Mobile Technology in TAFE

While some might feel a sense of relief because the tough slog of the blogging challenge is completed with the final ride down that last steep hill across the finish line, I feel immensely sadness because working together as community for this 31 Day Blogging challenge has been extraordinary.

So this is my last update of daily tasks for the challenge.

Day 27 - Find a Sponsor for Your Blog

YEAH - don’t need to do this task as I am not interested in making money from my blog.

Progress = Completed

Day 28 - What is Your Blog’s Mission Statement

Cool, YEAH, I have also done this in my post Been Wondering What My Blog is All About? Read On. This is what I said “I am about practical application of technologies in education, and most importantly HELPING OTHERS”.

Progress = Completed

Day 29 - Email a Blogger that Linked to You to Say Thanks

Unbelievable! I am definitely am not rigging these tasks, but whenever possible I send emails to people that link to my different sites. So for me the task is completed.

But more important, I must say it was nice to receive such a lovely email from Eklavya (The Indian Blogger) today who thanked me for all the support during this challenge. A pleasure Eklavya I have enjoyed reading your posts and look forward to your future posts.

Progress = Completed

Day 30 - Explore a Social Media Site

Social networking sites are very important to me. WHY, because if you truly want to exchange KNOWLEDGE, INFORMATION and CONNECT WITH OTHERS that share common interests than you need to make time to participate in these communities.

Here is a list of a few that I belong to:

• Twitter - mine
• Facebook
• EduBloggerWorld - mine
• Linked In - mine
• classroom20.ning.com - mine

Social network sites are about interacting with each other, getting to know the individual’s on a more personal level and making connections. Here is where the personalities of individuals truly comes to the surface. When people are able to connect with you on a personal level there is more chance they will interact with you. They also provide another avenue for people, who share similar interests, to connect with you.

Our networks are really personal to us; and individuals will have preferences for different social network sites. My favourite at the moment is Twitter. I know there are a lot of people that, are not into twitter, all I have to say is where else can you post a question to a global audience and get almost instant feedback. Note it is fun to have the occasional rant in twitter as well!

Progress = Completed

Day 31 - Run a SWOT Analysis on Your Blog

BUGGER! #@! Honestly Darren I was on the home run, and with one hr to go to achieve the tasks in 31 days and you add this one on the last day, a steep bloody uphill before the finish line!!!!!

Well here goes - will I get it done before midnight?

1. Define Your Mission and Goals see above

2. List Your Blog’s Strengths

What attributes does your blog have that will help you to achieve your blog’s goals? - numerous posts on technology use in education, helpful advice and good Step-by-Step pictures on how to use applications.

What does your blog have going for it? A person who is committed to help others and always looking for self improvement!

What are you good at as a blogger? Motivating others to want to participate in the online world and inspiring them to use technologies with their students

What resources and assets do you have at your disposal? Great friends

What do you do better than anyone else? Being me!

3. List Your Blog’s Weaknesses

What attributes does your blog have that are holding you back from achieving it’s goals?

What skills do you not have as a blogger? Language is not my strength, which is why I am better known as a podcaster. Find it hard to write concisely!

What is ‘broken’ on your blog or in your workflow? This question? Not sure what it is really saying.

What could or should you improve about your blog? Add Subscribe to my RSS feed at the bottom of each post. Create a to-do-list based on what I have learnt from the 31 Day Project that I can refer back to for continuous improvement. From all my reading of posts this month, need to make the first sentence of every paragraph count!

What should you probably avoid in your blogging? Long posts
What is distracting you from your goals? Sleep! Work full time, with 2 kids and several websites.

4. List Your Blog’s Opportunities

What external things could/are helping you achieve your blog’s goals? Connections that I have made through interacting in social networks. Podcasting opens doors, and gives me access to people that previously I might not have been able to interview.

What trends are there in your blog’s niche that you could explore on your blog? WOW what isn’t there, mlearning, mobile technologies and web 2.0 are exploding. So much to talk about and so little time.

What tools and technologies could you use to improve your blog? MMMmm not sure. Thoughts welcome.

