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.

The Dance of the E-Learning Objects

It's all coming together like a great musical that many people have been rehearsing for weeks: some playing instruments, some singing or acting, some building sets.

Thanks Vlad B at flickr

Everyone thinking 'how the hell can we combine all the different strands to create a thing of such beauty and complexity as this?'

For most of this year, I cursed the imac for not doing what I was used to. But I'll postpone a situation analysis on the imac for a later entry.

The e-mentor project presented challenges to 'talk the walk' amongst the e-leaders and travellers. But what is the walk? What's the best way to use a bunch of Web2 tools with our students in an environment where access to the internet is never assured, where you never know from one day to the next if the necesssary plug-ins /add-ons are available to run audio and video. And the students' computer literacy is inconsistent and patchy.

Last year (or was in 2008?) I set up the CNLCTalks wiki to be shared by ESL and ALBE classes to both showcase students' oracy work and as an internet hub for learning resources. I drew inspiration mainly from Dale Pobega's blog and Rosa's podcasts st St George TAFE in Sydney.

We had some early modest success, mainly in uploading audios from the Communications 3 group, and storing audio/ video / screencasts for ESL classes and computer classes. We also put a pdf of the latest students' RAW Newsletter there, though I doubt if anyone actually accesses it in this way. But I really felt that the wiki is under-utilised by both students and staff. Even I have had ups and downs with collecting student-centred content and with sourcing and uploading resources.

However recently a few things have fallen nicely into place. And we're pretty close to running a dress rehearsal (returning to the opening analogy).

The adoption and integration of digital audio is a rough road to travel: operating mp3 players, file management, editing (simply) in Audacity have all presented challenges. Even now we continue to do battle with the Voice recorder in Voxopop and are considering the move to a Pro Easi-speak microphone to ease the transition (for teachers especially).

However, I'm convinced the discovery of ipadio and phone blogging is a breakthrough for generating teacher-produced podcasts and recording students both in and beyond the classroom.

And the other day I finally incorporated Dropbox so that my Netbook and imac finally share files - like a separated couple who begrudgingly communicate now via a mediator! So now I don't need to take the mp3 player home to copy files to the Netbook. And the extra memory stick I recently bought can be mothballed. With 3 copies of a particular file (doc/ mp3) in 3 different places, I can update in any of these places and know that it is quietly working in the background to update the other copies too. Wow - an app that actually works for me (not the other way around!)

It's time to revisit the question: where are we heading and with what resources and tools? And we're in a good place to re-position ourselves, our tools and resources for the future.