Your kids have made a video and you want that perfect music track to add to the movie but you know that you shouldn’t use a commercially produced music track off of one of your CDs. What to do? There are plenty of ‘podsafe’ music resources on the web and I some listed on the Podcast page of my wiki. I have now just found another great source of music that it is legal to download and use (as long as you stay within the confines of the creative common licence). I found it while I was watching a video by Michael Wesch and my husband called out from the next room asking what music I was listening to. I jumped to the end of the video and, sure enough, the details of the song were in the credits and it came from a website called Jamendo. I went and checked it out and was pretty impressed with the way the site was organised and the quality of some of the music that it on it. You can embed a widget from an album that you like so I have one included below (I particularly like the first and third song). I will be using this site a lot I think when making multimedia productions. Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

Introduction BLENNZ ClusterOne of the clusters that I have become the national facilitator for is the BLENNZ cluster (Blind and Low Vision Education) which has facilitators across the country. I have so much to learn about this area of education having always worked in the mainstream and not having any children with vision needs in my classroom. Therefore, I consider myself lucky that I have been able to work with Chrissie Butler for a few hours this week who has just started as a Wellington based facilitator for the cluster. This also led to me joining in with a full day training session around an LMS called My Source Matrix which is designed with accessibilty in mind. While learning about the software was useful, it was the general information about basic web design principles for accessibility that I found particularly interesting. Demonstration of surfing with a Screen Reader We had Kylee join us for the session who is legally blind. She demonstrated what surfing the web is like using a screen reader application. She chose one site that was designed using My Source Matrix and is therefore great for accessibility and the new online Loto site which was not very accessible for her at all. It was amazing watching someone navigate this way - the sheer speed that she listened to the computer audio of the screen reader was gob smacking - I could barely make out the individual words at all at that speed. She had to slow this down so the sighted amongst us could make out what was being said. Kylie had a number of points about how sites can ensure that they are accessible when using these kinds of readers which I have outlined below. There is a downloadable newsletter from the MOE that includes information about screenreaders. Kylie was using the Jaws screenreader which is around $1500 NZ! There are freeware screenreader options: Thunder is a screenreader for PC and Mac OX has a screenreader built into the operating system itself called VoiceOver which I had a go with this evening (and failed rather miserably to really get the hang of it) Use heading styles One way is by having clear heading styles built into the page which also ‘flow’ logically. A reader can be used to browse through these headings so that the user can quickly find a section of the website that they want to explore in more detail. If you are creating a document in Word that you want to convert to html for the web, you should use the heading styles within word rather than simple enlarge a font and change the formatting to make it look like a heading. This means that it will retain this structure when converted so as to make it better for a reader. Many web design software (and wikis) have built in heading styles that you should use as well. Images as headings are therefore not recommended as they do not provide this structure. Hyperlinking correctly The thing that was really stressed was the importance of having hyperlinks that can make sense on their own and are very descriptive. The popular habit of having ‘Click here’ as a hyperlink is not useful for those using screen readers as you can list all the hyperlinks on a page in alphabetical order using the reader and ‘click here’ does not give any information about what you are going to click on. The information about where the hyperlink is going to take you should be in the hyperlink itself and not the surrounding text. I’ll give a copule of examples to link to my resource wiki to illustrate what I mean. How NOT to Hyperlink for accessibility To find resources on a range of web 2.0 tools from my wiki, click here.  (hyperlink itself gives no useful info on where it links to) Click here for my wiki containing links to web 2.0 resources. (while the link contains a little more info, it is still not enough and would not be easy to find in an alphabetical list - especially with a lot of other ‘Click here’ links on the same page. An appropriate way to hyperlink for accessibility You can find a range of web 2.0 resources on my Web 2.0 and Software wiki. (descriptive and easy to find in an alphabetical list) Alternative text for images and mulimedia Another thing to make sure of is that all images that you load to a website have alternative text sitting behind them. On many websites (including Interact) you can enter alternative text for an image when uploading it to the site. This is also good for people with slow internet connections that might have images turned off when browsing. It also means that when a reader is reading the contents , someone without sight can still get an understanding of what those images contain. This also applies for when using graphs on a page. You should also have text that explains the key findings of the graph. The also suggest that you have transcripts where possible for multimedia such as videos. Accessible PDFs We also talked about the fact that PDFs are not low vision friendly. Basically, PDF files are an image of a document so screen readers can find these very difficult to read. I felt guilt as I listened thinking of the number of PDF files I upload to my wikispaces! Still, you can make a PDF file more accessible by creating ‘tagged’ PDFs where the tag provides a structural, textual representation of the PDF. You can find information on the WebAIM website on how to make accessible PDFs. Making forms in Word Kylie also talked about trying to fill in forms that have been created using tables in Word. She said that these are pretty much unusable for her but if people use the form function to create the form, then it is accessible. You can learn about how to use the form funcion in Word on this site. Tidying up html when pasting from Word One interesting thing we were shown is that when you copy and paste text from a word document into a website, it has a lot of unnecessary html code regarding some of the formatting within the word document which can throw some screen readers. The software we were using on the day had a tool included to clean up this kind of code but this is something just to be aware of when doing it in general. You can paste it in and then choose to view the html source in order to see what I am talking about. Interestingly, I had Office 2008 so when I pasted in the text, the code was clean as they have improved this in the latest Office releases. Getting your website tested The BLENNZ cluster have set up a team of Tech Angels from some of their low vision students and Dave Merton and Chrissie Butler said that they are often willing to give sites a test drive for accessibility. I am already planning to send them the links to a couple of my online spaces to see how they go though I think they may not pass with flying colours! I may have to do a bit of rethinking!! Final thoughts I found access to this kind of information very interesting and a worthwhile exercise and it is something that those of us that are lucky enough to have sight and hearing need to be aware of. Resources we create should be available for everyone that wants to make use of them, not just the 80% of the population that have no issues with accessing sites. It was inspiring watching someone make use of the web using a screen reader. It was also really interesting to learn about hardware interfaces for those with vision needs such as refreshable braille readers and braille keyboards. It blew my pre-conceptions about braille reading out of the water watching someone read just as quickly as I do with braille. This has opened up a whole new area of learning for me and I look forward to finding out more. Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

