How Nerdy Are You?

I was surfing the net trying to occupy myself and came across this - good for a giggle. An online test of nerdiness - apprarently I'm a Dorky High Nerd!

31 Day Comment Challenge - Self Audit

Ok, so I'm later doing this then I intended as the technology in my house decided to have a disagreement with the internet yesterday. Having spent 6 - 7 hours wrestling with it last night, I finally sorted it out this morning.

Right, so now that's off my chest I'm ready to begin my "self audit".

How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?
Once per week on a good week, sometimes not at all. Often I comment in my head, but never quite get round to committing it to writing. So why don't I comment more often? Because I can't think of anything to add to what has been said already, because I worry that what I have to say will seem light weight compared to some of the other comments I have read, because I really admire the blogs author and don't want to write something that makes me sound like a ninny (how teenage of me), or because I get hit by a wave of overwhelming shyness and just can't convince myself to write anything. Reading all that it would seem that I have a fear of being judged by others! Thinking about it, the blogs I comment on the most are those where I have developed some form of relationship with the blogs author (usually via Twitter) which means I feel "safe" so it is less of a risk. Hmmmm interesting. What do others think? Do you tend to stick to "safe" blogs or do you venture out with confidence?



Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?
Not usually. From time to time I will click to be updated via email if I am particularly interested in a discussion and where it is going, otherwise no. Since beginning the challenge I have signed up for cocomment and after ironing out a few things I seem to be able to track my comments via my blog using the cocomment widget in my sidebar.


Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?
Mostly the same blogs, there are some I visit quite regularly. I do try to push myself to comment on blogs that I haven't done before, maybe only a couple per month, but I guess that's a start. That's part of the reason for my involvement in this challenge as I know this is an area that needs work.

Gina Trapini's Guide To Blog Comments"

Click on the link above if you would like to read Gina Trapini's " tips on better blog commenting. How do I measure up?

Stay on Topic
So the basic idea behind this one is to keep your ideas relevant to the blog post you are commenting on. I definitely do this, I don't tend to deviate with random thoughts when leaving a comment.

Contribute new information to the discussion
So do I leave comments if I can't think of anything to add that would enhance the conversation? Well no (as I have already mentioned), but, "conversation" is the key word here. I'm not sure that all blogs I read and their related comments are always a conversation as such. Sometimes they are simply sharing something someone has done, discovered, etc and not necessarily some form of "deeper" conversation. I might be wrong (or more to the point you might disagree) but it's just a thought I had. Point of interest, I must be a glutton for punishment then, or really conscientious as Gina Trapini's post" says:
"The longer a comment thread the more likely someone has already said what you're thinking, and the less likely it is to be read by future visitors anyway."
I ALWAYS read all the comments so that I can get a well rounded picture of all the thoughts and opinions being offered on a topic. Sometimes there are gems hidden in the murky depths. Should someone feel that they shouldn't add their voice to the conversation because there are so many others involved? If this happens what gems might be lost?

Don't comment for the sake of commenting
I certainly don't. Do people really leave "First" as a comment? Well that's a new one on me - why would you?


Know when to comment and when to e-mail
Now this is an interesting one, I definitely agree. Here's a thought though, what if there is no way to email because no link is provided? Then again, would these types of conversation be the ones you would have with those you know a lot better then some of your other commenters? If that was the case they'd probably know how to contact the blog author by email, so no issue then.


Remember that nobody likes a know-it-all.
Something I suffered from as a child, something I try to avoid when leaving comments now as an adult. That said, isn't being a "know it all" subjective? Does what I consider being a "know it all" necessarily reflect what someone else considers being one? Does it in fact depend on ones frame of reference, cultural norms, etc? - Am I being one now? ;)

Make the tone of your message clear
I certainly try to, I've been aware for a long time that misunderstandings are more likely in written conversation. Though, I'm not sure if I always want to leave smilies in my comments - I think this might depend on the tone of the blog/post itself. It would also depend again on that "relationship" with the blog's author that I mentioned earlier.

Own your comment
I do. I don't post anonymously. I always leave my gmail and blog address if the option is available.


Be succinct
Hmmmm? Mostly I keep it brief, BUT, occasionally my responses to topics I feel passionate about have got a little too long. Sometimes I don't think I've written much as it doesn't look that big in the little text box... then you hit submit! Opps, did I really write that much? Can't take it back once it's gone. I might have to work on that one.

