Blog blog blog Blah Blah blah

Blogging has its attractions for many of us who have something to write, and, hopefully, some sort of an audience out there in the ether. I started this particular blog with an idea to simply try out this medium: but what content and which audience?

Initially it was going to be driven by my interest in the local area: planning and environment issues associated with this fascinating locality - an inner-suburb on the edge of hectares of Yarra parklands and the buzzing cultural life of the inner North.

But this did not really eventuate: it's a blog with one voice and I had little to contribute for an audience of family and friends.

It eventually proved to be very handy for posting short reports whilst travelling and linking photo albums at Picasa. It was working successfully for me but not for my readers. They didn't seem to get it! I emailed the link regularly with instructions for clicking the 'photo to take you to the linked album'. Even my nearest and dearest either didn't bother or couldn't work it out!

Interestingly, when I finally caught up with an interstate friend who had subscribed, he provided insightful feedback: 'we didn't like it because it was too impersonal' - so that 'public voice' I had adopted was not compelling for friends and family: not enough personal stuff - the stuff I don't like reading in blogs!

I prefer this blog to be an avenue for reflection on my experience of e-technologies for use in teaching and learning. Not an e-portfolio but an e-scrapbook.

I've decided to leave music and concert reviews to the professionals and the DIYers who are much more dedicated (and talented) than me. See No Depression for an impressive and gigantic blogging community (I didn't realise it was a NING when I joined - I thought I was subscribing - must remove myself!)

My friend, Cara, starts a Wordpress blog

More recently, after years of postponing the development of a website for our local residents' association, I decided, as unpaid secretary of such, I would take the plunge and start a blog. I chose Wordpress, rather than Blogger, because it seemed more sophisticated, emulating a website with multiple pages and other publishing possibilities. My experience confirmed all this - I still find Blogger clunky. And the Wordpress site is humming with activity.

Admittedly, I promote it to a large email contacts list and publicise each blog post on our Facebook account. We've had a significant number of contributions in the form of Comments on posts (I moderate for a modicum of civility rather than agreement) and one other contributor (the most controversial blog post, so far). I'm encouraging others in the group to find their voice and expect their engagement might increase over the next few months as they follow the trajectory in Viewing stats.

So - why have a class blog?

The adult ESL group I see twice a week are writing reports and narratives of (theoretically) 200-300 words. They are also expected to develop basic computer literacy - email, browser and Word skills. There is a wiki for students, ostensibly to showcase their oral work (podcasts and videos), and photos from events and excursions, and to be a hub for course content (including links to other online language learning resources and websites). The wiki is closed to the centre's community given students' reluctance to have their images and work publicly available.

I decided that it is not feasible to attempt to teach students to edit the wiki. They could have their own pages but there are administrative workload implications (for me) and we just don't see them often enough for them to gain the minimum skills to become wiki-workers. So how could they publish their writing and share it with others?

What's 'Posterous' in Turkish?

Well, actually, it's not really a 'word' in English so you won't find it in your bilingual dictionary (in fact, I'm not sure if 'blog' is in your dictionary either...)

I chose Posterous for the class blog because:

1. You can simply email your Post to the web address and it's therefore dirt simple to 'post'.
2. I hadn't seen the various Matrix instruments developed to aid you, with scientific precision,  to choose the best fit blog app for your purpose.
3. It seemed very easy to sign up a bunch of bloggers (they can even have their own blog with the same account as well). I was wrong - at best, it's idiosyncratic, ie weird...
4. Retrospectively, I've noticed that Replies have as much prominence as the original post and that whenever someone replies to a post, the post appears at the top of the hierarchy (so the posting order reflects the reply activity) thereby giving replies added prominence.
5. The author of each contribution (including replies) can be readily identified by their photo avatar.

Early impressions have been mixed:

• students are having trouble remembering their email and passwords (yes, it will develop important digital literacy skills in remembering passwords and practising ruthless accuracy in typing them);
• Students complain of receiving too many email notifications (one for every post and reply, it seems) - we'll have to turn that particular feature off in each of their settings);
• they're mixing up the email address (@posterous) with the web address (.posterous);
• one person got assistance from her computer teacher who kindly uploaded her Word document into Scribd and then embedded it as a reply to someone else's post - when all that was needed was a copy and paste from the Word doc into an email! (We want to teach them to fish not procure the fish for them via some circuitous route);
• the theme or interface is a little unexciting and confusing (thinking about improvements....)

Early emerging benefits and unexpected applications, include:

• students are engaging with each other's work using a Web2 application in a social way: ie. publishing, clicking 'like' to show that they've read someone else's work, giving feedback via replies;

• the whole class can undertake 'writing workshops' by viewing a post together (via projector) and suggesting changes to fix errors and improve written expression;
• teacher can provided immediate feedback via Reply and has Administrator privileges enabling her (me!) to highlight and/ or correct errors, or draw students' attention to model usage of a particular language structure;
• a body of evidence is being collected (without bothering about printing and filing) for assessment purposes; 
• teacher can start a topic for discussion and students can all contribute a reply;
• other teachers can subscribe and/or become contributors (thereby promoting the blog as a legitimate form of online communication amongst the centre's community of students and teachers (can't wait for that one!); and
• we can 'mine' the posts in order to publish some in the periodic Reading and Writing newsletter (rather than file pieces of paper - for the editor to type up - in a folder on the mantelpiece).

I'm pleased to say that the above list is even more comprehensive than that I read today at Free Technology for Teachers.

Fun with the Flip

In the last few days I've filmed an ESL class (more on that later) and worked out how to trim (top and tail) video clips made by the work Flip camera. Here's a short video compiled with Flipshare software on the imac. I've given up using the netbook because the software started behaving badly when trying to open it there.

Yarra River in flood from Jill Koppel on Vimeo.

The floods video will be preserved for posterity: next drought we'll be able to view it again and again to admire the abundant waters. I really like the effect of the raindrops on the image.

Pan and zoom should be undertaken very slowly otherwise those predisposed to motion sickness might start feeling queasy.

Whilst I was filming Toni's Hands on English class I fortuitously worked out how to prevent the Two Touch smartboard from doing crazy things on the PC when writing on the projected image. Most of us are using the Two Touch at least to go to the internet and operate the PC by touching the board. But if you want to write something anywhere on the active area, it would inadvertently activate the PC. All you have to do is pull out the USB plug thereby disconnecting the whiteboard from the PC and Bobs your uncle! Problem solved. Just don't forget to reconnect when resuming 'touching'.

Here's the video from Toni's class: it was a little chaotic, especially when our student 'expert' told us we were folding wrongly. But that just gives us more 'language opportunities' for the follow-up class...

Hands on English at CNLC Making lotus flower from Jill Koppel on Vimeo.

The compilation process is amazingly simple. I chose vimeo to host these - it seems hassle-free and it's private (compared to Youtube).

By the way, did you hear that Youtube Facebook and Twitter have joined forces to make a mega company? It's gonna be called YouTwitFace...