Digital Dabbling Downunder
My journey into the Web 2.0 World
I was just tagged by Noel Forte in the meme going around the education blog circles called “7 Things You Really Don’t Need to Know About Me!”.
Here are the rules:
* Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
* Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter and/or Plurk.
Here goes:
- Music has always played a big part in my life. I play piano and flute and have dabbled a little with the cello and guitar. Both my grandmothers were very musical and my mum played piano (although not very well). My brothers and sisters all played musical instruments as well and my younger brother was a drummer in a band for a while. This love of music has carried in to my children although their tastes in music is very different to mine. My son 18 plays classical guitar, electric guitar and trombone. My son 17 plays clarinet and bass guitar and also played double bass for a while. My daughter 14 statred playing violin but decided she preferred the flute so that is what she plays now. She won a scholarship to study Voice at a GATE High school. All 3 played piano for varying amounts of time.
- I started University as a Music Education student but decided that I preferred to be a classroom teacher after my first teaching practice.
- I don’t like animals and my kids think I’m really mean because we do not have a dog. I grew up with a dog in our family and I know the responsibility involved in having pets and I didn’t want those responsibilities left to me!
- I am a cross-stitcher but I don’t have much time for doing it now especially since I discovered the wonderful World of Web 2.0 and made many online connections.
- I have “black” thumbs! I only have to look at a plant and it curls its toes up. I don’t find gardening relaxing so I leave the outside of our property to my husband who does a fantastic job.
- In 1986 we took 6 months long service leave and travelled through many different countries including Greece, England, Scotland, Ireland, Russia, and many more parts of Europe. We also travelled in the USA, Canada and New Zealand. It was a fantastic experience and I think my kids have picked the travel bug up from me. My son 18 has been in Sweden for the last year on Rotary Youth Exchange and also travelled to Japan by himself when he was ten to stay with a school friend and his family who came from Osaka. My son 17 is off to Finland this year also on Rotary Youth Exchange. He has travelled overseas before as well to Hawaii as part of a Navy Cadet Group. My youngest is off to Nepal at the end of this year onan expedition that she is fundraising for – 2 weeks trekking, 1 week doing community service in a school and the final week is R & R. She is also hoping to go on a school tour to Italy in October!
- In 2001 our family took 6 months off school/work and travelled around Australia. We had a 4-wheel drive vehicle pulling a large caravan and I sort of home-schooled the kids as we travelled. It was a fantastic experience for the whole family.
I’d like to know more about the following people: Tag…You’re it!
Today I joined in Lucy Gray’s Flash Meeting albeit a little late. This was a Flashmeeting event for GEC (Global Education Collabortive) members to talk about various global projects and plan for the new year.
Unfortunately I was a little late joining as I had a previous engagement but in the time that I was in the meeting I made some new contacts for my PLN and chatted with some I already knew.
Some of the chat that had me searching further was about the use of Skype and iChat in schools, the Apple Learning Interchange and the places I can go to for Apple help as I am still a relative newby.
When I first started this blog it was to take part in the 30 Day Comment Challenge. I started off slowly and found it difficult to keep up for the whole month.
I have decided to try and keep my professional blog page as a place where I can record the PD I do both online and offline.
I will also use it to record the interesting and useful tools and websites I find that I may want to use in my teaching and learning.
I plan to also use this as a part of my Performance Managemnet at school.
I hope to look back at the end of 2009 and find that I have made my professional blog a journal of my experiences through the year and a much more useful tool.
Tuesday 30th September
Waiting at Singapore airport was a tiring few hours. Once we had found a meeting place on some comfortable lounges that happened to be in front of a television the students went off in small groups to explore coming back to check in with the teachers every half hour. For most of them the first stop was Burger King for Coke and fries!
Our very tired group boarded the next plane to Beijing just after 1am and although we were exhausted it was a while before anyone slept. I have never taxied as far as we did in Singapore on any flight I had taken before – we were starting think the pilot wanted to taxi his way to China!! However after almost half an hour on the runway we took off at last.
Some of the students settled down to sleep straight away – eye masks and blankets on – and others continued to chat and play games. Most of us had at least some sleep but it was an extremely tired bunch of people who got off the plane in Beijing!
After waltzing through immigration and customs we were met by Sharon (Zhu Qi) our guide from Huijia Private School. The bus ride to the school took about an hour and because we had arrived a little late, the students were whisked away quickly to their dormitories to organise their bags for their first homestay as many of the families were already waiting to collect their students.
Once all the students had gone the staff were shown to their rooms. We decided that it was not a good idea to sleep although we had all had very little sleep since leaving Perth. We headed into the local town of Changping by taxi. Mrs Wright and Mrs McKay decided a neck and back massage was the go and Ms Van Beem and I wandered around the nearby area.