I have come across two very interesting web 2.0 tools in the last couple of weeks that could make blogging more attractive to both teachers writing blogs and to the community who read blogs. Posterous - using email to write blogs This is an extremely simple concept. Anyone can get a blog going by sending an email to post@posterous.com. This email is converted into a blog post on a site that is automatically setup for your email address. Every time you send another email from the same email address it will be converted and added to this website as the latest post. Even better is the fact that if you send photo, mp3 or file attachments, these will be automatically added in a very web-friendly format for people to view or listen to online. I tried it out and the results of this can be seen at http://suzie_ogyqs.posterous.com/ You will notice that the name of my site is not that userfriendly. If I had set up an account BEFORE sending in my first email, I could have chosen the part of the URL that goes before posterous.com. As it is, the first time I logged into Posterous after sending my first email, it gave me the chance to choose my own URL so you will see when you click on the link above, it redirects to suzievesper.posterous.com. Nourish - subscribing to blogs via email Many of the parent communities we work with are not all that familiar with technologies such as RSS. However, most people have email and will check this regularly. Nourish allows you to turn a feed (or a combination of feeds) into something that people can subscribe to by email. You can add a button to your website where people can click on and add their email addresses into to subscribe. You can also add addresses in yourself so that those people will get the email newsletter. People will be able to unsubscribe by clicking a link in their email if they don’t want to receive these emails. This would also be great for someone who wants to keep check on the activity happening in online spaces such as a school ICT lead teacher or a principal. They could combine all the feeds from the teacher blogs/ wikis and have these being sent as a digest to their email. I am going to add a button for people to subscribe to this blog very shortly! Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

Introduction I have been playing with a number of presentation tools in the last few days. It all started with a message from Jon Johnson asking why the links in my ‘ICT Examples in Education’ presentation that I have uploaded to SlideShare don’t work. This has been a bug bear for me recently as hyperlinks used to work in SlideShare but don’t seem to anymore. I left a message on their online forum and had a response to say that this is a known issue and that they are working on it. I decided to explore other options again and this was the beginning of many hours on the net over the weekend. I still like SlideRocket but as this is in invite only beta at the moment, I decided to not focus my efforts there. I also revisited CogDog’s presentation on story telling tools as I was playing around SO…here are some of the tools I tried and presentations I either created within them or found by others who had used the tool. 280 Slides A virtual buddy first alerted me to this on Twitter and I have to say that it is a lovely little application. It is built to look like Keynote (Mac application) but is online and open to anyone. It doesn’t have some of the bells and whistles at this point with no animations, audio or transitions but the interface is super easy to use and it really feels like you are using sofware from your own computer. One thing to be a wary of is changing the theme after you have already created a number of slides. It seemed to then shift some of the content around on the slide and some of the pictures seemed to disappear and had to be added again. Also, there is no hyperlinking options at the moment which is the main thing I was looking for but having emailed feedback to the team, they promised that hyperlinking is on its way (maybe as soon as next week!). I love the fact that I can embed a web video from places such as YouTube and that I can download my presentation as a Powerpoint. I set up this presentation below for a session I did on RSS and I used this online in full screen mode with no problems at all. AuthorStream I had played with this quite a long time ago but revisited it as I experimented. Again, I was impressed with this tool. It allows for animations on the slides and hyperlinks work perfectly. I will be uploading my ICT Examples in Education presentation to this site. Note: uploading is proving a little problematic - where is the perfect tool! I have embedded an example from their site instead. Uploaded on authorSTREAM by bebeee MyPlick I have not yet tried making one of these myself but I am quite impressed at how easy it appears to be to combine and sync slides with audio using this tool. I have embedded an example I found on the site. Tips for Getting Others To Buy Into E-learning Tags: leadership "professional development" elearning "Roger’s Adoption of Innovation Curve" I have more tools to come but this will do for this post! Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

I was asked to give feedback to one of my Green Party colleagues on their new wiki and I suggested they add a movie trailer from YouTube for a movie fundraiser that is happening in their electorate. This lead me to start putting together instructions on how to do this that then turned into a rather comprehensive guide to adding YouTube videos to a range of online spaces including Wikispaces, PBWiki, Blogger (in post), Blogger (in html gadget in sidebar), Blogger (in video bar gadget in the sidebar), Edublogs (in post), and Edublogs (in Text widget in the sidebar). Also included is how to play with the width and height settings when you embed it. I incorrectly said Blogspot instead of Blogger throughout and will fix this up at some point. In the meantime, enjoy! Instructions for adding YouTube videos to blogs and wikis - Upload a Document to Scribd Read this document on Scribd: Instructions for adding YouTube videos to blogs and wikis Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

I have been playing a lot on the computer in the last week experimenting with different bits and pieces. I was looking for instructional videos on the excellent Fotoflexor for my upcoming workshop wiki when I noticed that the man who made videos for this also made videos for something called GoAnimate which I had not heard of before. Always keen to check things out, I signed up on the website and had a go. Below you can see my efforts. I love the ease of use of this tool. However, there are some backgrounds that aren’t that appropriate (eg bars) and some props that aren’t that great either (eg guns) so I am not sure that it could be used with younger children. I don’t think it would be that big a problem with older kids though. The demonstration animation that you can watch on signing up has some rather uncomfortable moments in terms of appropriateness so I wouldn’t use it as a model at any time. Anyway,  I had a good time making this animation and I didn’t make use of half the possible features! Update: It appears that this embed code gets stripped of its link to the video when in this blogging platform so to see what I have done, go to my wiki page: http://educationalsoftware.wikispaces.com/Animation Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

I have been putting together a wiki for my upcoming pre-conference workshop and have been revisiting some tools that I have played with in the past as well as brushing up on the tools that I use reguarly. What I am finding is that I have become a little confused at the amount of choice that has opened up. This is nothing new in the internet world of infowhelm but I am now beginning to question things I’ve always just taken for granted. For instance, I am a big Flickr fan. I have been advocating the use of Flickr for a long time now. Flickr has its groups, map, add note feature and direct relationship with Picnik for editing. I am still a fan but its supremacy is being erroded by some of the other tools I have played with in the last couple of days. PhotoBucket, for instance, has really grown since I last checked it out. The interface is easier to get around and you can now upload videos and it has a direct link to Scrapblog meaning you can make these from within PhotoBucket itself. Then there is DotPhoto which I hadn’t heard of before but found on the Top 10 Reviews website where it had been given gold with specific mention of the great photoshows that you can make with it. This is just one example of the kind of exploring that I have been doing recently. All of which means that I am now getting a little bamboozled. So many options and they all have features that set them apart from each other while still having the same key functions. I don’t want to be uploading images to multiple places on the web but I don’t want to miss out on great features either. How are the rest of you out there finding the range of web 2.0 tools on offer? Are you coping? In the meantime, here are the tools that I have documented for the workshop so far. I plan to add an extra couple in the next week or so to the wiki page. Utterli Google Maps Authorstream Voicethread Zoho Creator Picnik/ Fotoflexor Glogster/ Wix Scribd Poll Daddy Slide/ Picture Trail Tabblo MyStudiyo 280 Slides ClustrMaps Flickr/ Dotphoto Google Calendar Wordle CircaVie YouTube/ Teacher Tube Voki Bubbl.us Mixwit Animoto Vodpod I would love any feedback or suggestions on where to source further examples of tools. Have I missed any that should definitely be there? I am planning to add Photobucket, Bubbleshare and Scrapblog. Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