5. List Your Blog’s Threats

What external things could or are hindering you achieving your blog’s goals? Sleep

What are other blogs in your niche doing that could be hindrance to your own blog’s growth? Nothing because in our area it is about helping one another.

So my action plan will be constructed by reviewing the daily tasks from the 31 Day Project, to create a checklist of actions that need to be implemented.

Progress = Completed

31 Day Challenge Progress = Completed

[image by WallyG]

Thanks challenge participants - it has been a fantastic 31 Days!

After being called a True Slogger and being challenged by John Pearce to write yet another blog post, I thought I just had to be one of the first in Australia, and the World, to write a post for BlogDay2007! BlogDay originated from the fact that majority of blog Readers read a very small number of top blogs so lets make an annual day dedicated to discover new blogs and expose them to the world.

My task is to post about 5 new blogs. NOT hard with all the feeds from Technorati and Google Blog Search, on mlearning, elearning and mobile learning, arriving daily in my Google Reader account. However with all these tag feeds, and all the blogs I subscribe to you really have to grab my attention.

Here are my 5 choices for new blogs to expose to the World:

Mike’s Doc Blog

As a lecturer myself, maybe I should not be promoting Mike? However he really grabbed my attention with his post Disappointed. Mike has, a little (to say mildly), shot at poor grammar of one of his new lecturers. His belief was that this bad grammar indicated the person “has no attention to detail, rushes through without checking quality, has a substandard grasp on grammar, and exhibits a lower level of scholarship than is expected at the doctoral level”. [image by inju]

As someone who is a lecturer, and who has difficulties with language herself, I really did feel that perhaps Mike was judging too harshly. Sure if the lecturer was teaching English perhaps, but otherwise Mike my comment to you is don’t confuse language ability with intelligence.

Putting all that aside, full credit to you Mike. I spent considerable time reading, and being engaged, by numerous posts on your blog, and wish I had your writing ability. PS if you visit please be gentle on my grammar

elearning Blog

Lets just start by clarifying that WOW if you were ever wondering, or wanted to name a blog, there are a lot of blogs called elearning Blogs. But full credit to Quintas for grabbing my attention with Death by Video. Being a fish farmer anyone who says “Contemporary business people share one characteristic with gold fish, their concentration span is VERY short” has to rank highly with me although let’s not go there talking about goldfish. Put it this way, I have my own version of 101 ways to skin a cat for goldfish. [Image by sgsteffens]

Clever Learning

Well I have to mentioned Jason Hando, not strictly for his blogging but because this guy is TRULY EVIL as he put me in the Twitter penalty time out box (check the photo at the bottom of the page)! Now that I have mentioned Jason, please return the favor, drop past his blog, and say WRITE ANOTHER POST!

E-Clippings (Learning As Art)

Now Mark does deserve a mention for grabbing both mine and Leonard Low’s attention with his post on Facebook on iPhones.

Now I know a lot of people are considering the uses of Facebook in elearning but my thoughts are:

• Please, come on lets just let them have this network for them to use, socialize and interact within how they choose. Surely it is okay to say this is yours, use it to connect with your fellow classmates how you choose to do so, and if you want to you can connect with me.
• Here is a social network that they can choose to use to link up with us and share more about themselves, outside the learning environment. For example, one of my students posted a picture on my wall saying here Sue look this is what I like to do in my life outside of TAFE. This part of his life I wouldn’t have found out about if it had not been for Facebook.
• Now if we talk mobile devices, yes I have a PDA with phone. Yes, I access mobile Facebook on it but no at the moment I would not expect students to. WHY, because most of them do not have devices that can access the mobile web and the cost. Trust me - I do not use my phone a lot but it is expensive accessing the Internet on it. Besides it is more enjoyable using my PDA to access mobile twitter than Facebook.

blogday

Before I started writing this post this morning I decided to check out Technorati and find out what others are writing about BlogDay. I was totally amazed and blown away to realise that Twitter accounts show up in Technorati. Just goes to prove that I am right - Twitter is shifting blogging to a new phase.

blogday is the Twitter site for following BlogDay2007 post on Twitter, and it is cool watching the posts starting to happen. This has also inspired me to claim my Twitter site with Technorati - just wanted to see what it was like for the fun of it.