Next stop for us was lunch and what an amusing experience that was! We chose a restaurant that had pictures displayed so we could order easily. We decided that the noodles pictured on the wall were called Beef Noodles on the translated menu we were eventually given. Expecting a plate of noodles each, we were very surprised when large bowls were put in front of us. The beef and noodle soup was actually very tasty although not what we thought we had ordered. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around in Changping. Eventually we found a supermarket/market. We strolled around for a while and then purchased bits and pieces to bring back with us (water, snacks etc). We discovered we were very close to where we had started so we returned to the same restaurant for dinner as the staff there had been very friendly. This time we decided pointing to the pictures was the go and we enjoyed a meal of fried rice and chicken kebabs. Then it was back to Huijia by taxi and after chatting for a while four very tired teachers hit the sack!
Wednesday 1st October
After the best sleep I had had in a while it was off to Beijing for the day that turned out to be a day of new experiences!
The teachers had spoken to the students they could reach and all of them were having a great time at their homestays.
Our trip into Beijing took quite a while. Firstly a half hour taxi drive to Lungze Station, the nearest subway station to the school. When we arrived there the queue to get into the station was very long but we quickly passed through the security, bought tickets and found our platform. Riding the subway was interesting – what we would call a packed train is anything but packed. Even when you think the train is full more people push their way on. We negotiated the change to the second line quite easily and found ourselves not far from Lulichang Street, our first destination.
Liulichang Street, which was built in the Qing Dynasty, had lots of Chinese history to experience. Crowded with shops selling antiques and ancient books, calligraphy tools like Chinese pens, ink, ink stones and paper, and Chinese ink drawings. There were also shops selling teas of many varieties, tea sets and also interesting Chinese snacks like green tea biscuits.
After strolling down one section of the street, we found ourselves wandering through a Hutong – a traditional Chinese housing area. This was also a very interesting experience!
Next stop was a Peking Duck Restaurant for lunch.
Back to the subway for our next stop- The Silk Market. In the basement we had to push our way through crowds of people, Every step saw another seller shoving their wares in our faces – Bali is nothing compared to this! After the shoe, bag and clothing floors we headed straight for the top floor and found lots of beautiful jewellery. Pearls, Pandora bracelets (fake, of course) and much more!
After a late dinner we went back to Huijia by taxi exhausted after a very interesting day.
Thursday 2nd October
Into Beijing again today – taxi then subway with 2 interchanges. After changing money at the bank, recharging our phone cards and some morning tea, we headed into the Silk Market again.
First stop – jewellery again!! Some more purchases of Pandora bracelets and pearls for gifts. We also wandered around the toy and electronic floor. Then after a pizza lunch we continued browsing, this time at silk scarves, ties, homewares etc. Then after some hard bargaining for a lovely leather bag we decided it was time to head back to Huijia.
As the students started to arrive back at their dormitories we recorded their thoughts and experiences about the homestay visits. (These will be added later!)
They were all very excited and it took some time to settle them for the night. From the chatter about their experiences all the students have had a fantastic time and experienced many new things. What a fantastic way it was to start their China experience!!
Sorry folks having some trouble with internet access! First time here and it won’t read the flash drive with the diary and documents on it. Will try again soon.
The six students from Bateman were also made honorary ambassadors of W.A. and received their certificates and emails at their assembly too.
I didn’t realise it was quite so long since I had written a post but reading Michele Martin’s web2.0 Wednesdays post asking us to divulge how we manage our time online I decided I should put “pen to paper”.
I think I am spending way too much time online because since I started blogging and twittering etc. I have learned so much from so many people I seem to be on a roll. Trying to fit this in with working full time and managing a family is a juggle and I admit to being a bit of a multi-tasker. I always have at least 4 or 5 tabs open on my browser and flick between them as I go about the tasks I have set myself. I’m not sure that this is the most efficient way to work but if I didn’t do it this way I would miss opportunities to learn from my online friends. I also break things up with a game or two on Facebook sometime with online friends or at least trying to better my scores.
I haven’t use an online Calendar before but am just setting up a Google Calendar for myself because I commit to projects online and then end up in a rush at the last minute because something had slipped my mind or I hadn’t realised the project was starting. I think there are other tools out there like Remember the Milk that I could probably use to make my life easier but the time to organise these tasks never seems to happen. Perhaps that is a task I need to add to my calendar.