Cite your sources with links or inline quoting
I do my best. I don't often write the types of comments where I need to do this though, it's more a blog post thing.

Be courteous
Always. Sometimes I might respectfully disagree, but I'm always polite.

Don't post when you're angry, upset, drunk or emotional
Don't really drink so that's not going to happen. If something I've read angers or upsets me I tend to rant at my long suffering husband about it. If I'm feeling emotional about something else I'm more likely to surf iTunes then surf blogs - so no, I don't post when I'm in a negative head space.


Do not feed or tease the troll
What's a troll? I'm not sure I totally got that one, I sort of do...I think. I take it this isn't the cute kind with the funny faces and sticky up hair then?

And if you are part of The Comment Challenge remember to add the ” comment08 ” tag to your post.

31 Day Comment Challege - Behind Already!

Why Participate?

I've signed up for the 31 Day Comment Challenge in the interests of pushing myself outside my comfort zone. I was thinking the other day how funny it is that despite the relative safety of your online persona, my shyness still leaks through. I'm not sure if that last sentence quite makes sense, but essentially what I'm getting at is that even though I'm not engaging in a face to face conversation my inhibitions often stop me from leaving a comment.

Then, on the flip side of this is the fact that I love to get comments and feedback from others. In part I blog for myself as a way of jotting down my thoughts and ideas for future reference. However, I also blog hoping that what I have to say will be of some use (or at least interest) to others - kind of a combination of my love of sharing my learning/resources and my frustrated inner author. Comments from others shows that you are not merely talking to yourself.

With this in mind I decided I needed to be involved with this challenge in order to give myself the "push" I need to comment with greater regularity - to both build my confidence and to ensure that I am giving others the type of feedback that I enjoy receiving myself.


Photo from Flickr uploaded on October 3 2006 by Memotions licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence.

Behind Already

Now the challenge runs from the 1st to the 31st of May. As it is the 4th, I'm already 4 days behind! I plead the fact that I had to get organised for the start of the new school term tomorrow. I was having to resist the urge to log in and work on the challenge tasks.

Now, this already illustrates the power in being involved in a challenge like this (at least for me) as my natural "girly swottiness" means that I feel compelled to complete the required tasks and make sure they are done on time. Which is not to say that this is some form of strictly regimented "thou shalt" type of a task, after all my participation is purely voluntary. I think what it is though,is the fact that you have signed up for something that others are also involved in and you just know that you want to do it properly and do it justice.

I also feel that it is important to participate fully and to the best of my ability as this is the best thanks I can think of for all the hard work Sue, Kim, Silviaand Michele have put into getting this challenge up and running.


Logo created by Christine Martell

Daily Tasks

So today I have 4 tasks to complete. One I have already done - Sign up for a Comment Tracking Service. I did this as soon as I signed up for the challenge and have set up an account at Cocomment. This will allow others participating in the challenge to track my comments.

I have to leave a comment on a blog I have never commented on before, which I shall do soon as there are plenty of blogs that I read that I have yet to leave comments for.

I have to leave a comment on another blog post that asks a question in order encourage conversation/dialogue between myself, the blog author and other readers. That I shall do soon too.

Finally, I have to complete a "commenting self-audit" which I think I shall do as a separate post as this one is getting quite long enough already.

So I'm off to complete my self-audit and start on my path towards improving my commenting on blogs - both my own and those of others. I'm looking forward to the challenge, the fun of participating, the new skills I hope to develop, the new online acquaintances I hope to meet and the reinforcing of my current online relationships.

And don't forget, if you are part of The Comment Challenge remember to add the comment08 tag to your post.

Encouraging Self Reflection and Thoughtful Decision Making.

Not the most attention grabbing title, but I promised Amanda I would blog about this and I was determined to get it done before I went to bed tonight (which is now this morning).

We’re in the middle of our school holidays right now, but about 3 weeks before the end of term my class spent a week creating advertisements about themselves. They were required, as part of our Team 5 integrated topic “Advertising Me” to create a television type commercial. This commercial had to have a jingle and some form of catch phrase. It was suggested that they use Movie Maker to create their advert. I was concerned that Movie Maker would be too complex for some of these children, especially as we had a very short time frame to complete their advertisements in and many of the children were unfamiliar with the programme.