TASK = Complete

“People’s interpretations of policy is causing lack of consistency (between States, Territories and organisations) on accessibility to tools for e-practitioners”

[Image by Halan]

Early this week I flew across to Melbourne to participate in a workshop for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework’s VET Network and Firewall Access Research Project to discuss collaborative national solutions to ‘Computer Network and Firewall Access’ issues that are impeding e-learning implementation with IT support and e-practitioners from around Australia.

The idea of the workshop was to:

1. Look at the issues and solutions for computer network access
2. Identify common activities and types desired by e-practitioners to provide documentation to support network people to help applications of these in networks. e.g. information on the functionality of each tools such as Web 2.0, virtual classrooms, browser plugins and VOIP

The first activity of the day was for:

1. IT support to identify their priorities, constraints, managment requirement
2. Practioners to list their desired tools and applications for elearning including why chose, why important and any frustrations with being able to access

As a practitioner I was expected to write each tool/application on a separate piece of paper. For me this required only one sheet because I wanted access to “EVERYTHING” which, in typical practitioner fashion, created excessive work for the IT support on our table who had to write each reason why not on lots of separate pieces of paper.

I have issues with listing desired tools and applications because rapid technology development, especially Web 2.0 applications, means our choices of tools is evolving. For example, a list prepared early 2006 might have excluded Second Life, Twitter, Facebook, Google Talk which we now know have e-learning applications. My concerns are IT support and future e-practitioners may use this list as being “THE LIST.” A document with recommended tools and applications is being prepared for support network people - I hope they include several paragraphs at the beginning of it to highlight the changing and evolving nature of elearning. I would also like where possible the document to link to specific examples of the tools being used.

During the workshop representatives from:

• IT support (Wayne Kufer) provided us with a snapshot of the role of computer networks and firewalls
• AARnet (Guido Aben) discussed broadband access issues and the need for our sector to build our own networks
• E-practioners provided a snapshot of the VET elearning landscape (myself and Michael Coghlan) - I will talk about my own presentation in a different post.

Through out the presentations and activities there was plenty of humorous banter, with individuals expressing their differing view points. Notably opposing view points were often between the practictioners. Those that “advocated the need to use controlled environments, back out of using Web 2.0 tools due to intellectual properties issues and risk of being sued” to those that held the opposite view point. A practitioner did say that issues relating to Web 2.0 use with students needed to be debated more. I managed to hold my tongue but wanted to say issues and concerns of Web 2.0 use is a heavily debated on the blogsphere, make time to reading blog and maybe start voicing your own opinion using a blog.

While there were many at the workshop with a high understanding of the use of the tools and applications, there was many present with minimal exposure to their use. Possibly time should have been taken to showcase the educational use of some of the tools so everyone present had a good understanding of their value.

I also recommend that you read Robyn Jay’s from NSW Learnscope post on this workshop.

Definitely I think that my view points that where possible we should be educating our learners about the appropriate use of technology, rather than preventing access, was contrary to most present. In fact I think that the IT support staff were happy that I am not in their State/Territory. As I said, organisations have to make the decision whether they support e-learning OR NOT - you either want us to INNOVATE or NOT - put too many barriers in the way of people like myself and you might as well forget innovation because it all becomes JUST TOO HARD. Saying that, I agree there needs to be boundaries and the key as was mentioned during the day is “two way dialogue required” - all groups need to understand issues from both points of view

Been doing a bit of “Ask the Leyland Brothers” this year with some traveling of the country side. My latest trip was to Melbourne for two days for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework’s Firewall and Network Security workshop. Unfortunately I am a TAD absent minded when traveling and deserve the “Most Disorganised Traveler of the Year Award!” Hopefully being this disorganised will not earn me time out in the Twitter Box.

Here are my tips for fellow travelers:

Tip #1 - Organise and package bags one day in advance

Tip #2 - Organise YOURSELF before SWITCHING ON PC or you will lose track of time and MAY RUN LATE

Tip #3 - DO hair, makeup and finish packing bags BEFORE ringing for taxi

Tip #4 - DON’T forget your toothbrush!

