CC News

——————————–

CC News - A blog site well worth the regular visit…in fact I’ve added to my blogroll and it’s 1.58 AM in the morning.

Time to sleep.

Flip Camera

—————————————————————————————-
[ image : Flip Camera ]

Could have some interesting possibilities for under resourced educators and tradies in the field

Wacky Gifs

One from Burning Pixel;

Edupunk : Oi Oi Oi !

…………………….

[ image : me in 2007 ]

It would seem our most illustrious educationalists are now engaged in a race to rhetoric to rid themselves of the web 2.0 moniker they so lovingly have coveted for so long ….for so little some would retort.

D’Arcy Norman threatens self immolation in a land of machines and Leigh Blackall quotes 1975 as being one of the best years in his short life, both it would seem  in their reference and abhorence to straight-edge geek-boys desiring dirt amongst tech-smarm and power hungry industrialised neck-bearded hegemonists.

Yet, on reflection, a trillion social bookmarks and three hundred billion lost passwords and associated personal information fields later, we now have a better picture of what we could perhaps should now be working away from…but how ?

Well, perhaps we could all get web 2.0 and 21st century ( finger down throat ) about it and address it as all good fcuking edu-mcationalists should in a list of ten ‘edupunk’ behaviours ( or considerations of reality ) that you think define our move away from reframing and bundling emerging technologies into cookie-cutter products with pre-defined application….

Here’s my ten;

1. Resolving The Identity Crisis - I now know who I dont know because of the technologies I find myself using day to day….what was my name again and who do you want me to be ?
2. Avoiding Robotic Gesticulations - The machine is in me
3. Head Banging For A Living - I’d shave my head and bang it only its all fallen out
4. Google Maps My Arse - I’m already covered in tattoos and they still gave me a job as a pre-school teacher
5. Beazley For President - Johnny Rotten was the last Australian Prime Minister right ?
6. Networking Mayhem - My RSS reader looks like Sid & Nancy on crack
7. Avoiding Detention - I’d happily trash a classroom if I had one
8. Business Before Pleasure - Fuck capability building…lets all get pissed and feed our learners to the factory furnace
9. Convicts - We all know that with a pardon we can get to the top and mohawks are a type of Columbian bird right ?
10. Green What ? - You seriously want me to work with this haircut ?

Ah well.

Even when I grew my hair back the attitude still remained…..so I’m told. Better we get all ‘edu’ punk as long as we refrain from waving flags and chanting stupid arse slogans invented for long dead white supremist lunatics.

Oi !

Funky Soundtracks

Gentle Giants

……………………………………………..

[ image : mosieur J ]

Lucy Chili and I have again been exploring what makes and constitutes change whilst acknowledging fear, favour, patterns, binary thinking and other such debilitating conditions of humanity.

Faced with a seemingly undending array of topics to explore which underpin the anxieties of living life as e-learning educators or in Lucy’s sake not education ( although I’d argue it’s concept not a title) we’ve unearthed an interesting piece of prose via the Gmail semantics ad. campaign in the top toolbar.

On Social Practices.

Ripples

It’s nice to see Bee online at it again and networking knowledge to great effect

Chinese Wisdom

Grab a fridge magnet.

Print the following and stick it under the magnet for a while. I took this one off the fridge up here in Orange and it seems to have been a guiding light for the last year or so.

1. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
2. Marry a woman / man who you love to talk to. As you get older their conversational skills will be as important as any other.
3. Dont believe all you hear; spend all you have; or sleep all you want.
4. When you say “I love you” mean it.
5. When you say ” I’m sorry” look the person in the eye.
6. Be engaged six months before you get married.
7. Believe in love at first sight.
8. Never laugh at anyone’s dreams. People who dont have dreams dont have much.
9. Love deeply and passionately.You might get hurt, but it’s the only way to live life completely.
10. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.
11. Dont judge people by their relatives.
12. Talk slowly but quickly.
13. When someone asks you a question you dont want to answer smile and ask, ” Why do you want to know ?”
14. Remember that great love and great acheivements involve great risk.
15. Say “Bless You” when you hear someone sneeze.
16. When you lose, dont lose the lesson.
17. Remember the three ‘R’s : respect for self; respect for others; Responsibility for others.
18. Dont let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
19. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
20. Spend some time alone.

Feerless Leeder Rudd Beneficent

Local Eyes

[ image : Localeyes Sydney ]

Every once in a while I get to the point where I just need to have a big cry and connect with being emotional…being human and letting go of the stress and pain of being alive and well in the beautiful world.

Tonight I opened an email from my friend Jennie Burrows who has two very special and dear children who have grown up entwined in each others lives like two peas in a pod. I want to acknowledge that Jennie has been a light in dark times for me when I was going through one of the most difficult points in my transition as I broke away from the lands of Western Australia, opening her home and heart to me along with a number of other noted friends I’m lucky to have.

I also want to acknowledge that I’ve witnessed an amazing transition in a small persons life as they grow and love their siblings and that little person is Persia who has just recently won the Local Eyes - http://www.localeyessydney.com.au/ - photographic competition at the grand old age of five years .

Persia has been a participant in the Pathways program and her portrait of herself and her brother Tyler has just moved me to tears and prompted me to write this blog post. Congratulations Persia ( and Tyler ) and it is testament of the amazing energy that Jenny has put into building love in a very diverse and beautiful family.

