Wednesday 16 September 2009

Response for John Connell

In John Connell’s Post for a workshop at the BBC, he has asked ……..

  • How did you get into blogging?
    • I was encouraged (Bullied?) by Andrew Brown (Then the Education Support Officer for ICT in Argyll & Bute)  I was, and still am, of the opinion that blog is far too often a personal Soapbox. Saw much more educational use for Wiki’s. I set up an initial blog in June 2006 but moved to this one in the November.
  • What were (are?) the motivations?
    • Decided that I needed to record/broadcast what we were doing with our Schools of Ambition project.
  • How does your “private” blogging relate to your work?
    • Private blogging is now done exclusively via twitter. I have had the occasional personal post in the blog but generally I am reflecting on what I and the school are doing.
  • How do you achieve a balance of personal voice and authority
    • I am not sure I manage this or even if I want to. I am placing my voice and any authority I have is given from others. I think this community implied authority I consider far more real and important.
  • What can be achieved through blogging that can’t through ordinary news/reporting routes?
    • How could a tiny school 2 hours from the mainland have had voice through ‘ordinary news/reporting routes’. It didn’t. Even today we are ‘too far’ for even the educational press to realise where we are. 
  • How do you follow other blogs and other forms of “public conversation”?
    • I have 5 pages of feeds from a wide range of inputs, i.e. blogs, bbc, and technorati tag words but a load come via recommends in twitter.
  • How does your blog connect to others in a “conversation”?
    • It has been the starting point for lots of conversations. Twitter is very conversational, Blog can have some feedback. The best example was the crowd sourced input to the discussion around the Education 2020 wiki This was much more than a conversation.
  • Are there other bloggers you follow especially, others you think are exemplars of the practice?
    • Less now than did at the beginning. At first I had ‘experts’ that I looked too. Now, I find the tag feeds much more important. Though a couple of people provide regular, thought provoking inputs to my thought processes. Taking John as a given. Don Ledingham, though he has gone quite.
  • How do you feel about “lighter” practices such as Tweeting, facebook status updates etc…?
    • These are vital sparks to deeper reflects on blog posts and crowd sourced wiki actions. They are like the ‘pub chats about big topics. They get your brain going but you have to remember this is out in the public domain

    Sunday 13 September 2009

    Call for collaborators

    A couple of years ago I got a very positive feedback on an animation that the the S1’s (12 year olds) at the time had produced using Google Sketchup. On a blog post by Ewan McIntosh, I made contact with Keith Hamon.

    Keith is a wonderfully positive and enthusiastic leader. We talked via email about how we could work with some of the teachers in his part of the world. He identified Bob Meacham from the Banks Stephens Middle School in Forsyth, Georgia, USA.

    Between us we developed a wiki based around pupils sharing information about local buildings.

    The pupils would collect as much information about one local landmark and place it on the wiki for the other pupils to recreate in Sketchup. We would then have some video conferences. I even ‘taught’ the Banks Stephens class how to use Sketchup via VC.

    I think its time to revisit this project.

    I am looking for some classes/teachers from around the world who would be interested in developing a new project.

    Leave a comment or add your name too the wiki http://international-sketchup.wikispaces.com/

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