Tip #5 - Remember to pack book to read on flight

Tip #6 - If buy book at airport, read back of cover properly. NOT good idea to buy a book about plane crash when flying!

Tip #7 - When arrive at hotel check bags and MAKE SURE nothing important missing!

Tip #8 - If you forget hair mouse, hair spray and hair brush - DON’T wash hair and then wonder HOW you are going to DO HAIR - TOO LATE (thankfully this time was able to run across to chemist at airport and buy all these items AFTER washing hair)

Tip#9 - Sit underneath Qantas lounge and you maybe lucky enough to tap into their free wireless

Tip #10 - Better still have FRIEND who is a member of the Qantas lounge, and get invited in for free food, drinks and wireless

Tip #11 - Switch off laptop, and go to facilities, way ahead of boarding time, so in your mad rush you don’t accidentally turn tap wrong way when washing hands and SOAK clothes

Tip #12 - DON’T tell students of your misadventures, as they elaborate on the story to other lecturers

Now just in case you are thinking all this travel, despite me being disorganised, sounds like fun - the following picture shows all I saw of Melbourne (taken from the window of my hotel room at the airport.

However I did have some “What The?” moments in Melbourne:

1. Decided to Blue tooth a document to another PDA. When I searched for the other device, I found “This is God” phone
2. There was a plug for the Internet above the toilet. This definitely confirms my online addiction is not too bad - NO WAY!

Gabriela is an ABSOLUTE LEGEND - she knows what I am an interested in and as a member of my del.icio.us network, she adds bookmarks for web sites to my del.icio.us account that she KNOWS I WILL LIKE. If you are not familar with del.icio.us or want to learn how to use del.icio.us more effectively - check out my Getting Out of Del.icio.us information.

Today she gave me a GEM - Gabriela knows I am a bit crazy about iGoogle (= Google’s personalised homepage - read more about it here!), as I am a self confessed Google-aholic. And she has shared with me the link for Adding “Custom iGoogle Skins” to your iGoogle page. I already use google themes on my homepage, which change during the day but with the Custom iGoogle Skin gadget you can either make your own theme for your personalised homepage OR choose themes (skins) that others have shared, by browsing the most recent or the most popular.

I know it sounds crazy, but the colours and feel of my themes on my iGoogle page do effect my emotions - the right theme has a calming influence. The hardest task with the iGoogle Skin gadget is actually choosing which is most calming.

THANKS Gabriela!

UPDATE

Just discovered that the iGoogle Skins is affecting my Google reader gadget and stripping out all links posts. So I have had to turn off skins - SORRY. However Christine has reported she has installed and is having no ISSUES with it interfering with her Google reader gadget. So I suggest you try for yourself and report back outcomes. If you know a solution, for me, please let me know?

After an extremely made dash out of the door yesterday to catch at plane to the other side of Australia - as taxi pulled up in driveway was still dressing, finishing off doing hair/make up and packing bag because I had spent too long on Internet - I had the lovely pleasure of catching up for dinner with new and old friends, Coach Carole and Michael Coghlan. But it made me realise that with many new visitors to my blog, as a result of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Chocolate Challenge, I thought it was important for my new readers to know more about me and my blog.

I’d also love to get your feedback in comments below to help me keep improving.

With my blog being only 5 months old, I definitely consider myself a new comer to blogging, and am better known as a podcaster, and for my Mobile Technology in TAFE wiki. My sites are all about e-learning, Web 2.0, mlearning (mobile learning), mobile technology and their educational uses, with particular emphasis on vocational educational and training (TAFE means technical and further educaton). You can read more about who I am and my different websites on my About and My Other Sites pages, or check out my window into my blogging world.

Why I Blog

People often wonder, why I willingly share information and help others, my answer is WHY NOT? What am I losing? NOTHING. What do I gain? KNOWLEDGE, INFORMATION, CONNECTIONS WITH OTHERS.

So for those who wonder what Sue Waters stands for - I am about practical application of technologies in education, and most importantly HELPING OTHERS.

