Mobile Technology in TAFE

I’m soooo cold and have been like this for days.

For those who follow me on twitter you are probably starting to wonder why I’m complaining so much about feeling cold! So it’s probably best I explain.

What Happened

A massive gas explosion at Apache Corp Varanus Island plant off West Australia’s north-west coast, on June 3, has which means the company will be unable to supply natural gas output for at least two months. Effectively this has cut gas supply to our State by 30 %. This mightn’t seem such a big deal however our State is heavily reliant on gas as an energy source e.g. gas is used to run power stations that provide our electricity.

To manage the gas shortage people have been asked to:

• minimize their use of heaters
• take shorter showers
• turn off lighting when not needed.

All businesses have been asked to reduce their energy usage; and energy intensive industry have been placed onto energy rationing (where they are advised each evening of their quota for the next day). Where I work we are reducing usage by minimizing lighting and NOT using heating unless necessary.

How badly could this affect the State and Australian economy?  Not sure.  Our State has been experiencing a massive resource boom.  This energy shortage is affecting a wide section of industries.   I’m sure there are West Australians that aren’t reducing their energy usage but our decision is not to use heating at home.

How I Cope With The Cold

So there you have it this is why I’m cold.  No heat at home and none at work!

But I’m probably whining more than most because I’m a lover of heat and hot weather! In summer I feel no need for air conditioners and easily sleep at night without any air conditioner or fan when the maximum temperature have been above 40°C (100 °F). Every summer when my hubby is struggling to sleep at night from the heat and I’m enjoying it he will say “I’m not normal .

Saying all this it’s probably no surprise to learn that I don’t like the cold or winter at the best of times. And for those of you who do live in colder climates you could probably argue that I don’t even know what true winter is since where I live in Western Australia has a Mediterranean climate. We don’t even get snow here!!!! But I have many English friends who come here to live and complain how cold they are in our winter because our homes aren’t set up with features designed to keep them warm in winter months (e.g. central heating, double grazed windows).

You will be pleased to know I’m starting to feel warmer.  Bought myself a beanie, scarf and gloves (wasn’t impressed by level of hubby’s laughter at the sight of me).  Have cut out the fingers on my gloves so I can type and still keep my hands warm. Have one quilt over my legs and a blanket over my shoulders (the post must go on ).

FINAL THOUGHTS

For those use to cold climates please share some tips for keeping warm!  Thinking I need to purchase thermal underwear.

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Photo uploaded on October 24, 2006 by cbturtlegirl76 licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0

Okay I know there are probably more important things I should blogging about e.g. Wordle but it has come to my attention there are Outback Steakhouses in USA that some Americans believe serve food that reflects Aussie cuisine (thanks to Jennifer Jones for providing the link in twitter).

Now in all fairness Outback Steakhouses about information does say “Big, bold food made fresh everyday accompanied by a laid back ‘no worries’ Aussie attitude”. I will need to visit to see if service is a laid back ‘no worries’ Aussie attitude” (which is unlikely to happen) but their food doesn’t look like what we would call Aussie food.

Meanwhile its clear we need to provide so more education on Aussies.

So check out this famous Australian song made by Austen Tayshus in 1983 called Australiana.

Now Kate Foy response to Outback Steakhouse was:

EEEEK! “Buffalo wings, shrimp!” What are these? Aussie food indeed. Tell ‘em they’re dreaming.

The saying “Tell ‘em they’re dreaming” is an Aussies saying most remembered from the classic Australian film The Castle (check out The Castle Part 1 and Part 2).

FINAL THOUGHTS

What other videos/information do you suggest they check out to learn more about Australia?

Also please share your thoughts on true Aussie food because at the moment (according to Christine Martell) large numbers of Americans believe Aussies eat greasy onions all the time; and they celebrate Aussies by eating them too.

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Am I trustworthy? Perhaps. May be not.

Really what evidence do you have to go on? If you’ve never meet me all you have are glimpses of who I am. Words here, photos there, a few videos, way too many tweets and whatever interactions we have online.

Why do I care if I’m trustyworthy?