The biggest challenges I face in managing all of your Web 2.0 tools and toys is keeping track of the ones I want to have a closer look at. I have lots of Diigo and Delicious bookmarks but my organisation of these is almost non-existent. Maybe that should be my starting point!! I think you have to be selective about the ones you choose to add to your repetoire and I think I need to make time to go back and look at some of the tools I have bookmarked and decide if they suit my needs or not.
I have found myself sacrificing other parts of my life for your Web 2.0 fun. Michele asks “Is this a good or a bad thing?” For me there is good and bad. I spend time most evenings on the computer and sometimes I could be spending more time with my kids although at that time they are usually doing study or homework.It has opened up a new network of friends and colleagues and on a recent trip to Melbourne I managed to meet some of my new friends face-to-face. When you find you have no-one in your workplace that can help you with your Web 2.0 queries my PLN is always out there and there is always someone out there with suggestions and answers. Would I go back to the way things were just over a year ago? I don’t think so! I am having way too much fun, learning so much and meeting so many new people!
During the comment challenge I came across Caroline Middlebrook who also took part in the challenge. She has produced a program called Stumble Rush. Below is the description Caroline has written about her product. It is well worth reading and I have already discovered several great websites by just “stumbling”.
StumbleUpon is essentially a “discovery tool” – it is a toolbar that sits in your browser of choice and allows the user to hit a button, the Stumble button, and be shown a website that the system thinks you are going to like. How does it know what you like? Well that’s the clever part you see…
When you first install the toolbar you’ll be asked to select topics that you are interested in and whenever you Stumble you can click a “thumbs up” button on pages that you like. Over time, the StumbleUpon algorithm learns the kinds of pages that you like and the pages that get served to you become more and more targeted to your individual preferences.
Those are the essentials of StumbleUpon from the perspective of the user but that’s not what this course is about – this course will teach you how you can leverage StumbleUpon to send traffic to your website.
It is free to trial Stumble Rush so why not have a go!
Day 5: Comment on a Blog Post You Don’t Agree With
Finding a blog I disagreed with was difficult as I had just started a new term with my class and my surfing time was limited. However I came across a post about Mother’s Day on Savvy Auntie’s blog.
I left a comment but then on re-reading both the post and comments from myself and others I went back and left a second comment which clarified my view.
Day 6: Engage another Commenter in Discussion
This activity links to an earlier one where we had to leave a question when we made a comment. I didn’t leave a comment specifically for this Day because if I do want to know more about a post I will leave a question and then discuss further if I need.
Day 7: Reflect on What You’ve Learned so Far
The Three things I have learned so far in this challenge are:
- that I should leave comments more often no matter how brief because bloggers appreciate feedback.
- that all bloggers love to have feedback on their posts so that they know it is being read and in leaving comments we are really thanking that person for their thoughts on a particular subject.
- that there are many educators with so much to offer – I wish I had more time!!
Day 8: Comment on a blog outside of your niche
This is a task I will come back to later.
Day 9: Should We Be Commenting on Blogs?
I only have to see the excitement of my students when they have comments left from their peer bloggers to know that feedback is such an important part of blogging. The reason I started blogging with my class was to provide an authentic purpose and audience for their writing and also to give their families the opportunity to view what we do in class. Comments provide a way for this feedback to be recorded and seen by the class.
Day 10: Do a Comment Audit on Your Own Blog
The reason I have very few comments on this blog is because firstly people do not know it is here and I have deliberately not made many links to this blog yet as I only started the blog at the beginning of this challenge and have not yet made any other posts. My primary blog is still my class blog and we receive many comments on the blog from other classes and students. It was at this time that I talked more about comments with my students and challenged them to leave comments at three blogs that they hadn’t visited before.
Day 11: Write a Blog Comment Policy
On my class wikispace I have our class blogging rules which we kept fairly simple. There is one rule about being positive when commenting. I think I will go back to this page and separate the blogging rules and make a separate section for commenting rules.
Day 12: Make Sure Your Blog Technology is “Comment Friendly”
I don’t think I have ever not been able to leave a comment on a blog but there have been a few occasions since starting this challenge where I have left a comment but was not able to tag it to the challenge.
Day 13: Write a Blog Post Using Comments
This is another task for the “too hard basket”. I have a student teacher in my class and time is scarce. I will post this one later.
Day 14: Turn Your Blog Over to Your Readers
For this activity I have decided to use my class blog and will get my students to “write” the blog by leaving comments.
Day 15: Give a Comment Award
Each week I give one or two of my students a blogging award. It may be for a great post, a thoughtful post, for comments they have left for their classmates or something else to do with their blogging. So this week my blogging award will be to those students who left the most thoughtful or interesting comments that I challenged them to do on Day 10.
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