Well, here I am back at home again after a very busy week in Christchurch last week. In between rendering video clips in Final Cut of the presentations, I thought I’d dash out a quick blog post. Basically, this year was a very different experience with wearing a yellow lanyard and working with the kids media team. Being a person that misses working with kids now that I am in a largely administrative role, I had a ball with the team. We had a good mix of younger and older students and they were all incredibly quick to pick stuff up and had brilliant skills before they arrived. One of the younger kids instructed me on the frame rate that we should export for putting video on the web - I was happy to bow to his superior knowledge! There were lots of kids who could edit in iMovie and had a range of technical skills. The students were also great at approaching teachers in order to get video and photos for us to use. When you go and check out the media team wiki , you will see the newsletters uploaded that the kids put together (with the support of the adults). I want to stress that the writing in the newsletter pretty much all came from the children with VERY little input at all when it came to drafting and editing. I was really impressed at the high standard of writing from the kids! An example of this is when coming up with a title for the piece on Twitter. I suggested ‘The good, the bad and the ugly’ which didn’t sit exactly right. The girls took this suggestion and reworked it to be ‘The good, the bad, and the off-topic’ which I consider to be very witty and insightful. The level of vocabularly and quality of writing style of the students (two girls in particular) was very high. Some of the younger boys struggled to get their ideas down but they worked at it until it was finished and I was impressed with their perservance. I have included some clips that are available on the wiki here to give you a taste - make sure you do go and check out the wiki and sign the guestbook or leave a message for the team on the Voicethread. I didn’t get to see any presentations this year, I am now getting to watch all the Spotlights as I edit the videos for them. The is some great content in these Spotlights (so far I have particularly enjoyed listening to Julia Atkin talking about effective leadership) and when they are up online, you should definitely check them out. You will need to have a login for the site associated with a person who attended the conference to view them. I also presented twice this year. I did a full day pre-conference workshop and then an hour and a half interactive presentation in the ‘graveyard shift’ (last breakout).  Both of these went really well (though I think I may have bambozzled some in my full day - we certainly packed a lot in!) I hope to do more workshops in general going forward to next year as I enjoy these chances to interact with other teachers. In preparation for these workshops, I revisited a lot of web 2.0 tools and found some new ones. All of these can be found on my new wiki at http://learningweb2.wikispaces.com. I plan to write a series of blog posts highlighting some of my favourite tools from this wiki so watch this space!  OK - it looks as if the video clips have just about rendered - back to work Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

Working in a largely admin job these days, I have been told that I can spend an hour and a half a week in schools to keep ‘in touch’ with schools and to try out different tools with children so that I am talking from a place of some credibilty. I found this very exciting and instantly got in touch with a few of my old cluster schools to organise it. I ended up heading along to the smallest school in my cluster which has a total of 23 children in the school and agreed to take all of them for an afternoon slot. Being excited at the moment by a tool called Pixton which makes it easy and fun to make 2D comics, I went along ready to use this with the kids. I have to admit that I did not put that much work into preparing as I thought the tool was pretty straightforward and that it would be great to get the kids to problem solve and figure things out on their own. Of course, ICT often doesn’t work as planned. I was without a laptop and I couldn’t get the data projector to connect to one of the new computers in the classroom (where was the fn button!). Giving up on that, I gathered them all around one computer screen and logged into my account and took them for a brief tour. I hadn’t set up a structured activity at this time as I wanted them to explore first. Looking back, what I should have done was at least talk about the genre of comics and explore features of this kind of visual language. I should also have had a better idea of what I wanted them to have accomplished by the end of the session. I then set them up in pairs to go and explore on their own. This is where things really started to fall over. I had to spread the kids around three rooms to get them all onto computers and hadn’t gone around and logged in to Pixton first. As kids are likely to do, they started to get a little noisy while waiting for me to log them in (I didn’t want to give them my login details - I should have set up one they could use without me logging them in). My stress levels started to go up a little. Next major problem was that Pixton wouldn’t let me log in to my one account from multiple computers! Obviously, I should have got to the school a little early and tested this! I could get kids on but as soon as I moved on and logged in a few more, Pixton would freeze on them and kick them off again. As I moved around the rooms I had kids coming at me from a number of angles asking me to come and help them. My stress levels rose considerably at this time as I hadn’t prepared ‘plan B’ (which every person using ICT knows is a sensible idea!). Giving up on Pixton, I gathered them all together again and showed them Voki as at least something they could go on to and doesn’t need an account. I had no clear direction in doing this - I was simply in ’survival mode’ by this time. Again the kids spread out but still the problems continued. This time, the internet connection at the school wasn’t really fast enough for 10 computers at once to connect well to the internet so many kids had trouble getting their Vokis to load and work properly. Still, most got something going and then I asked them to pack up and sent them off home. So what will I do next time? Well, I am not one to give up easily so I am going to give Pixton another go but this time, I am going to put a bit more thought into what the LEARNING is that I want rather than just playing with the tool (I know that seems so basic but even those who are doing this all the time need to be reminded sometimes!). I am going to have an offline and online component to the activity so that I reduce the pressure on their internet connection. I am going to go early and set up and check that everything works. I am going to have a ‘plan B’ this time that is not technology based. I am also going to set up more than one Pixton account so that kids can be working in a couple of different ones. I will let you know how it goes. So what about your biggest ICT failure? Leave me comments letting me know what it was - I think we should always talk about what doesn’t work as well as what does. Teachers often have issues with ICT that then stops them from wanting to use it again. I think we need to let everyday classroom teachers know that everyone experiences failure but that doesn’t mean we don’t keep refining and trying again. Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

