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.

Around the block: built form, art and nature

This is going to be a quickie post just to introduce the slideshow. I've linked to the photo album at Picasa Web Albums (rather than included a movie) so you can view them on demand. Just move your mouse over the image and click. You'll then be taken to the Album at Picasa.

Yesterday was chilly and the sun came and went. Winter is hard - the sun is low in the sky and there is no pretty foliage on the exotic trees - just long shadows and eucalypts.

Around the block 25 and 26 June 2011

The art exhibition at C3 was a total surprise: I hope interiors are accepted in this round the block challenge! I usually drop in to C3 at the Convent on the way back from yoga so it's a legitimate trail. I was totally blown away by 'Numan' and 'Hanging Garden' and little Angelina obliged to lend these installations perspective. She was equally intrigued and engaged with them. Thanks Greg and Angelina.

The street art is a mere fraction of the public creativity around here. I'd like to snap more on another walk.

Finally I cheated: the coffee was 'created' in Carnegie later after a countery at the Rosstown. And the little creatures were 'sunbaking' on my back window sill, originally from Hermannsburg, they crave some solar radiation in this hard winter...

Flippin' Video for Dummies Part 2

When you're presenting a video to a formal gathering like an AGM, it's a good idea to run it from your PC hard drive rather than from the internet. So just copy it to your USB stick and remember to grab the CORRECT one as you leave home that morning...

And just in case the USB stick malfunctions - or you take the wrong one - arrrrgh! put a copy of your precious video in the cloud at Dropbox. In the unlikely event that you've taken the wrong USB stick, you can simply download your flippin' video from Dropbox.

Allow plenty of time for this download process. How much time? you may ask. About 3 flippin' hours for a 350 MB video. That's right. The download finished about 15 minutes after the end of the AGM.

When all else fails, ask someone at home to peddle over and hand deliver the correct USB stick (as long as you live within 20 minutes of your workplace). It works a treat.

Postscript: now if you absolutely have to play (another) video directly from the internet, play it through before your guests arrive, so it will play without interruption (buffering) on demand. And NEVER navigate away from that particular web page or else all that preparation was a waste of time!

Flippin' Video uploading for Dummies

Spent most of the weekend trying to upload a 'little' video to one of the hosting sites available for our work wiki.

What a smorgasbord! I felt like Goldielocks.

There's Teachtube - just for education - perfect! Except they only accept videos smaller than 100MB and there's my Latest Favourite - Vimeo a 'respectful community of creative people'. It's quick and cute but unfortunately only takes videos up to 500MB, or is that 600MB? I dunno and don't care because the video in question is 689MB.

So I cast my eye around to blip.tv which I seem to have used before (I've got videos floating everywhere in the cloud, it seems). You can grow old waiting for videos to upload at blip.tv and there is poor communication on their side when they spit the dummy after 2 hours and a big zero has uploaded.

I googled Best free video hosting sites and nearly fell for Viddler - it's got great interactive tagging and comments facilities which I might eventually use. But luckily I watched all their talking head how-to videos before going through another lengthy sign-up process and found a limit of 500MB for those too stingy or poor to pay.

Well, what about Youtube? I hear you ask. Unfortunately whilst they seem to accept anything, there's no privacy controls, and many of my students have a healthy contempt for having their faces appearing all over the net. So I think I'll just go back to the Flippin' software and split the finished product into Part 1 and Part 2, thereby getting around the limitations of free hosting sites.

Spiders, mushrooms, old ghosts and new forests

Mushrooms, spiders, old ghosts and new forests from Jill Koppel on Vimeo.

...and the story of the Church of the Lake at Nagambie.

It was delightful Autumn weather for the Easter break spent at Moyhu. The orb weavers were out in force, just like back in 1992 (?) when you couldn't walk anywhere without waving a big stick ahead to clear a path through the invisible webs.

Everywhere new, lush growth.

A few jobs were undertaken and then a trip back to Melbourne via Nagambie to drop in on a chap in Heathcote.

A night out in ACDC Lane

A night out in ACDC Lane from Jill Koppel on Vimeo.
What does a cheesy Country ballad have to do with Flinders Lane cutting-edge street art? Probably just that the audio track was one of only two that I have of Dale Watson in my itunes collection, from the compilation album Ten in Texas. And I was keen to get the photos out to those who love our Dale. Of course, being the amateur photographer that I am, I missed a golden opportunity to snap Dale chatting with his fans outside in the break: I could've got him in the foreground with one of those artworks. Never mind, I got some fresh air and a close look at the finely tailored jacket that he was sporting.

The Cherry Bar was packed with punters: the air was hot and stuffy, and the oldies were jammed up on the benches round the sides with a perfect view of the band over the tops of the heads of the smart young things with coiffed hairdos like Dale's.

I tried to keep track of the set list - jotting down scraps of lyrics from the chorus of each song so I could google them later. At least his lyrics are understandable: whether it's truckin' and texting, crying into his whiskey/ tequila or beer or sharing his love and loss with us all. And the crowd was extremely appreciative - a lot had been to Austin (or so they claimed, in answer to his query).

The band was jumping - Chris Crepps on upright bass, new fiddle player Don Raby, Don Pawlak, pedal steel guitar and Mike Bernal, drums.

While I hunt around for those song titles, I'll post this for currency...

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...