Because trust is an important part of the blogosphere. Building trust online takes time; it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s something you earn through your actions. Transparency is an important of maintaining trust and as a blogger part of being transparent is revealing any potential influences (especially monetary ones). While we all know that words can easily be misinterpreted the words we leave out can cause worse misinterpretations.

What brought up this conversation on transparency and trust?

Well today Stephen Downes called Steve Dembo and I out on this issue:

How about a little disclosure here? Are Steve Dembo and Sue Waters getting paid to promote a commercial product (I assume Alan Levine’s rah rah post is unpaid, though you’d never know from the tenor)? Was Dembo being paid when he started plugging it on his site back in early April? I don’t care if people want to make a little money, but let’s keep the advertising content in the edublogosphere clearly labeled as such, OK? Because, as it stands now, I can’t trust anything Sue Waters and Steve Dembo write - and that’s an unhappy state to be in.

Well Stephen right I didn’t provide a full disclosure and left it up to interpretation. So let me provide full disclosures to hopefully clarify all matters:

MyStudiyo Competition

Steve Dembo and I am not getting paid by MyStudiyo to judge their competition.

MyStudiyo contacted me, explained that they were planning this competition and asked if I could be a judge with Steve Dembo. I thought about it and decided I was happy to be involved because I had seen Steve’s quiz, liked the product and saw the value for educators.

In response to Stephen’s comment “Don’t you think that being given a computer to give away to your readers is a form of payment?” my answer is sorry, no I don’t because the competition is open to anyone.

The Edublogger

When James Farmer, founder of Edublogs, approached me to ask if I was willing to be the editor of The Edublogger the concept was that I would keep doing the kind of stuff that I already do well, but also do it at a central place within Edublogs. My passion has always been about HELPING OTHERS learn how to use these technologies; so that is why I jumped at the opportunity!

I’m paid to blog by Edublogs to write posts for The Edublogger based on payment per post only (which works out to less than the “minimum wage” i.e. wouldn’t even pay for a takeaway meal for the family).

The Comment Challenge

The Comment Challenge came about because commenting is a crucial aspect of blogging conversations for achieving the greatest learning. Trouble is factors often limit people’s commenting practices so they don’t experience this learning and fail to appreciate it’s value. I, and others, felt strongly that we needed to do more to engage others, especially new people, in commenting. This Challenge is being sponsored by CoComment and Edublogs. None of the coordinators are being paid by CoComment.

FINAL THOUGHTS

There is a difference between being paid to blog and being paid to blog about a product. I’m not being paid to promote any product and if I was I would fully disclose it.

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As promised it’s time for me to share what we did on our holiday last week.

But since 68 % of readers of this blog and 87 % of The Edublogger readers (the other blog I author) don’t live in Australia I thought it’s appropriate to start with some background on where I live so you understand where I went on holidays. If you’re interested — here’s comparison of % visitors by country, for top 20, for both blogs using Google Analytics statistics.

Please note I’ve uploaded the photos directly to this post to make it easier for readers who read my posts from work because Barry reminded me that many school districts block Flickr. I haven’t added the videos however I’m happy to upload the videos directly to my blog that I have on Flickr (shows the fish and the kangeroos) — just let me know.

About Western Australia

It’s a long way from anywhere!

But it’s the largest state in Australia even though some from the Eastern States of Australia consider our State a “backward” civilisation due to Perth’s (our capital city) isolation. I should also add it’s the wealthy State of Australia due to massive mining and resource boom. The image on the right shows a size comparison of Australia with USA and UK (click on image to enlarge).

A widely-held belief is Perth is “the world’s most isolated capital city” because the closest major capital to Perth is Adelaide (2,800 km away) which takes three hours by commercial flight. Unfortunately Honolulu in Hawaii is more isolated (nearest capital city of Majuro in the Marshall Islands is 3,673 km away). I’m thinking Honolulu sounds nice .

Western Australia is composed of distinct geographical regions each with their own unique climate, features and tourist attractions. It would take me forever to talk about the wonders of each region so click on areas on this map to learn more — I’m based in Perth.