I thought I would post some of the comments from a debate myself and a few other teachers have been having on the National party website over their new ’standards’ as part of the crusade for literacy and numeracy. Warning - this is a long post! I would love to hear your thoughts on this! Yes - this is a political post and it is fairly obvious where I stand on this but I think we should all be proud in New Zealand to stand by our convictions. From the National party website: National Party Crusade for Literacy and Numeracy. National will: 1. Set National Standards in literacy and numeracy. 2. Require every primary and intermediate school pupil to be assessed regularly against National Standards. 3. Require primary and intermediate schools to report to parents in plain English about how their child is doing compared to National Standards and compared to other children their age. 4. Provide targeted funding to assist primary and intermediate schools to give an extra hand to the pupils who aren’t meeting National Standards. 5. Refocus the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office on supporting schools in the Crusade for Literacy and Numeracy. Lyn Croft wrote: There are national standards in literacy and numeracy. Every primary/intermediate school student is assessed very regularly. Schools do report home to parents in ‘plain English’ - although a number of caregivers do not read English. Yes, schools need extra funding to support students who are failing - more reading recovery teachers, more teachers to work with individuals/small groups, smaller class sizes and a teacher aide in every classroom.Special Needs students and students with learning needs miss out on funding, particularly when moving to secondary schools. Giving ORRS funding to those students with only very high needs discriminates against those who, with assistance, can reach their full potential. We need more funding to enable these students to be part of mainstream classes where appropriate, with the necessary support, enabling them to socialise with their peers. It’s called inclusive education. Then I wrote: I would like to support the comment made by Lyn Croft. There are MANY standards already in place for literacy and numeracy and schools are already testing against these regularly. To stick another layer of ’standards’ and associated testing on top of what we are doing already (which gives us very effective data) is in my mind repeating the mistakes of the UK and the US which are beginning to realise that their testing approach had little impact. Ask yourself why 83% of primary school teachers are opposed to this move. It is not because we are afraid of hard work - teachers in this country put in hours of work often in weekends and evenings, it is because we don’t see how your plans can add ANY value to what we are already doing and we believe that it will be destructive overall just as it has been overseas. This is something I would be prepared to strike with no pay over should a national government try to impose this on our education system! How about you consult with teachers and try to learn a bit more about what we ARE doing before bringing in a half baked idea like this one. Jamin Lietze wrote:  (Twitter buddy. We did not talk about this beforehand so interested to see him here!) I too support what Lyn Croft and Suzie Vesper have been stating about National’s idea to implement National Standards. IT IS NOT NEEDED. This move in my mind would increase: - surface learning - Teacher and student stress - administration time It would build tension between schools/communities who would compete for more student enrollments. I feel this is a "market" strategy that is being applied to our Education system and I don’t agree. At this point, I Twittered about this policy and more Twitter friends went and commented on the site. Dave Winter wrote A preoccupation and focus on nationalised testing is likely to lower standards, demoralise some schools and students. "You can’t increase the length of a piece of string by measuring it". Authentic assessment has its place; but should be to improve literacy (which itself needs to be redefined) not measure it. National leadership seems to feel we will have the right citizens if they can read, write and add well. Ooops please come up with policies for a future that will exist not a fast fading past. Fiona McDonald wrote: I agree with Lyn and Suzie. I can’t even begin to imagine what a nightmare it would be with unhealthy competition between schools to get the best test results! It would be like England with League Tables. To reward teachers with best practice sounds like a major can of worms! Would it reward those who teach to the test, or those who teach to inspire and empower? I can’t imagine anything that would cause friction on a staff more! In reply to S. Anderson, I agree that more needs to be done to address dyslexia; John Key isn’t the first to come up with this! But do you know what is already being done to help children in schools? It seems to me that too many people judge schools and teaching methods on the ‘prehistoric’ methods that existed when they were a child. When I think back to my schooling it was definitely a ‘one size fits all’ education. It certainly isn’t like that these days in the classes at my school, or at any of the schools I know! I strongly believe that simply pumping more money into the teaching isn’t the solution (although its always nice to be able to buy a bit more ICT and PE equipment!). We can teach until we are blue in the face AND until the cows come home, but if what we teach and model at school isn’t reflected in the home then it is a potentially losing battle. In so far as managing the budgets for ‘at risk’ students, the major problem our school has had is that of immigrant families arriving with special needs children that automatically chew up our special needs budget. Bye bye extra reading groups, bye bye math booster classes and those ‘at risk’ students fall through the cracks. I understand that these families are looking for a better life for their families, but at the expense of our existing students? Then, after six months they often decide to move home… *John Key do not add more testing*. Have you heard of NUMPA, snapshots, Asttle, eAsttle, Probe, Running Records, Arbs, Six year nets, Portfolios, reports, parent/teacher conferences, diagnostic assessment, formative assessment, summative assessment… I seriously believe NZ will lose a lot of it’s greatest teachers should even more testing be introduced, leaving the mediocre ones to reap the rewards! The site admin left this message on Fiona’s post: No additional tests are involved with National’s policy, nor will there be national tests. From the text of the policy announcement: "National will require primary and intermediate schools to use assessment programmes that compare the progress of their pupils with other pupils across the country. Schools will choose from a range of tests, and there won’t be national exams." Check: national.org.nz/files/2008/Education_Policy_Crusade_for_Literacy.pdf ] I replied to this admin note: I note the admin statement in Fiona’s response. If you are not going to impose national testing on students other than what is already in place then I think you are being very misleading with the way you word this policy. When you say ‘National will require every primary and intermediate student to be assessed regularly against standards’ then this is an empty phrase since this is happening already. All schools are already regularly assessing against national standards and will continue to do so. How is your statement making this any different? It just sounds like rhetoric to me to make other people think that you would be responsible for some kind of major change when you actually would not be. I also want to hear more about these ’standards’. We have standards now that have been refined over a long period of time with consultation with schools - what would you do to change these? I also don’t see how you can bring in new ’standards’ and then say schools would need to assess against these new standards and then expect us to believe that there would be no changing to testing as we have it now. Also, when reading the PDF, I find the statement about telling parents how children compare to other children incredibly dangerous. I think parents should be informed about the progress of their children against national norms but NOT in comparison to other children. For children to be ‘ranked’ in a class leads to all kinds of nasty dynamics between both parents and children and is damaging to the self esteem of children. It is certainly NOT going to help them improve their learning. Teachers know that there is a time and place for a certain amount of competition in schools and we use it but with caution. Too much competition can completely demoralise some children and by ranking children against each other, that is the kind of environment the kids would be operating within. I should point out in the interests of transparency, that there are 10 steps that National plan to take and I have only talked about the top five. I have no issues with the other points. So - what do you think? Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

