Sunday, May 23, 2004

In the woodpile



The woodpile is a new feature added to my garden last year. The idea is to provide plenty off nooks and crannies for toads, frogs and other wildlife to hide away in, as well as a whole host of flora and fauna living off the decaying wood.

Back in the field



It's good to be back in the field

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Guestbook

I think you might be able to leave a message here now, in which case feel free!

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Three drafts

Hi. I'm posting here because the ultralab server is down, so I can't post to my new blog, nor view it nor catch up with community stuff in First Class and also because blogger released a new interface yesterday so I wanted to try it out. In my mind I have three journal entries which are in danger of getting left unposted forever if I don't get something down now, so here are three draft entries.

1) is about a year one lesson which I took yesterday afternoon, after the teacher approached me at lunchtime. The curriculum mentions different types of media used by 'the information around us' so I decided to demonstrate the use of video and we produced some impromptu short 'silent movies'. The children had to think up mimes which were videoed, downloaded onto the computers and then played back when the other group turned up and had to guess what had been going on. I worked well with class teacher, definitely using some reflection-in-practice techniques there, all the learning objectives were covered, not just ICT but numeracy and literacy as well, and the kinaesthetic element will mean they remember it for a long time. So it was one of those occasional times when everything went right, and worth recording for that.

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2) this is my PDP - personal development plan, medium term overview.

It's broken down into spheres of activity I would like to develop.

* Technician

OS X administration, network management, netboot image updates, general OS X stuff.
Also control and monitoring equipment, digitalbrain and elc stuff

*ICT Coordinator

Planning, cross curriculum, assessment

*Teaching

gain some experience with adults.

*ICT Tutor

learn how to use the DV cam.
develop the ict-tutor.co.uk website

*Internet

learn how to install software in my own webspace for blogging, WIKI and mailing list software,
How to provide an aggregate RSS feed


*Self employment

setting up a business, applying for funding

*music
go to more gigs
setting up a home recording studio
Finishing off the 20 songs I wrote in Spain last year.
seeking local venues and audience

*personal finance

provision for retirement
investment
investigate possibilities for telecommuting, relocation.

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3) This one is a discovery I made while surfing random blogs. I read an entry from someone about to go to their first 'blogmeet'. He was looking forward to meeting people he's been exchanging blog comments with for a long time, and was wondering how blogger would recognise each other. This read just like someone from a newsgroup about to link up with their community face -to-face- for the first time and it has made me rethink my ideas about blogs and community. Bloggers seem to feel the need to identify their geographical location, and there are several web services which provide for this - chalk , geourl, London bloggers etc.
So while the things bloggers blog about tend to be person-centric, and the technology leads to nebulous links with fuzzy edges, the sense of community may be emerging for some in a different way, at the location level.