Our Holiday In Relation To Perth

Our holiday was spent in the South West of our State in the Busselton, Dunsborough and Margaret River region (250 km south of Perth). This is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the State due to it’s fabulous beaches, surf areas, vineyards, tuart forests and fine foods. It feels like every km you travel in this region there is another vineyard or more fine foods to eat topped off with a swim at the beach.

Here are some of the highlights:

Favourite Tourist Attraction

Definitely Underwater Observatory that they’ve built to the seafloor at the end of the Busselton jetty. As you walk down the Underwater Observatory, 8 metres to the ocean floor, you see the different marine life, in their natural environment, that exists at each level.

The Busselton jetty is the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere stretching 1.841 kms into the ocean. Construction commenced in 1853 and it was used for commercial shipping from 1865 to 1971.

It’s a lovely walk out to the Underwater Observatory (1.8 km) but not so much fun walking back in a thunderstorm in the rain (click on the photo of us walking back to see how far from shore we are).

Classic Moments

Always helps if you’re clear in providing directions.

Here is my hubby’s great instructions for locating him when I arrived after driving for 3 1/2 hours:

We are in Dunsborough at coffee shop (no idea of it’s name) near bakery in main drag.

I’m not sure anyone could interpret those directions?

Especially since there was several bakeries, coffee shops and main drags in Dunsborough and I’d never been there before.

Although I should be grateful– he could have always given me a map link like this so I ended up in the ocean .

Meanwhile you have my excellent directions:

Just keep going straight and it will take us to Cape Naturalist Lighthouse.

Well I got that one totally wrong and we ended up at Yallingup totally missing the Lighthouse

Honestly I thought the map showed the road we were on as a straight road that went to the lighthouse .

Favourite Moment

Has to be spotting the huge mobs of kangaroos (mob is the term used for a large group of kangaroos) in farmer’s paddocks next to the road.

Unfortunately I scared the first mob by yelling too loudly when we got out of the car but managed to video the mob I saw the next day. The farmers definitely wouldn’t have liked them in their fields.

While these kangaroos look lovely — you definitely don’t want to hit them with a car especially if you don’t have a roo bar. This is why I was very quiet filming them on the second day as there were probably more than 50 of them right next to a really busy road. Here is my video if you want to watch them.

Funniest Moment

We went away on holidays with several family groups.

Just about everyday the men would go fishing, for 3+ hours, and return home empty handed (I believe that is called conservation?). Sorry they did catch one fish in 7 days .

They were hunting the Australian Salmon (Arripis trutta) which any seafood lover will tell you is a poor tasting fish. Commercial catch is mostly canned.

Finally in frustration on the second last day I took my hubby fishing to show him how it’s done. Here’s a photo of the fish I caught — which taste much nicer . He also commented how much more fun it was fishing with me.

Although I think it’s much easier to grab fish out of the tanks at my work

Craziest Moment

Couldn’t sleep first night managing to wake hubby who then walked through cabin and when switched on lights blew them all out for the entire cabin. So with no lights (i.e. unable to get up to read) and not able to sleep I hide my PDA under my blankets (to keep light from waking my hubby) and played on the Internet.

Frustrating Moment

My hubby was responsible for booking the holiday accommodation. He went under guidance of our friend who organised the holiday and has been to the particular location about 5 times.

All I shall say on the matter is my hubby is never, ever, ever booking accommodation ever again!

Our cabin was falling down and not very nice inside. Our other friends (not the ones who gave hubby guidance) stayed at the same location, just one cabin behind us, in a lovely brick cabin with fantastic furniture and paid $100 more.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Definitely did a lot more than I covered in this post — which is way tooooo long. Here are the photos on Flickr that includes all the videos and lots more sights.

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Nope sorry I’m still not back from holidays . And I’m sure I’m having a great time — I will let you know about it next week.

One of the trouble with blogs is you often have good content, that’s worth a read, but it becomes hidden away and new readers miss out (image by Amanda Bel).

Having a “Most Valuable Posts” widget like Vicki Davis does on Cool Cat Teacher blog or link to a page on “My Favourite Posts!” as Larry Ferlazzo does on Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… are an excellent idea for bringing these posts to the attention of readers.