Here is the first in a series of posts about the tools I have included in my learning web 2.0 wiki. I have mentioned Pixton a few times recently. Pixton is a tool for making 2D comics that is incredibly customisable. You can change almost every aspect of a character including clothing, colours, facial expressions and postures. You can even change the position and angle of each limb and appendage. You are also able to add a variety of objects and backgrounds to your comic and these are also customisable. You can sign up for a single account or there is an option for schools (but this is rather pricey). Be aware that you can not log into a single account from multiple computers - it does not like this at all (see reality check post for what happens if you try). Some of the characters in the normal account are also a little borderline - I forgot about the fact there was a cartoon Jesus complete with halo when working at a Catholic school but then this could also be a good thing for retelling bible stories! I have a page on my learning web 2.0 wiki which includes examples and a video I made showing step by step how to use it. This is an introductory video that shows you quickly what some of the key features are: Here is a thumbnail of one comic strip I’ve made while trialing Pixton (clicking on it will take you into Pixton to see a full size version): I have also written a lesson plan designed to work with Pixton as well as other technology tools you can use for making comics on my new ict lessons wiki. This lesson is based around the topic of conserving energy and includes website resources for this topic. I think this is a great tool and I’d love to hear stories of how other people use it. Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

I am running a session during a full day workshop on Monday on the role of the lead teacher. Being my obsessive compulsive self, I decided that this would be best supported by creating content on a wiki. At first I was going to add content to an existing wiki but then I decided there was enough content to make a dedicated wiki so here it is - http://leadingict.wikispaces.com I made the front page graphic in Wix. This is an excellent tool and I see myself using this more and more. I also have become completely attached to ColourLovers when setting up colour schemes for my wikis. It is so much easier than having to come up with this by trial and error. When you have found a palette of colours that you like in Colour Lovers, you copy the hex code for each colour and then go into ‘Manage space’ and then ‘Look and Feel’ and paste the code into the box for each option in the template. The screenshot on the left shows what each option from Look and Feel (screen shot on the right) changes.Note that I have also created a logo using one of the avatars I have created online. I am now branding this on all my wikis. I have also been playing with my Twitter background picture which you can see all of on http://twitter.com/suzievesper I’m not completely happy with the colour combinations against some of the Twitter colours so will probably rework this again and I need to make the side panel shorter so all of it shows. To make this, I went back to Colour Lovers and selected a pattern I liked and downloaded it. From there I opened up GIMP (would also work in Photoshop etc) and copied the pattern which meant I was able to use it with the fill bucket to fill the entire space. All patterns from Colour Lovers will appear as one seemless pattern when tiled. Then I created a layer with the rectangle where I added my details and avatar. I saved the whole thing as a PNG and then uploaded it as my design to Twitter. In other words, I spent ages mucking around in the evening doing something pretty inconsequential but diverting. Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

I know that I am supposed to be hunkering down to read all the milestones and variations coming my way and I am mostly doing that but having a bit of fun helps keep a person sane! That is why I have been enjoying playing with Elf Yourself - a tool designed by the Jib Jab site where you can add up to five people’s heads to elf characters in a variety of dancers. Here is a band of Twitters dancing up a storm. See if you can spot @klandmiles, @teachernz, @allanhk, @heymilly and myself @suzievesper. Send your own ElfYourself eCards While speaking of Xmas (and yes I know that we haven’t even reached December yet), I have been working on updating my Christmas Links wiki from last year in time for the festive season in schools. You can find a large range of sites, games and activities related to Xmas on this site. As you would probably have guessed from all of this, I am quite a Christmas freak. I could play Xmas music all the time if it didn’t drive my husband to absolute distraction Finally, moving away from the whole Xmas theme and getting back to colour tools there is Idee Labs.  You can use this to find images based on colours of your own choice or from particular images. I think this would be great when exploring the moods of colours or just wanting to create a display around key colours. Here is a screenshot of the images that I generated by choosing the red and green colours you can see on the far right. Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.

Even twictionary was unable to translate this tweet according to Penny Coutas! I’ve tweeted many weird funny insane incredible tweets but this is definitely my most ‘blog worthy’ tweet!  It’s made more funnier by the fact that: I can’t translate it I sent it from twizza, a meet up for educators to learn about twitter (looks like I’m the one that needs some lessons!) Bad headache today has impacted slightly Please feel free to leave a comment to translate what you think I was saying……and to tell me about your ‘most blog worthy tweet’ (by you or someone else!) And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

Below is an account of the worm attacks on twitter on the Easter weekend, 2009 — it’s been regularly updated as new events occurred. CURRENT STATUS: A new twitter worm attack occurred on April 17. Early Easter Sunday 12 April (Western Australia 9 AM GMT + 8hrs) I noticed that several of my twitter followers sent out tweets that appeared like their account had been hacked. To be honest, I thought I was safe because I had seen similar before. Boy how wrong was I…. This guy learnt a new method of hacking into our accounts. All it takes is checking on the profile when you receive notification of a new follower. Assume they have probably set up quite a few accounts to do this…. It immediately accesses your account and starts sending out a range of different tweets about the company. Here is what you need to do if it happens to you: Immediately change your twitter password - that appears to stop it Check your bio and make sure it hasn’t added a link into it for their web site - remove any links that have been added This was caused by a worm named the Stalkdaily worm created by Mikeyy Mooney, the 17-year-old creator of StalkDaily.com from Brooklyn (read more about it here). When StalkDaily hit I recommended that twitter users don’t: Check out the profiles of any new followers until it is addressed (unless you first engage in a meaningful conversation with them) Don’t visit web profiles of infected users or click on the link to StalkDaily Within about an hour Twitter deployed a security patch that they thought fixed the problem. It was also necessary for Twitter to suspend some users accounts for awhile. Some of twitterers found when their account was reactivated that it had removed them from their followers lists as a result. This meant they had to contact people and ask them to refollow. I recommended people remain cautious for the rest of the day — just in case. Fortunately this was good advice. Approximately 8 hours later the next worm hit twitter. This time Mikeyy Mooney created the Mikeyy worm that took over accounts including changing their user and sending out continuous tweets like: Twitter please fix this, regards Mikeyy Man, Twitter can’t fix sh*t. Mikeyy owns. Twitter should really fix this… During the Easter weekend Twitter fought off four waves of worm attacks created by Mikeyy Mooney.  Damon Cortesi wrote an excellent postmortem post that explains exactly how the worm worked and what code was used. Unfortunately security continues to be an issue for twitter.  After Mikeyy Mooney was hired by ExqSoft to do security analysis work Mikeyy launched a fifth worm attack on Friday April 17.  You can read more about this latest version here. Options for protecting your twitter account: Don’t visit web profiles of any twitter users if you are logged into your twitter account unless you have ensured your web browser is fully secured and have scripting turned off using plugins like NoScript for Firefox. If you haven’t secured your web browser only visit web profiles of twitters users once you have logged out of your twitter account. Stick with using a twitter application like Twhirl or Tweetdeck.  You can use either of these applications to check out new followers using their search facility and add by clicking on the + alongside their profile. IF you want me to add you to my twitter account — please send me @suewaters and engage in conversation. If you are new to using twitter you might like to check out my twitter advice for new people. Please note: I don’t normally update posts but because of the nature of these worm attacks this has been necessary. And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

