Great Avatar Maker Website

Portrait Illustration Maker is a great avatar creation website. The finished avatars look like cartoons, but you can make them look very life-like, and even like yourself if you want (or better). How'd I do?

To easily put an avatar into your profile (or any image) first create the avatar and save it to your computer. Then upload the image into a blog post just like you would any photo, by using the Add Image button. Last, switch to the Edit Html tab and copy the image's URL. Post this to your profile in the appropriate spot. Here are the full directions from Blogger.

Wait, what is this week's Learning 2.0 exercise???? Can't I just keep making avatars of all my friends?!

#20 Thoughts on YouTube

At YouTube I first found it difficult to find "good" stuff. People have shown me really good YouTube videos, but I couldn't find them myself. First I tried browsing the categories and searching for specific topics in travel and music. I found some things, but nothing that made it really worth the effort. Same thing for channels.

I really found the most interesting videos by just searching with the word "libraries." With this search I found A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto, which I kind of liked, and then this gem, produced in 1987 by a student at Arizona State University (a bit silly but it made me laugh, and they say that laughing is good for you).

I think that the "I Love My Library" contest at the channel Librareo was a good use of YouTube for libraries. My favorite YouTube videos have been creative and educational projects such as this. Another educational one I like is The Machine is Us/ing Us. And a few weeks ago I noticed that a Journalism professor had used YouTube to embed student presentations on the school's website. I think that libraries could use videos to promote services and also for tutorial purposes along the lines of RSS in Plain English, using YouTube as the vehicle.