Unfortunately I’ve run out of room on my sidebar at the moment and may have to face choosing a new theme.

Meanwhile here are my most popular posts based on pageviews:

My Advice On Being A More Effective Blogger!
The title says it all. I really need to follow it up with a more detailed post on tips for better blog posts (similar to the information I’ve written in the section of this post on my personal pet hates but with examples of what I mean).

Why Didn’t I install Google Analytics Sooner?
Having statistics on how readers find your blog, what content they like and how they interact with your blog is really important.

Many bloggers use several different stats counters on their blog and with an overwhelming amount of information it’s hard to work out which one to use– Google analytics is definitely one that you should install.

Al Upton & The MiniLegend’s Blog Given Order for Closure
Parental Consent, Use of Student Images and The MiniLegends Closure
Conversation On Al Upton Situation With Alec Couros’s EC&I 831 Class

Al Upton has been blogging with his students for the past five years and this year Al Upton decided to take student blogging, with his new group of miniLegends, to the next level and invited the educational blogging community to mentor a mini. Unfortunately there was concerns relating to perceived risks of cyberstalking and online predators with the end result being that he was asked to close his Al Upton’s MiniLegend class blog while the concerns were investigated.

Situations like what happened to Al have happened, and will happen to other educators, which is why Adocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety and Success has been started — focus of this group will be to coordinate actions to educate the general public and education decision makers on the importance of educating students on digital citizenship.  You can join the group here! I will talk about this more next week when I get back

Why Does Technorati Mock Me?
If you’re a blogger than it’s really important to understand how blog search engines work to ensure your blog and posts are being found.  This post explains how Technorati and Google Search searches blog posts and why you need to claim your blog on Technorati.

FINAL THOUGHT

Good luck.  I hope these posts help you; there are more I could have added but that will keep you going for now. I’m always looking for ideas for blog posts so please let me know

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By the time you read this I won’t be here instead I will be on vacation without with limited Internet access.

But today is a special day that I can’t let it pass without saying thanks for being loyal readers and I ‘m thinking of all of you.

You see today is Mobile Technology in TAFE blog’s first birthday and I’ve now being blogging for a year. As the birthday girl it means I get a wish (image by imedagoze).

Here’s my wish

I spend a lot of time supporting other bloggers, helping them and leaving comments on posts (especially new bloggers) but this week can’t (image by TIO).

So can you:

• Visit some blogs today (or this week) and write a comment on their posts to let them know that someone cares what they write.
• Leave a comment on this post with links to posts you suggest other readers check out plus tell us about some of the posts you commented on and why.

It’s been an incredible year and an amazing journey so far. Persistence, patience and commitment helped.

Here’s my year in reflection.

My First Months

My blogging abilities increased considerably from my early days; check out my first post. I wrote 29 posts in my first month of blogging with 40 comments and had many posts with no comments. Now I written 238 posts, for this blog, and have 1,474 comments.

I still remember the feeling of Why continue to write a blog? when you don’t receive any comments and feel like you’re talking to yourself. I’m sure there are a lot of people that are glad I didn’t give up — so don’t you give up .

And yes commenting is important to me — I spend a lot of time commenting on other people’s blogs and on my own posts because I’ve made the decision I’d rather support the community and other bloggers than write lots of posts.  The interactions within comments and linking between posts is where the greatest learning happens.

Thanks to all my readers for being loyal readers. And thanks to everyone who takes the time to write comments and/or links to my posts — I really do appreciate it and you’ve all helped so much with my personal learning.

31 Day Project

My blogging ability dramatically improved when I participated in the 31 Days to Build A Better Blog Project with an amazing team of bloggers from around the World. Thanks to each and everyone of you (the participants) from the 31 Day Project and my readers who supported me during the project.

I would especially like to thank Michele Martin for inviting bloggers to undertake the project with her and Darren Rowse for creating the 31 Days Project. I’ve set up this page on my wiki if you’d like to do the 31 Day Project and/or check out what I learnt.

I don’t believe this blog would have been a finalist in the 2007 Edublog Awards in three separate categories: Best Individual Blog; Best New Blog and Best Ed Tech Support blog if I hadn’t done the 31 Day Project. Thanks to my readers for nominating my blog for the awards.

