal use.  I had no expectations upon starting this “blog,” so therefore there was nothing to live up too. 


I greatly appreciated a few of the creative tools used for assignment purposes.  A few sites that were helpful in particular was the Mind Mapping and Word Clouds.  If nothing else, these tools were just plain fun to mess around with.  I liked the visual appeal that they could provide to otherwise plain text.  Mind Mapping allowed me to organize in a different manner.  Usually, my daily planner is where my scribble my to-do lists.  But Mind Mapping allowed me to color coordinate whatever I wanted and connect ideas and my to-do list.  I can see myself using this tool in the future, and the same can be said for Word Clouds.  By plugging in literally any text I wanted, Word Clouds created an entirely unique artwork with the most prominent and reoccurring words.  Although I’m not sure how effective this would be in the business world, because it’s essentially just a jumble of words.


Social Bookmarking and Google Reader are two other helpful sites I encountered due to the 13 Things project.  Both of these sites are great for personal and professional use because it helps make one’s life easier by saving texts and other websites in an organized manner.  Google Reader allows me to stay connected (to whatever sites I want) with little to no effort.  If I want to stay up to date on Cedar Rapids news, pop culture or sports information it all gets sent straight to my google account.  In the past, I would have had to search for relevant articles and remember to visit the websites on a weekly basis, but no more. 


I didn’t like the Mashups assignment, most likely because my computer was slow.  Whatever the case, this tool didn’t click with me and I don’t think I’ll be using it in the future.  I also don’t think I’ll be using the Visual Thesaurus in the future, mostly because Thesarus.com provides more results and I have no use for the visual aspect. 

Now, just for fun, I'm giong to leave you all with a funny video.  Little kids dancing to music that's too adult for them, and probably too adult for me.  Funny stuff.