Week 2 Thing #3

I loved creating the avatars. That was fun. I learned from Facebook that there are other free sites to create avatars. I want to play more with exporting them to/from different places. One of my challenges with the camera "avatar" was how to keep it from covering up the quote that I wanted with it. The only solution I discovered was to change the layout of this "gadget."
The students who read the Manga/Tokyopop books talk about avatars. I understood the definition to be a cartoon representation of a real person, an alter ego in an alternate reality -- like Peter Parker / Spiderman. But when koolavatar.com called the movie projector an avatar, I got confused, and I finally looked up the definition. Merriam-Webster online dictionary gave as definition #4: an electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer user (as in a computer game). The thesaurus in freedictionary.com reads:

1. avatar - a new personification of a familiar idea; "the embodiment of hope"; "the incarnation of evil"; "the very avatar of cunning"

Of course the original definition is "the incarnation of a Hindu god." The change/growth progress in definition of this term reminded me of Carl Sandburg's poem Languages
"There are no handles upon a language Whereby men take hold of it And mark it with signs for its remembrance. It is a river, this language, Once in a thousand years Breaking a new course Changing its way to the ocean. ..." I remembered the quote as languages change like rivers, but the correct quote further on in the poem is languages die like rivers. hmmmmmmm . . .
I also checked out one of blogger's features -- Blogs of Note. The top pick was ReadingAdventures! I don't kid myself that this blog is all that interesting, but I'm hoping the stuff I learn is interesting and can be applied in teaching and learning situations.