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I received an email from the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education about a free online conference that they are holding over the next three days about changing how we “do” conferences that takes into account Web 2.0 technologies. Find out more about this free online conference here.

When I visited the Ning homepage for this online conference, I discovered a video of Kevin Burden and Simon Atkinson about the value of traditional conferences and what we might want to move to. Enjoy…I did!

The company I work for wrapped a cool new social networking application around our LMS this school year. There are teams of people who seeded the site with cool content for kids. The students have taken to it like the proverbial duck to water. When I first logged in to change my password, there it was – taunting me: “Click here to upload your profile picture.”
Uh-oh. I always dread this part of setting up a profile. For those of you who have yet had the pleasure of meeting me, let’s just say that I’ve “let myself go” for the past, oh, 12 to 15 years. I don’t consider myself to be a vain person, but I am somewhat sensitive about my weight. It’s not healthy, I don’t like it and I don’t like the way I look – particularly in photographs.
So I resorted to what a lot of people have – creating an avatar image of myself instead for my profile pic. I used the Simpsonize Me website. That was sufficiently geeky I think (thanks, Mr. Moses!).
But when I went to EduCon 2.1, I was able to recognize people I never met before in person, all because they had actual “normal” profile picture online (usually Twitter). That is when it hit me – regardless of what I think of myself, others may (gasp) actually want to talk to me when we are in the same physical space.
So I set up the ol’ Logitech webcam, combed my hair, and start snapping away. After more than a few shots, I think I’ve come up with one that represents me well and fairly.
What about you? Do you post your “real” picture? If so, why? If not, why not?