Much of the learning from blogging happens as a result of commenting and interaction between commenters.   Comments that challenge views, ideas and thoughts or provide alternative solutions all expand your (and your readers) thinking. Trouble is most readers are relucant commenters, not because of lack of time, but because they feel uncomfortable leaving comments.  So here is your chance to help me demonstrate the power of comments to participants at Digital Fair.  Can you please leave a comment to share your thoughts on: Reasons why readers mightn’t leave comments on blog posts What makes a good comment? What are some of your tips for encouraging readers to comment? And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

People are now asking me about Blogs.mu in terms of school blogging programs so I’ve decided it’s better to clarify because most people won’t appreciate how very different Blogs.mu is from other hosted blogging solutions. But before I do it is important to point out, to ensure full disclosure, that I work for both Edublogs and Incsub (who own Blogs.mu). WordPress blog vs WordPress MU blogs When you sign up for a blog on Edublogs or WordPress.com what happens is these companies host your blog and you can get on with the job of writing your posts and blog design. The highest level of access you have is as an administrator and because it is a hosted solution features like adding extra plugins or uploading themes aren’t possible. The other option for single blog users, who want to use WordPress but have more control over their blog features such as extra plugins or custom themes, is they will install WordPress from WordPress.org and host their own blog on either their own servers or pay a hosting company. Once you want to hosts lots of blogs on the same domain then you need to use WordPress MU (WordPress Multiuser and also known as WPMU). Both Edublogs or WordPress.com use WordPress MU but Edublogs has been highly customised by our specialist team WPMU coders to include features that specifically assist educators with using the blogs with students. WordPress MU blogs vs Edublogs Campus Site Often schools and universities want higher level of control and access than achievable with Edublogs so they will look at solutions like hosting their own WordPress MU site or Edublogs Campus. While installing and managing your own WordPress blog is relatively easy, but can cause problems, WordPress MU is considerably more specialized and requires a certain level of expertise. This is why educational organisations choose Edublogs Campus because it provides all the powerful features of a WordPress MU site without having to worry about the stress of hosting, maintenance and upgrading the software. The main feature which provides the higher level of control that educational organisations want is access to site admin. On a WordPress MU the next level of access of access above an Administrator is the site admin user. As site admin user you can: Manage the access and level of responsibility of all users Manage blog features including access to plugins, themes and blog privacy settings Create new users and new blogs Edit posts, pages, comments on any blog Reset passwords Edit and delete any blog In really simple terms, if you have problems with a student, as site admin user, you can immediately log into the dashboard of their blog, without being attached as a user to that blog, then edit/delete a post/comment plus change whether that student can access their blog. WordPress MU blogs vs Blogs.mu Community Blogs.mu is quite a bit different from the hosted Edublogs and WordPress.com. When you sign up with either of these services you are provided with a blog. On Blogs.mu you can sign up for WordPress MU site of your own and then set up your own blogs, or blog community under it. For example you might like to set up a community on writing called writerspot.blogs.mu and then if the writer John Smith signs up in your community his blog is writerspot.blogs.mu/johnsmith. Similar to Edublogs with Blogs.mu you can choose to be a free user or a supporter. With Blogs.mu just like Edublogs Campus you are getting your own WordPress MU site with the high level of control minus the stress of hosting the site and specialist expertise required to maintain or upgrade WordPress MU. The features of these two sites are quite different because Blogs.mu is designed for anyone who wants to set up a community using their WordPress MU while Edublogs Campus has been customised specifically to meets the needs of the educational community. For a comparison check out: Blogs.mu Site Admin Guide Edublogs Campus Site Admin Guide and log into the University of Blogs Sandpit site If you’re interested in the technical aspects of how blogs.mu was created check out Barry’s On Muing MU - A technical introduction post. And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

In case you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to for the past few months, and why I’ve had less time than usual, I can now explain. Although maybe not everyone has noticed this less time? Working with WordPress MU Besides all my usual Edublogs responsibilities I’ve also been working for Incsub developing WordPress MU (WordPress Multiuser and also known as WPMU) support material (some is still a work in progress). While installing and managing your own single install WordPress blog is relatively easy, but can cause problems, WordPress MU is considerably more specialized and requires a certain level of expertise. The reason why people use WordPress MU is once you want to hosts lots of blogs on the same domain then you need to use it. Edublogs is a customized version of WordPress MU designed to include features that specifically assist educators with using blogs with students. Most themes and plugins used on WordPress can’t be used on WordPress MU, and you also use mu-plugins on WordPress MU (some of these can be challenging to install). The idea of these support material is to help make the process of installing and using WordPress MU easier. WordPress MU Support Material Locations For a ‘one-stop shop’ for those that use WordPress MU here is where you will find these support materials: Site Admin user manuals Edublogs Campus Site Admin Manual - WPMU 2.6.5 The WordPress MU Site Admin Guide - WPMU 2.7 Blogs.mu Site Admin manual - WPMU 2.7.1 WordPress MU manual - for installing WPMU 2.7.1 WPMU.org - where The WPMU Manual is being serialized (here is the RSS feed if you want to subscribe).  Below are the first two posts! Choosing a domain name and hosting service Setting up your MySQL database and user Next step is adding more detailed instructions to the Premium plugins, where required. For example. this is the new instructions for installing the avatars plugin. FINAL THOUGHTS And yes, if you were wondering, it does mean I’ve had to install WordPress MU, bbPress, plugins, themes, languages, mu-plugins, use FTP and Text Editors. I’ve also felt like I’m going crazy (occasionally) remembering the Site admin differences between Edublogs (WPMU 2.6.3/2.6.5 hybrid), Edublogs Campus (WPMU 2.6.5) sites, newer versions of WordPress MU (2.7 & 2.7.1) and site admin (and system admin) in blogs.mu. And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