The Edublogger

It’s been a great honor to now also blog on The Edublogger — a blog set up by Edublogs dedicated to helping educational bloggers with using emerging technologies in education, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium.

Thanks James Farmer (founder of Edublogs) for giving me this opportunity because it has increased my potential to interact/connect with a larger community and help even more people. And thanks to all the bloggers (you all know who you are) that I work with and assist — I enjoy helping you all .

The Friendships

But most important my blogging has helped me connect with wonderful people throughout the World, and whose friendship I value. I’m sorry I won’t be coming to NECC.

And for each of you, because I know you are missing me this week, I left this video so you can have a good laugh.  Make sure you watch it because there are short comedy segments between sections of the song.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thanks to everyone that does take the time to grant my birthday wish. Internet access will be limited while I’m away but I’ll see you when I get back.

Don’t forget to join them at Open PD while I’m away. Thanks to everyone for sharing their Blogging Experience & Tips For Participants From Open PD. There is still time to add your tips — I will be following up this post when I’m back.

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It would appear that apparently it’s impossible to say NO to me, surely that’s not the case, however I’m feeling slightly sorry for the poor companies / individuals, this weekend, that got dragged into Sue’s World. Image of No!!!! by Claudecf.

Adventures With Diigo

Let’s start with Diigo. The educators have gone absolutely crazy in Twitter since last Thursday about this site — so much so that I had to name it The Site That Can’t Be Named.

I’ve made a conscious decision not to rush off to try every new shiny tool that people rave about because it becomes tiring/draining; it’s much better to let others do all work and wait to see if they still love in a few weeks or moved onto the next best thing (I’m with the cows — read the last sentence at the bottom of the post). However boredom won on Saturday night made me decide to try Diigo out.

Unfortunately installing the diigo toolbar crashed FireFox and kept crashing it whenever I tried to open up my iGoogle page. Nothing worse for me than not being able to do something; drives me crazy. Joel from Diigo immediately contacted me Sunday, when I twittered my problem — poor guy has been working hard since to reproduce my problem so they can check out the issue.

CoComment And Commenting

Meanwhile I’ve been having nice discussions with Christophe from CoComment; we been communicating since he became interested in my comparison between the RSS feed from co.mment and cocomment. I’ve decided to persist with Cocomment because 1) I’m so impressed with the responsiveness of their support and 2) I’m interested in the community aspects of their site (Hey Kim - you seem to be a CoComment power user — do you have any tips for getting more out of using it?).

Poor Christophe — my latest problem with CoComment addon was intermittent problems in FireFox preventing comments from being posted.

After considerable research Diigo wasn’t able to reproduce the problem so suggested I create an entirely new profile of FireFox — which I did last night. Installed Diigo toolbar - no problems. Added CoComment addon — oops now iGoogle is crashing. So we have Diigo toolbar + CoComment Addon + my iGoogle page = FireFox crashes.

Poor guys — now both companies looking into what has Sue done (but fortunately they have now been able to reproduce the problem using an iGoogle page exactly like mine).

So now we have the email competition — which company will enjoy the most email exchanges with me? Your thoughts?

My Own TweetCloud

And not to be outdone I’ve also managed to drag poor John Krutch into it; after he read my reply on Alan Levine’s post at not being able to use TweetCloud cause apparently I’m a prolific twitterer. Thanks to John I’ve now got my own fantastic TweetCloud and he is fantastic. I hope you all notice that Good features strongly in my twitters; this should dispels all myths that I rant and proves I’m GOOD.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thanks to Joel (Diigo), Christophe (CoComment) and John Krutch (TweetCloud) for all the fantastic support.

Would love to hear what you like the most about using Diigo and CoComment. Please let me know of resources, video etc that you recommend I should refer to for learning how to get the most out of using Diigo and CoComment. And let me know how your TweetCloud goes

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Holiday time is approaching and normally I would feel a sense of excitement. However the trouble is in just over two weeks I’ve agreed to spend the first week of my holidays, with the family (i.e. hubby & our two kids) and some friends, at a holiday resort.