After sharing the task requirements with them, I asked the children which software they felt would be the most useful to create their advertisements and they came up with 3 possibilities

• Movie Maker

• Photo Story

• Power Point

We had 2 full days and 3 half days available to us in the ‘Discovery Centre’ (our school’s tech suite) so I knew our time was limited. Prior to going to the Discovery Centre the children had spent a couple of weeks working out their slogan, writing their jingle and story boarding & scripting their advertisements. We had also viewed several examples of television advertisements and had developed our own criteria for what would make a good advertisement.

Our first session arrived and I had made the decision to take things up a notch. I could have made the decision as to which software they would use and tell them they were all going to use it. However, as I believe in challenging my kids and encouraging them to think for themselves/ use problem solving strategies, I decided to give them the choice. In order to make an informed choice I felt it was important to provide the children with an opportunity to simply play, explore, experiment with each of the programmes so that they could see the potential and pitfalls for themselves.

The children were asked to create a mini movie about a recent class trip or a story they had written. I had folders with pictures suitable for both possibilities set up on the intranet ready to go. All they had to do was to recreate their mini movie 3 times – once in Power Point, once in Photo Story and once in Movie Maker. They spent the day working on their movies, calling each other over to come and look or to help with suggestions and solutions. I kept myself moving around the room asking questions and encouraging them to think about the pluses and minuses of each tool.

At the end of the day I asked the children to gather together in their “table groups” (groups of 4 that they regularly work with) and discuss & record the pluses and minuses of each programme. They then had to make a decision as to which particular programme they were going to use for their advert. As each advert was an individual piece they could all choose something different if they wished. They had some interesting opinions (Click on the image of the table below and it will take you to a larger version that you can read).




Now this was the first time they had been asked to do something like this and they were mostly 9 years old, but I think they did well for a first time. This is certainly something I will continue to encourage during the year. For most of these children their only previous independent experience had been with Power Point. They’d watched me create a quick movie for our “Voices of the World” contribution on Photo Story, but hadn’t used it before. I was very careful not to influence their decisions by telling them which programme I thought would be best for this particular task (Photo Story) so it was interesting to see what they thought. In fact, about two thirds of them opted for Power Point – the main reason being that they were familiar with it and they liked the pretty backgrounds and the whiz bang effects. About 5 of them picked Photo Story and only 2 chose to use Movie Maker. There are 27 kids in my class in total.

The children spent the remainder of the week working on their creations. This included taking photos or short video clips and putting it all together to create their advert. Many of the children started to re-evaluate their original choices as the week progressed, especially when they found the tool they had selected was not able to do what they needed it to do, or it did it, but not in the way they wanted. This was particularly true for the children who had opted to use Power Point. Most of them persevered with their existing choice though, some saying they would use something else next time, others saying that they still preferred Power Point despite the fact they were unable to do all the things they needed to in order to meet class criteria. A couple of them wanted to transfer their Power Points to Photo Story so they could use the features available through that programme, so I taught them how to save their whole slide show as a set of jpegs so they could import them into Photo Story. (As an aside I felt they adverts created using a combination of programmes ended up being the best examples produced. The children were able to take advantage of some of the best features of both programmes).

Finally we had our class viewing session and adverts were assessed by self, peer and teacher review according to the criteria we originally set. The final task I set for the children was to complete an evaluation of the whole process and product. I asked them to say which programme they used, did it do what they wanted it to – they had to explain their response and would they choose a different programme next time & why? Here are some of the responses:
“I would stay with Power Point because I find the other ones hard to use.”
‘I think I would use Movie maker next time for a bit of a challenge”
‘I would rather use Movie Maker or Photo Story next time because they have more features.”
“I would use Photo Story again because if you want to go back and fix something you do not delete your progress.”
“I would choose a different one so I could learn.”
“I would maybe probably use Photo Story next time because I think personally it’s the best.”
“I would use Movie Maker because you can put in movies you have recorded.”
“I used Power Point because I was familiar with it and I would use it again because there was nothing else I needed.”

I found this whole week to be an interesting and useful learning experience for both the children and myself. They have covered several curriculum areas and have been required to use problem solving strategies and be reflective about their use of technology as well as the other aspects of the unit. I can’t wait to see the progressions they make as we move through the school year

Just because... a bit of light relief.

Had to share this simply because it amused me. (Plus I love the Sound of Music - sad but true). All that aside, if you listen carefully the educational advice aspect is very true and worth considering. Don't forget to sing along.