On the side issue of helping others, Darren has asked for assistance with postcards from afar for his daughter (her class is trying to get postcards from around the world). I think it such a cool way for the kids to learn about other cultures, so am happy to help, and you can TOO, by sending your own postcards and/or helping me choose which postcard of Western Australia to send. Please leave a comment and tell me which postcard you think I should send (Postcard 1, 2 or 3) - you can check out enlarged versions of these postcards on Flickr.

There are a number of ways of following my blog:

• RSS Feed - one of the most popular ways that people follow what goes up on the blog my ‘rss feed’. This technology lets you subscribe to my site and be notified of updates on a variety of tools such as Google Reader, Bloglines, NetVibes and many other news aggregators and feed readers. If you want to use these to subscribe you’ll need to add this feed.
• Daily Email Updates - if you don’t use RSS you can still get updates sent to you once a day by subscribing to my feed via email. You can do this by entering your email address on this page.

Commenting on my posts

Every blogger loves comments because it is comforting to know we are not talking to ourselves, and comments are the beauty of blogs because they allow readers to comment on what the blogger has written.

To comment my posts:

• Scroll to the bottom of the post you want to comment on and click on the link to “comments.”
• Scroll to the bottom where it says “Leave a Reply“
• Enter your name and email address. If you have a blog or website, you can share that, too.
• Enter the Anti-spam text that appears on the screen. This is simply to make sure that a real human is commenting, rather than a robot.
• Click on the check box below the “Submit Comment” if you want to be notified by email of further comments to this post. A better way to be automatically notified of comments on a bloggers posts is to use co-mment.
• Write your comment in the box and then click on Submit Comment.
• Alternatively you can send me an email.

Energy has been an issue during our Chocolate Challenge of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, but with just over one week to go, I am thinking the challenge participants definitely deserve a party next Saturday to celebrate their achievements - although different time zones may cause an interesting debate for us to decide which day to hold the party Check out Darren’s 31 Day project page for the detailed information on the daily tasks we have to complete.

Day 15 - Make Your Most Popular Posts Sticky

The best part of doing these updates is going back to my previous update and actually making sure I have completed a task. At this point the word BUGGER springs to mind. I had planned to add similar RSS reminder to the bottom of my posts like Michelle has done (see image below), and I forgot! My mind was debating whether it was a good idea to have an RSS icon with no RSS feed attached like she has done - since readers used to RSS would just click on the icon - that I totally forgot to do anything!

Might need to write a to-do-list of reminders when writing posts!

Progress = OOPs

Day 18 - Create a Sneeze Page and Propel Readers Deep Within Your Blog

This task did make me quite emotional. Thought I had finally caught up and THIS. She shall not be overcome sprung to mind!!!

Worked hard and made massive changes to my blog by:

• Adding a Browse Blog Page - not the greatest of names, any suggestions? Here is where I put quick links to posts on mlearning, elearning, Web 2.0, most popular posts, most commented posts and my archives
• Adding a 31 Day Blog Project page and pictures of the blogging participants to enhance the community aspect (Full credit to Leigh Blackall for inviting me to Konrad Glogowski’s online session on Classrooms as Third Places and thanks to Konrad for highlighting the value of using pictures to enhance network connections)
• Removing separate tabs on main page for My Podcast and My Wiki site - and combining them into on tab titled Other Sites (thanks Evil Sue for recommending I do this)

Progress = Completed (unless you think there is more I could have done?)

Day 20 - Run a Reader Survey

We have all agreed that we are holding off on this task as we’ve been asking a lot of readers in the past few weeks, and we don’t want to put anyone on overload. So we will schedule it for later in the year (hopefully Alex will send us all a group reminder )

Progress = Complete later in year :)

Day 21 - Make a Reader Famous

First I think that Michelle words of wisdom on this task are so important that I want to share them (hope that is okay Michelle?):

• One of the beauties of blogging, as opposed to just running a website, is the sense of community that develops from interacting with your readers. The best blogs have active reader communities and it only makes sense that you’d recognize your readers from time to time.
• Let me say, though, that I think “making readers famous” is probably a really essential key to blogging, particularly if you’re an organization. People like to read about themselves and feel recognized. When you put them front and center, they’re more likely to come back again.
• I think this task should definitely go high on the list of “most useful” pieces of work to do on our blog or website.