I’m not the best of company for extended periods in group situations, as I like my own space, and to make matters worse there’s no Internet access. The owner of the resort tried to explain to me that you don’t need a computer when you go on holiday. What the? Are they for real?

So now, as the time approaches, I feeling a bit like Robin Williams from RV: Runaway Vacation. I’ve been plotting for days how I can smuggle some type of electronic device with me, to remain connected, and stay sane.

And like Robin Williams character in this movie I will need to be sneaky clever as hubby may not totally understand and friends definitely won’t.

Help definitely needed

Here are my thoughts so far:

1. Internet cafe - not ideal. Expecting others to be slow to get going in the morning so would be good to access from accommodation.
2. Use Data plan on my PDA - less than ideal. Expensive option because my PDA is 2.5 G. Also I’ve lost my charger for my PDA and have to charge using computer. If I take a computer it would be my MacBook which won’t work with my PDA that runs Windows Mobile 5.
3. Purchase a Mobile 3G USB modem plan for my MacBook - this option looks good to me. Smuggle my MacBook into my luggage. Plans are about $30/month although not sure if wireless coverage will reach Siesta Park in Busselton? Downside is need to sign up for a 12 or 24 month plan to ensure 1 week of sanity (seems worth it to me).
4. Go without?
5. Illness?

So I’m thinking the USB modem plan might be the way to go. What’re your thoughts? Crazy or sane? Do you know which company is better to go with?

Off course maybe therapy is cheaper?

PS Not that I’m being secretive but lets hope hubby doesn’t Google my blog and read this post

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The Passion Quilt meme has definitely been interesting in terms of analyzing the viral nature of an effective meme within the edublogging community. Started on February 10 by Miguel Guhlin it has now appeared on over 100 blogs and it’s progress can be monitored by subscribing to either of these RSS feeds using your feed reader e.g. Google Reader:

• Google Blog Search - Passion Quilt
  
• Technorati - Passion Quilt

Chart below shows posts that contain “Passion Quilt” per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Passion Quilt’s Been Brought Together

Unfortunately I was only able to encourage a small number to upload their images to Flickr using the tag term passionquilt08 so that the Passion Quilt could be brought together as a slide show. But the good news is Miguel has been incredibly busy capturing the images from each blog using Skitch and uploading to Flickr.

Here’s what it looks like so far:

Also worth checking out Miguel’s post to see what it looks like as a PicassaWeb slideshow and Andrea Hernandez fantastic work in creating a slideshow using RockYou.

Another Meme

Meanwhile Alan Levine must have decided I needed to join him in the doghouse since he tagged me with The Book Meme — who would like to be tagged

Check out the chart below to see how viral this meme’s been - chart shows posts that contain “nearest Book” per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

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Yep, I know a lot about “a lot of stuff” but there lies my problem; as Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes) says:

The more you know, the harder it is to take decisive action. Once you become informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of gray. You realize that nothing is as clear and simple as it first appears. Ultimately, knowledge is paralyzing

So I need help, advice, on what solutions/options you would recommend for the following scenario. Image by Petite Corneille.

I’ve been contacted by a lecturer who teaches horticulture. She says:

I’ve been recording botanical terms e.g. plant names and spelling to help ot students using a tape recorder. It seems to me it would be much more efficient to put this stuff onto the net so that they can download it to their mp3 players but I’m not quite sure where or how to do it. Any advice?

Here’s my thought process so far:

1. Worthwhile considering offering both video and audio formats - to enhance the connection between the terms and the botanical images
2. For audio I’d use a USB headset and Audacity. My choice for video would be MovieMaker or PhotoStory.
3. Will the outcome desired change with time? i.e. focus currently is the benefit of recordings on mp3 but long term will this change to include: students being able to interact using a forum and post their own videos & photos; being able to provide other resources (documents, PDF); and/or write posts.
4. Does the site need to be password protected or can it be open?

Can You Help Out?

1. What other questions are worth asking?
2. What solutions or options are worth considering?
3. Do you know of any sites that horticulture lecturers are using with their students?
4. What haven’t I thought of?

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