Flock

I'm just playing with my Flock web browser as I explore the possibilities of this social networking based tool. Technically speaking, if this actually works, pressing the "publish" button should send this to my blog. I guess we need to see what happens.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Wohoo! It worked :) I added this after it uploaded by signing in to edit though Blogger like I normally do. This could prove to be a very useful tool. I already like the fact that I can follow Facebook, Twitter and Flickr via my Flock browser. I can also subscribe to and follow RSS feeds for blogs I want to keep an eye on. If I click on my favourites button it automatically adds it to my del.icio.us account - very cool. There are a few other neat features that I still need to play with, I'll keep you posted.

Playing Again

Just had a play with Bookr and made this. I thought I might use it for our "Wild New Zealand" unit next term. Very cool to be able to make a "book" with pages that turn. I also like the fact that it is embeddable.



I seem to "play" online a lot. Not that I think this is a bad thing, I personally feel that the best way to learn to use new technology is to take the time to play and explore. By playing you can come to grips with how something works. It also enables you to identify the pitfalls and possibilities. The more you play, the more ideas you start to generate for uses in the classroom.

Twitter - it works for me.

I think one of the best things about being a connected learner/educator (and I count myself as both - I am learning so much) is the global connections I am able to make. I am building my Twitter network, working towards regular blog posts and avidly reading and following the blogs of other educators. I also belong to a couple of nings (links in sidebar). Twitter for me really has been the most powerful social networking tool. I know I have probably said it before, but it really has made a huge difference to me, both personally and professionally. When I try to explain what it is to others I tend to get funny looks or comments like, "Well what's the point?" I am also aware that there are some out there in cyber space who also see little value in it.
Those I follow through Twitter are all educators and this is where it really works for me. I am able to follow, share with, learn from and connect with like minded others in a form of self driven PD. Twitter has broadened my knowledge of the educational potential available through net based 2.0 tools. I can see what others are doing with their classes and even organise for my children to participate in global collaborative projects.
Last night was a perfect example of why Twitter works for me. My class are soon to be producing video commercials for their "Advertising Me" unit and I was searching for useful ways to teach them about camera angles. I put out a tweet asking if anyone knew of any sites or resources - I figured that maybe someone would see and I might get a reply. In a matter of minutes I'd had responses from several people, for a range of different sites relating to my query. I was stoked! needless to say, my class had a wonderful time today exploring the links and developing a really solid understanding of terms like close up, mid shot, panning, worms eye view, etc.
The second neat thing (well for me anyway) that occurred last night came just as I was thinking about closing the laptop and trotting off to bed. Suzie Vesper and Sujokat both sent out tweets asking if anyone wanted to try out WiZiQ. I didn't even know what it was but thought ,"why not?" What followed was half an hour of mirth, merriment and good old fashioned fun as we played with this. It was neat to hear people's voices, especially as they are all people I "talk"(read as type/write) to online, but have never met in person. I also got an opportunity to explore a tool for collaboration and presentations that I would other wise have had no knowledge of . My mind is already churning over the possibilities - I even jokingly suggested to another teacher this morning that you could teach from home if you were sick as you'd be able to hear the class, talk to them, share files with them and write up info for them. They could do the same for you at home. (Don't worry I'm not quite that bad...yet!)
The net result of my experiences last night was that while I got a few hours less sleep then I should have, I had expanded my horizons, made connections, interacted with others and felt a real sense of community and belonging.

Social Bookmarking

Came across this in my web wanderings today. I thought it explained Social Bookmarking very clearly. Posted on Slideshare by heyjude.

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Meme: Passion Quilt

I've been tagged twice!! Once by Nedra and once by Allanah to participate in the Passion Quilt Meme created by Miguel Gulhin. Thank you for tagging me, I still get a kick out of the fact that other people are reading my blog too.
I knew what I was passionate about, the trick was finding a picture that actually represented what I was trying to convey. After looking a pictures of people of various ages, technological devices, signs, etc - I finally found these guys. To me they have a look of wide eyed curiosity and I know from my own cats that cats are constantly exploring and discovering their world, taking risks, problem solving and persevering until they achieve their desired result. I wanted to convey one of my main aims as a teacher and life long learner and for me this picture says it all.


Here are the rules:

1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

I now tag the following 5 people:
Toni Twiss
Rachel Boyd
jlietze
Sarnee
Jane Nicholls