Saturday, December 31, 2011

The Habits and Attitudes of Being Public Online - Teacher 2.0

  • What are the emotional barriers to building a PWP and contributing online?
  • What are the "habitudes" you (and your students) need to develop to feel comfortable contributing online? (For example, is "courage" needed to contribute online?)
  • As you look at how youth interact in the online world, what "habitudes" will you need to help them learn participate well? (Thoughtfulness? Sensitivity to others?)
Emotional Barriers? Probably the biggest is the fear that no-one will find my posts interesting.  I maintain 4 blogs and a wikispace - I have Guest Books or provision for comments on all - yet I have received no guest book entries, very few comments on my blog posts, and apart from a few members on my Genealogy Blog, no members to my blogs.  I have received a couple of queries related to my family history thanks to the wiki but although my visitor counters tell me that people are looking at all of my sites I'm not getting much feedback so I sort of feel I'm the only person really taking any interest in my on-line efforts.  But that isn't such a bad thing I guess, as I still get immense pleasure from keeping the sites updated, and it is good for self reflection - especially my 'Reflections' blog where I reminisce about things and people from my childhood.
Habitudes?  I am slowly learning to use some cyberspeak in my online communications, especially text messages and the occasional twitters I share.  But my blogs demand proper English, good grammar and punctuation.  I just can't help it, and I cringe when I see some of the efforts of some people.  The teacher in me wants to correct errors!  Another habitude which I think I have developed is to define the purpose of my on-line presence - primarily it is for me!  If others find it interesting, or benefit from it in some way, then that is a bonus - so I shouldn't worry about whether or not I get feedback from others.
Youth Interaction?  I think they need to learn the differences required in different forums.  i.e. when the message is for a small group of close friends, then perhaps cyberspeak is acceptable, but anything for broader  publication should contain proper spelling, grammar and punctuation.
I would also like to teach them caution - what they publicly broadcast now might seem like a bit of a lark, but in time it may (will?) come back to haunt them.  They need to be aware of the image of themselves they are painting with all aspects of their on-line presence.

Another Year Over

Well, it is the 31st December - another year has flown by.  I guess when your life is measured in three week blocks that is bound to happen.
Overall this has been a good year.  Once I got over the horrible side-effects of the slightly higher dose of Xeloda I began to feel quite good.  From about September on I have felt the best I have done for three and a half years.  That was marred somewhat by my sore shoulder/arm - but now that seems to be on the improve also, thanks to a combination of Patrick the chiropractor, Naveen Joshi for the only painkillers that had any effect (Endep) and which also seem to have helped enormously with sleeping, and Alpa the physiotherapist.  I am eating better, to the extent that I have put back some of the weight I lost over the past couple of years.  Bill thinks that's a good thing, I wish it had stayed off.
Tonight we wil go over to Lakes Entrance for the fireworks.  We'll see Mark and Janine and the kids for at least the 9:30 display, but will probably stay on the foreshore by ourselves for the midnight display as we have done in past years.
2010 fireworks at Lakes Entrance
Farewell 2011!

Friday, December 16, 2011

Christmas Shortbread

Well, for the first time in over three years I have cooked something.  I decided I felt well enough to make a batch of shortbread to give to the neighbours for Christmas.  It nearly knocked the stuffing out of me, but I felt pleased when it was finished.  I thought it was going to be a disaster, but it actually turned out all right.  First off the dough seemed too dry, so Bill decided to 'help' by adding some milk and more butter to the mixture.  Of course shortbread doesn't have milk!  Then he decided that the oven would be better if it was on the griller setting rather than the fan forced - result, first batch look like chocolate shortbread!  Second batch actually rose a bit despite being made with plain flour, thanks to Bill's milk.  Final batches, made with the remains of the 1kg of butter, from which Bill had 'nicked' 50gms so it weighed 200gms instead of the required 250gms, and less flour and sugar seemed to come out fine.
I used the same recipe Mum has used for as long as I can remember.