Read Write Blah.

. .

“……some who complain in the staffroom about not being able to turn off from school when they get home……..they just want their paycheck and to keep doing things the same way they been doing it for the last 10/20 years.”

Time Out

I’d almost forgotten about this history time capsule - time out !

Sheesh……only two years ago ?…make that one.

Wimba: The Next Challenge

It could only happen to me surely….and yet I know it dosent…regularly and it frustrates the hell out of teachers trying to make a go of it and I feel for them as they seek innovation only to have really seemingly simple things stop them in their tracks.

Here I am behind the the four-walled firewall and my VoxPopping DJ dropping attempt at trying to make it into Kerry Johnson’s world has yet again been stopped. I’ll try again from the home office.

Repeat attempts x 5 mean it’s a home job…again.

That also rules out my ideas for Wimba ( with ease ) poking it’s head through the Moodle installs out here in the West. I’ve managed to get Scorm compliant tool box things happening inside and that heartens me somewhat.

Luckily also though I’ve had the opportunity to speak with Graham Wegner , Janet Hawtin and last night Kim Cofino. Some things do work and yet…..

I tried using the CallGraph program to record Kim’s great talk last night but it fell over with no recording present at the conclusion of our Skype talk…..so perhaps Kerry you could extract something from the above MP3 recordings and Vox pop it through EDNA.

There are so many challenges for educators simply with navigation through the web inside large organisations that I’m sure this contributes to the perception that ICT’s are just so close and yet so tantalisingly out of reach hence an attitude of….nice…….if only it would work for us. I’ve eluded to this a little in my presentation which will occur this Thursday in Dubbo with the CSHT& R Faculty…just a little.

Without humour it’s hard to see forward. Without the guts the it’s hard to look back proudly and know that you’ve contributed to breaking down some stereotypes and demystifying some of the fear surrounding networked learning.

Beyond delivery.

I think I’ll invest in the PrettyMay pro. audio Skype recorder. Cant afford to have conversations like this with Kim or others just not record.

Graham, Janet and Kim are all looking for the same thing in this debate. Some sensible approachs to the use of digital technologies involving our most precious asset - our children. having the guts to become a networked and global citizen celebrating difference and celebrating unity where possible.

Beautiful day up here in Orange after the snow fall yesterday.

Twine or Spokeo ?

Just getting my head around the Twine RDF semantics.

Likewise Spokeo.

Virtual Knee Surgery

Courtesy of Marg Bell who’s also suffering from a broken ankle, here’s a virtual surgery toolbox - would certainly see you getting squeamish if indeed , like me, you’ve just undergone surgery.

It looks like a great resource so I’m going to start a new online category for Virtual Resources and tag the posts by topic are which may be helpful in retracing them.

I think this would be a handy resource for e-learning learners also as an introductory step into online anything. Do you know of any resources similar ?

If so drop me a comment . I’d love to hear from you.

WP 2.5 : Wrapt !

Unbelieviable difference is the main thing I have to say about the dashboard and running upgrade of Wordpress 2.5

Congratulations Matt and team !

The difference is amazing and has inspired me to ditch my previous dodgy theme and invest in a Brian Gardner product which I vote as impeccable…..beautifully coded and a pleasure to work with.

Typically I hadnt read the operating instructions ( must be a male thing ) and launched headlong into unzip mode on Bluehost.

Brian had solved my enquiry within one email with a two minute turn around as to why my plugins werent happening and it was all smooth sailing from there on in.

Ive been throwing the code around a bit and spent most of the day building new RSS , email and header images experimenting with shadows and the Neuropol font.

Dare I say it - I’m happy with this layout - static ( dynamic though ) front end page with category feeds and a funky , managable and affiliate rich three column blog.

That means I can finally get down to the real business of web design, connected learning and a whole heap of project related blogging.

Back to it. 

Testing The RSS Reader

This post is a test on the TALO rss reader

Slideshare

Funky Movie

Retrodicals | Printdown’s

You’ll notice some changes in this blog structure and the way it reads again so here’s hoping this is the end of the spring clean for 2007 and that I can get down to some serious summer business.

Today was the wrap-up meeting for NSW LearnScope and this alone has given me the jitters. Back to consultancy land for a while amidst changes to the local working politic….it makes me happy though to know that NSW LearnScope as a project has been successful , exhausting but awesome two year project (s) journey.

I drove back through the most torrential downpour today all the way over the hill from Sydney to Orange and then have been behind the console since;

• updating the FLNW2 wikispace timetable
• confering with the TALO mob and the overlap with TESOL EVO 2008 group
  
• Twittering
• chatting with Graham Wegner about the concept of printdowns.

The idea behind printdown goes something like this. A lot of our writing online is at risk of never being printed which for some is no real issue as it means that there’s less paperwork to be worried about.

What about our kids, those in the future who may have missed the online and who for many reasons may never access our musings and connections ? Sure, we could say the same about any online site, wiki, podcast etc. but in my estimations blogging is about a textual connection which has some artefact value.

It would be great to see other people offer a one year printdown of their blog for sale via a widget in the side-bar….it would give others an oppourtunity to digest the stories differently.

It’s a though anyway and probably one I’ll follow up in the new year. Maybe printdown from Jan 1. 2007 to Jan 1. 2008.

Lots happened during that period in my life.

Next Page »