It's not bad being old. I look around sometimes and think, "Thank Goodness I don't have to worry if my socks match!" Let's be honest, I am 40 something, my wife loves me, my kids are entertained when I sing-along with my guitar, and I do ok at my job, so what's the fuss? Twenty years ago, I had to be in the know on every shadow of a fad crossing the airwaves of MTV. I can't imagine trying to keep up with what's legit in the world of self-propelled content on the WorldWideWeb today! I used to sit in my car to hear the end of a song that only came on the radio twice a day - today my 11 year old son never has to wait for the latest and greatest as long as he has access to a touch screen. How can someone be responsible for all that content? Who could keep up with trends when so much access to information has split that moving target into clouds of targets swirling through the 24/7 cyber scene?
So, why was lip syncing song lyrics under the Friday night lights such a status symbol a couple decades back? It was one thing to be in the know on something that was new, it was another to have had enough air time with the top-chart tune to commit it to memory. If you knew the latest song, that meant your older brother probably had the album, which meant you had access and that meant status.
Regardless of the year on the calendar, the feeling of being the first kid on the block to gain access to the latest craze still lights that fire inside every kid young and old.
So, I noodle quite a bit with Google Sites. Not unlike myself, they ain't the prettiest set up, but they are reliable and work hard. I use them at work as sandboxes for all sorts of teams to play in. We use them as collaborative sites and informational sites, we use them for static comms, two way comms, and for whole-group crowd-source data collection. I'm always posting up a picture here and there to try to spice things up, but I have never been successful at creating an auto-starting picture slideshow..until yesterday.
+Amber Sutton and I were rapping Google and she said, "Oh yeah, no sweat, click insert > Google+ Album, and the settings will turn your Google+ Album automatically into a slide show on your Google site!" BOOM! Just like that, she dropped the mic and walked of stage. There were only two of us in the room - but we both knew who owned that moment!
It's 2015 and I am no teen tweeting idol shots from the front row of a sold out arena show, but darn it if I don't jump to social media to spread the news when I learn a tip or trick that I think will raise the Spock-Style eyebrow over all the EdTech Super-Stars in my PLN! Sure, a part of me wants to share out new knowledge, to help everyone work a little smarter and just a bit less harder, but truth be known, if I am not going to turn heads with my matching socks, I can still stretch that sideways smirk of someone hiding a glint of pride when I can be the first one with enough time on my hands to noodle with and figure out something new. Sharing something new never gets old.