Last week I was invited to present on PLNs (personal learning networks) as part of Getting Connected 09 for The Australian Flexible Learning Frameworks. As the conference targeted the VET sector I decided to take a different PLN approach and share how social networking tools can create communities of professionals, and students, that help each other. Skills level of participants Participants were surveyed near the start of the session to help guide how little/much information on each aspect need to be explained. The results are shown in the table below (Yes= has their own or uses with their students; No = doesn’t have own or use with students; No response = they didn’t respond to the question). Value of Creating Communities The message for creating professional learning communities using social networking tools was similar to PLNs. Our daily face-to-face interactions offer limited opportunities for: Asking our work colleagues/students questions Reflecting on ideas with each other Effectively sharing information Social networking tools provide the ability to easily connect ourselves, our students, with educators in the same/similar fields, and people from industry to form a global community. This greatly increases opportunities to receive assistance and provide assistance. The main difference to a PLN is technology skills of individuals you may want as part of your professional learning community are often (very) low. This means you need to use a range of tools including ones they are more likely to feel comfortable using. To stay sane remember: Not everyone will share your excitement (and it is unrealistic to think they will) Let them choose whether or not they join Don’t be offended if you can’t encourage everyone to participate Be grateful for those that do participate It takes time! During the session I discussed the main tools I use for aquaculture industry to highlight their benefits and how it can be done. Facebook In terms of aquaculture Facebook is used mainly with my students (but I do have some work colleagues in my account). My students are given the option to add me to their Facebook account knowing that they can email me, use the chat or leave comments on my wall. Years ago I used to give students my email address and never get got any emails. With Facebook student regularly contact me to help with both my work and other courses. Many continue to remain in contact when they leave. Ning Our AquaEd Ning community to connect educators, industry and my students together (consists of members from within Australia and oversees). Benefits of Ning are ability to have forums, upload photos, upload/share videos and easily email all members etc. For me this Ning community meant I was about to source training material and images to use for an aquaculture elearning unit. I couldn’t have sourced this material as well (or as quickly) using traditional methods. My students, and other community members, are using this Ning to share what they are doing and ask others questions. Ning challenges are you need to be prepared to facilitate and encourage conversation. The more people you can encourage to help you facilitate the more likely it will grow. As a Ning owner you need to closely monitor all new members (using RSS) due to spammers. Twitter Never thought it would happen but have people from aquaculture joining my twitter account. Which has been excellent because they also then join AquaEd Ning. As these people are already into social networking they add value to your community because they aren’t reluctant users. FINAL THOUGHTS This session was recorded and you can watch it here! My advice for building a community remains the same as for a PLN — your first step is to start using these tools for your own learning then start thinking how you can connect with members from your industry. Check out my PLN Yourself website to get started! Meanwhile for those that have created professional learning communities — please share your stories. What has worked well? What aspects have caused problems? And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

Did I ever imagine that one day I would be sitting at a desk in USA writing a blog post?  NOPE! Yet, according to Google Maps, I’m currently about 14, 816 miles from my home (Perth, Western Australia).  Fortunately I didn’t follow Google Maps directions and kayak across Pacific Ocean from Australia through Japan to get here! Purpose of my trip was to attend NECC 2009 (one of the World’s largest conferences for Ed Tech professionals).  This year over 18,000 people attended. Those following The Edublogger’s USA Adventure… to NECC and Beyond! have been asking me what the conference was like so here goes! The Sessions Many of my Australian friends would love to know how the NECC sessions compared to Australian conferences.  Unfortunately this is where I go sorry!  I only attended two sessions, both of which were keynotes, neither did anything for me. There were several reasons why I didn’t attend sessions. I was representing Edublogs at NECC; I knew I could watch recordings of NECC sessions and read blog post reviews later.But most importantly, a fact that people don’t appreciate, is I’m quite isolated living in Perth (costly 5 hour flight to most conferences just in Australia). I don’t have many opportunities to meet and network with others f2f.  NECC may have been my one opportunity to ever meet a people who I network with online f2f as there is no guarantee I will ever get a chance to visit USA again.  Creating stronger connections with people, by interacting f2f, in my view long term provides greater opportunity for learning than any session you can attend. Biggest NECC Takeaways by Others Looking for reflections by others?  Check out survey results of other people’s biggest takeaways from NECC09.  Or if you attended NECC, either in person or virtually, add your own reflections using this form. Thanks to Alice Barr for creating this document which I will use to guide my viewing of NECC session recordings! What I did At NECC Most of my time at NECC was spent at: Bloggers Cafe (a casual space set up for people to connect with each other) and NECC unplugged (NECC’s unconference area where any one who wants can present to both f2f and virtual global participants). I really enjoyed presenting at NECC Unplugged and plan to follow up with a later post on it. Majority of my time was spent networking with others. Too many people, and too many stories to mention, but the slideshow below contains photos of most those I met.  Definitely existing connections through blogging and twitter enhanced these f2f interactions. The Edublogger Shirt For those unaware I has a shirt custom made for me by Paul Morris (CheekyTeez in Perth) with design input from Gary Barber. The idea of the shirt was to fit with the beginners series I faciliate for Classroom 2.0 and followed the same theme of badges we organised for NECC. In a crazy Sue moment I decided to use one of the shirts as a sovenior by getting people I meet at NECC to sign the shirt.  I’m hoping now poor Paul (or anyone) can figure out how I might frame it to keep as the souvenior. Here is a photo of my favorite blogger signing my shirt! The Slideshow below has a closeup of all the different signatures. The Exhibitor Hall WOW!  What can I say about the Exhibitor hall?  It was massive! Felt like the size of a football oval and had to be seen to believed. Lots of NECC posts were critical of the exhibitors hall however I think Alfred Thompson’s Sponges and Participants post is a reminder to Edubloggers about the needs of different types of conference participants. FINAL THOUGHTS Thanks to everyone that I meet at NECC!  I enjoyed every second (except for all my misadventures on US air planes).  I will follow up later with some USA reflections in later posts. Extra special thanks to James Farmer for giving me the opportunity to attend NECC! For those that attended NECC — would love to hear about what aspects you enjoyed the most? For those who attended NECC unplugged through Elluminate - what was it like?  What was the best aspects? The most challenging aspects? Feel free to also any questions about what USA is like to an Australian Badge image by Greatnews licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike

It’s my last day in USA and I’m taking home so many lovely memories of USA…..except for Coca Cola and Cadbury chocolate. IMHO it is a scandal! The Taste of American Coca Cola and Chocolate Being well known for my Coca Cola and chocolate love (it’s what I’m holding in my avatar) I feel a need to expose this scandal. Worse still that I have to confess I’ve been drinking Pepsi and feeling physically sick from the memory of eating Cadbury Carmello chocolate. While other Aussies rush off planes from USA to grab a true Aussie meat pie all I’m thinking about is drinking my first real drink of Coca Cola in 3 weeks. It may be an extremely long flight home for the Qantas flight attendants if they serve American Coca Cola and not Australian. Off course I’m also now concerned that I will no longer cope with the sweet taste of our Coca Cola and our chocolate . Reason for the taste difference Before coming to USA I was aware that the chocolate would taste different but assumed that Coca Cola tastes the same World wide (as did most non-USA people in my network). So why the different taste? Well here they use high-fructose corn syrup instead of sugar. Besides not being as sweet it has a horrible taste. In USA the price of sugar is considerably higher than the World sugar price due to factors such as sugar quotas on the import of sugar and government subsidies of USA sugar growers (read more here about the history of USA inflated sugar prices). The solution for reducing food production costs has been to replace sugar with high-fructose corn syrup or move production to countries like Canada where sugar is cheap. Meanwhile Americans who want to drink soft drinks containing sugar go to stores that sell Mexican imported Coca Cola and Pepsi. FINAL THOUGHTS I’m arriving into Sydney airport Monday 13 July at 6.15 AM. Hopefully no one gets in my way as I run to grab some real Cadbury chocolate! Sigh with a short time between my flight from Sydney to Perth hopefully in my rush to get some chocolate I don’t miss my flight home PS yes I will tell you more about my USA adventure than just the chocolate and Coca Cola scandal. What else would you like to know? And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

Can be only one response to this tweet! Readers should answer it Personally I find it hard to believe for two main reasons: a) I’m a chocolate addict - I think we need a clarification of addiction! b) That it could be very scary! Your thoughts: Is Ashley Proud right? Does it make me scary? And can an addition scare readers? Perhaps truth - he’s a chocolate hater? Disclaimer: Sue Waters is a serious blogger And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

Credit where credit is due is important. Yes the "Twitter Handbook for Teachers" is an excellent resource. While it is lovely for people on twitter to regularly thank me for the resources I create (and to get all the retweets of thanks) — I DID NOT write Twitter Handbook for Teachers.  But I can understand why people think I did. It was written by Tomaz Lasic (@lasic) who used the quote from my PLN Yourself wiki on the front page of his handbook and then made the very human mistake of not adding his own details as author on the front page.   So now everyone sees my name (and website) and automatically assumes I created it. But it is also important that I give Alan Levine credit also — as he pointed out in the comments I should have attributed him.  I’ve always felt that the following words were inspired by his audio he provided for a podcast I was asked to proved for the Knowledge Tree (here is the PDF version of the podcast). "Watching from the outside, Twitter like the the dumbest thing you’ve heard of "Why would anyone want to tell others what they are doing in 140 characters." And yet to dismiss Twitter is a mistake because it’s an incredibly powerful tool for your personal learning and connecting with others" However they could have come from his Being There presentation that I attended twice in 2007 and wrote about on my other wiki. Please thank Tomaz Lasic (@lasic) for his great resource - he deserves full credit for his excellent work.  And Alan Levine (@cogdog) deserves full credit for his work. And if you want to thank me here are the resources I created on twitter for my PLN Yourself wiki: Set up your own Twitter Account - helpful information for building your PLN using twitter Step 2: Set Up Twitter Account - designed as a step by step guide for f2f workshops PS for those that know me I can’t believe you thought the handbook was my work — not one single step-by-step screenshots that is characteristic of my work! And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

Well I’m a bit late  to help John Connell with his session at BBC’s Glasgow HQ! But I like the blogging questions and think others would be intrigued by my answers. 1.  How did you get into blogging? I’m sure lots of people that are very glad I’m blogger would be totally surprised by the fact that initially I really struggled with the concept of blogging — Why anyone would blog and why others read their blogs? It took almost a year from being shown what a blog was to becoming a blogger. The turning point were a result of: Subscribing to blogs (which gave me a greater appreciate of blogs) My strong desire to reflect on what I was learning. 2.  What were (are?) the motivations? My podcasts and wiki were excellent for sharing information but weren’t great for other aspects. Blogging gave me what podcasting and my wiki lacked; the ability to reflect, collaborate, exchange ideas and connect with others.  These aspects plus my strong motivation to help others motivates why I blog. 3.  How does your "private" blogging relate to your work? Well my ‘private blogging’ developed into my work. And if you had told me when I first started blogging that within 8 months I would end up employed by a blogging company — I’d have said Get Real!’ Key events that lead to this were Darren Rowse’s 31 Days Project that made me a better blogger and James Farmer who saw potential! 4.  How do you achieve a balance of personal voice and authority Sorry but I really don’t like words ‘authority’ or ‘expert’ We each have our own personal voices and own opinions — when we share and collaborate together we all gain in knowledge and skills. 5. What can be achieved through blogging that can’t through ordinary news/reporting routes? Any one, any time, any where can share their thoughts, opinions and beliefs. We can now make the news, report the news and connect in ways we couldn’t previously. 6. How do you follow other blogs and other forms of "public conversation"? By subscribing to blogs and using twitter. 7.  How does your blog connect to others in a "conversation"? Wonder how John Connell answered this question?  Boy that’s a hard one. My blogs help others become bloggers, or hopefully better bloggers.  Working together through engaging in conversations in comments  we connect and help with each other. 8.  Are there other bloggers you follow especially, others you think are exemplars of the practice? Really hate those types of questions.  Reading  blog to me is like reading a novel.  Some people like romance, or horror, or sci fi or ……  PS don’t make me read a romance 9. How do you feel about "lighter" practices such as Tweeting, facebook status updates etc…? I think it’s s a mistake to see them as ‘lighter’ practices… a very bad mistake.  They are both complementary and becoming increasingly important for bloggers. Many readers now prefer to grab links to posts from twitter.  Others like to read the posts as updates in Facebook. Blogging is all about making your blog be more easily read by your audience.  Twitter, Facebook, RSS feed and email subscription all make it easier for your readers. FINAL THOUGHTS So that is my journey… would love to read  your responses to John Connell questions! And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!