I agree Michelle, we should be recognizing and acknowledging the value our readers provide to our blog community.

So the question is am I doing this?

• Promote a comment to a Post Definitely - comments make me see issues from other people’s view points which then inspires me to investigate and report back. Classic examples this week has been: 1. Christine encouraged me to research how we can inform our readers to best read our blogs on mobile phones; 2. Dianne inspired me to post on policies stifling use of technologies in education which has encouraged others to join the conversation on the topic.
• Write a Post about their Blog Visit the blogs of those leaving comments on your blog. Write an ‘unpaid review’ of the blog - highlighting the best posts and what you like about it. Well - I am not sure that I do - certainly I acknowledge and praise blogs that I like. Definitely putting this on the to-do-list
• Send Your Readers to Comment on Someone Else’s Blog Was a bit worried for a few seconds. But yes, thankfully I do this - for example, have been encouraging people to visit the participants in the blogging challenge.
• Give Readers an Opportunity to Promote Themselves - Will report back on this one
• Reader of the Week Would be interested in my readers thoughts on Reader of the week? Here is an example that Darren highlights. Yes or No? Should I do it or Not?

Thanks to Frances for showcasing the effective use of the tick in posts.
Progress = mmmm

Day 22 - Catch New Readers Up on the Basics of your Blog

Darren says he does this type of post every few months (3-6 months) and here is an example of how he has done it on one of his blogs. I am off tomorrow to Melbourne for 2 days, I will schedule this post to appear while I am away.

Progress = Completed

Day 23 - Go on a Dead Link Hunt

Well Paul suggested that we use Dead-Links.com and Xenu to locate broken links within posts that I tested. I tried Dead-Links but most the links it indicated were broken weren’t which was a bit frustrating. I had not read his follow up post that also suggested Xenu, instead did road testing of different free online broken link checker.

In my opinion the W3C link checker (see image below) worked the best of the free online link checkers. Note that still had the same issues that so links that it suggested might be broken weren’t. So am going out on a limb to say based on my knowledge, at the moment all links are working.

Progress = Completed

Day 24 - Do a Search Engine Optimization Audit

Well Technorati has been known to mock me, so I have already been working hard on this. I am also subscribing to tag feeds for mlearning, elearning and mobile learning from both Technorati and Google Blog Search - WHY because many of my favourite bloggers prefer to read posts by subscribing to technorati tags than to blogs.

My advice is it is definitely worth seeing what your post looks when it comes through to a feed reader as a Tag feed from both Technorati and Google Blog Search - you might be surprised/shocked! Also worth noting that these two search engines will often feed you different articles.

My advice for Search Engine Optimisation is:

• Technorati and Google Blog Search looks for the tag terms within the text of your posts - so if you want these search enginges to easy find your post use the keywords within the text of your post e.g. this is why you will see me use the words mlearning (mobile learning) and mobile technology within the body of a post
• Technorati does not recognise terms like m-learning as a tag, so make sure you use all variations of the tag (e.g. mlearning and mobile learning)
• People also locate blogs using advanced blog searches at Technorati, your blog will not be displayed if you have not joined and claimed your blog. Read more about this here!

Progress = completed

Day 25 - Go Shopping and Improve Your blog

I think I will wait and see what the other blogging participants suggest about this activity. Do it or leave it?

Progress = ? (Waiting for feed back).

Day 26 - Link Up to a Competitor

As Darren has said previously ““he uses the word ‘competition’ hesitantly because the thing about blogging is that those blogging on the same topics as you are potentially your biggest allies. Connect and work with your competition and everyone improves.”

Happy to say that I willingly, and regularly link to posts by others who blog on the same topics. My aim has always been to network and help others, no such word as competitor to me (other than those I am competing against in the chocolate challenge).

Progress = Complete

Over the last couple of weeks I have been writing posts on mlearning (mobile learning) and mobile technologies. But I would like to hear about what you are doing.

Do You Have Posts or Podcasts on mlearning (mobile learning) and mobile technologies?

If so - feel free to post the URLs in comments below so I can visit and see your work!

