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:

1. 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.
2. I started University as a Music Education student but decided that I preferred to be a classroom teacher after my first teaching practice.
3. 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!
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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!
7. 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!

Kirsten Anderson McGhie

Suzie Vesper

Judy Weggelaar

Grace Kat

Joe Dale

Paul Reid

Lenva Shearing

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.