Christine Martell (Visuals Speak Blog) comment on my STOP, LOOK, THINK - What Is Material Really Going To Look Like on A Mobile Device was “Now I’m really scared to look at my blog and site, so it’s a good thing I don’t know how to! Hope the next article is how to fix such things?

So here is one solution for how we can cater to our mobile readers cutesy of a comment on Nick Cowie’s post on The mobile web meets Google Analytic. Before I talk about the solution let me just thank Nick for telling me how to work out how many people are reading my blog posts from mobile devices.

And the answer if you are wondering is YES, people are reading on mobile devices. Numbers of mobile readers will increase with decrease data plan costs and increased confidence in using the mobile web.

Thanks to Mr Speaker for the comment on Nick’s Post! Mr Speaker said on Nick’s post “I read your post (and am writing this comment) on my mobile - but I got here through RSS with Google Reader Mobile, which does an excellent job of reformatting pages to mobile friendly ones.”

Mmmm why didn’t I think I that? Well, lets seeing blogging, podcasting, mlearning, mobile learning, mobile technology and Web 2.0 - means a lot of ground to cover!

So check out my video on what a blog post looks like on a mobile phone (actually my PDA) using Internet Explorer.

So if you want to inform your readers on how to read a blog on a mobile device perhaps Christine we could add a section on reading on a mobile device? Now Nick, sorry to bug you, but will this work solution work on all mobile web browser? and let me guess perhaps it would be expensive for an Australian unless used wireless instead of your data plan?

And finally for Michelle and Alex - I do believe that being able to use a mobile friendly version of Google Reader means that Google Reader now is winning against NetVibes? Not that I am keeping score For a comparision of mobile Bloglines and Google Reader check out this post.

Today/yesterday (time zone dependent) was the first official online meetup for the new social network, EduBloggerWorld and as part of this event I was asked to share a window into my educational blogging world.

But what is EduBloggerWorld, and why is it important?

Well, EduBloggerWorld has been created to encourage connections and community among educational bloggers worldwide. Participants use it to share ideas on how they use tools like wikis, podcasts and blogs with students; and are enhancing their students’ learning by inviting teachers and students from other parts of the World into each others classroom using tools like Skype and blogs.

Who Can Join EduBlogger World?

DO you need to be qualify, be an expert or a TECHNO guru to join? NOPE the only qualifications needed are:

1. A desire to improve teaching and learning
2. A desire to improve community among educators worldwide
3. A connection with blogging is desirable, be it past, present or future

Join EduBloggerWorld at our Ning community and read more on our wiki.

My Blogging Task for EduBloggerWorld MeetUp

My task for this first meetup is to write a post on: Where do you blog? How often do you blog? What do you blog about? Why is blogging so important to you?

However before I do this task I think I am allowed to have an official RANT. Please note some people say my rants are my best posts, while others suggest you should not be too personal when blogging.

I am currently Day 24 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project, this is a serious challenge - there is chocolate at stake :). All of us chocolate participants have been working really hard, and learnt heaps, but our batteries are draining low from all the hard work. In fact I believe I can hear the other chocolate participants feeling my pain at writing post for ANOTHER task - besides the 31 Day Project or mlearning (mobile learning).

Also I have been posting between 1-3 posts for the past 24 days, some of my readers are overwhelmed and others are commenting on the lack of podcasts (although strictly speaking I think she said she preferred my podcasts).

Rant is now officially over! And I am writing this post because I believe that communities and networking is important; and it is important for educators to join EduBloggerWorld, not to lurk, but to participate - we all lead busy lives but all gain from helping one another (PS Darren my rant proves that I am not a computer!)

Where do I blog?

Mostly here, in the so called cyber brothel using Windows Live Writer.

But now I also use my new MacBook here! Wonder what the chances of a Live Writer version for a Mac is?

How often do you blog?

Normally several times a week - but 1-3 times at the moment for chocolate challenge.

What do you blog about?

Web 2.0, e-learning, m-learning, mobile technologies, professional development and rants.

Why is blogging so important to you?

• To share my knowledge and experience with others
• To network with others
• Helps me express my thoughts
• For my personal learning (when researching information for blogs and podcasts I learn more about the topic)