#mainedu – Page 7 – JAMES MICHIE

#mainedu: One module down, two to go…

Having begun the MA in Education, promising to blog my learning journey, I have found that time has been at a premium and thus blog posts have been in short supply. With that in mind, I have squared away a moment or two to provide an update.

As tweeted out earlier last week, I have completed Module 2: Assessment for Learning, achieving a distinction. I subsequently tidied up the corresponding page on this blog to include a summary of the unit; the texts that influenced my understanding and impacted on my assignments; and also added links to both my 1000 word critique of Black and Wiliam’s: ‘Inside the Black Box’ and Action Research Assignment.

While I may be finished with the module, AfL remains an area of significant interest to me. Particularly, because of the way that I have been using Google Docs with my students. Moreover, this is the focus of my School Based Enquiry, for which I continue to collect data.

Based on the feedback I received from my Module 2 tutor, I am planning a trip to Oxford Brookes University Library over the half term break to expand my reading; there are some texts that look useful but I am struggling to find in PDF format online.

Module 3: Developing eLearning began earlier this month. This module will likely prove to be the most enjoyable of the three. As an area of education that I am significantly immersed in, I hope that it will afford me the opportunity to broaden my understanding and refine some of my current practices.

In order to ensure that I don’t simply fall back on tried and tested tools however, I completed an audit of the technologies that are embedded in my current teaching practice and those that are not. It is my intention to develop a series of lessons wherein one of these technologies will be used to facilitate the learning in some way.

Reading for the module has also commenced and for me a number of the texts are old news but nevertheless I will revisit them, making the necessary notes in Evernote to use later in my assignment. We have been given the already well critiqued Prensky articles: ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants’ and ‘Do They Really Think Differently?’ (Digital Natives: Part 2) to read. For some up to date debate on the concept of digital natives, these posts from Simon Bostock and Doug Belshaw are definitely worth checking out:

Finally, I hope that as the unit eveolves I will get the chance to tie in some of the material I have been reading and writing about recently with regards to learning technologies, taxonomies and literacies. Only time will tell.

Audit

A brief audit of edtech tools (I may have missed a few!) in no particular order/preference.

Used and embeded in my teaching practice:

Lino (Wallwisher)
Google docs
YouTube
Google Search tools: Wonder Wheel, Advanced Search, Timeline, Images, Books, Scholar
Blogging (Blogger, Posterous, WordPress)
Office: Word, PowerPoint, Excel
Prezi
Slideshare
Bubbl.us
Wordle
Moodle (Forum, Wiki, Quiz, Online text, Glossary, Game modules)
Adobe Connect (Skype)
Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects (iMovie)
Garageband (Audacity)
Wikipedia
Flip camcorders
HD camcorders
Digital cameras (inc. Digital SLRs)
Apple Mac computers (MacBooks)
Mobile Phones
IWB

Used but not embeded:

Twitter
Voicethread
Google Maps
Google Calendar
Cover It Live

10 things I’ve learned in a year of blogging

I started this blog one year ago today. When I published the first post I was very unsure about whether I would be able to commit to blogging on a regular basis but now can’t imagine not doing it. It has become an extension of my brain – a place where I can explore ideas; share experiences and reflect on my learning. As an educator the learning never stops and a blog (IMO) is the best way to document and focus the learning experience. Along the way I have learned a lot about blogging and so I’ve decided to share some of what I’ve learned, today, on my blog’s birthday. Here goes:

1. It’s what you write that matters

The most important feature of your blog is what you write. I know that this sounds obvious but I can attest to the fact that it is easy to get bogged down in worrying more about the look and feel of your blog than the content you are putting out. My advice? Find a blog theme that is clean and offers your readers a clear reading experience. Stick to sans-serif fonts and a high level of contrast between the text and your blog background. Don’t obsess about images, buttons and other features. Focus on the writing and the rest will follow. After all, the people who will become regular readers of your blog will not care about the way your blog looks. In fact the people who become return visitors will probably subscribe by RSS and therefore not even read your blog via your actual site. Pick interesting topics to write about. Find your own writing style. And don’t be afraid to borrow from others while you are finding your own voice.

2. It’s okay to post at your own pace

Starting a blog can be intimidating. Particularly when you see that some bloggers post at least once a day, sometimes more. I originally set out thinking that I would blog at least five times a week but I quickly realised that for me this was unrealistic. I have settled into a far more organic rhythm publishing an average of six posts a month. How often I post is affected by a number of factors but mainly by my workload.

I write when I feel compelled. I shelve posts occasionally to let them simmer, returning to them with a clearer sense of what I wish to convey. Sometimes an idea for a post will go from first draft to published post in less than a couple of hours. Other times they will go through multiple drafts until I am happy. Remember that quality is far more important than quantity. If you would like to know more about my writing process and how I find focus check out the following two posts:

3. It’s important to post material that is provocative (from time to time)

I’m not suggesting here that you set your stall out to… but it will come as no surprise that many of my most read posts are the ones that were a little contentious, that focused on challenging issues where others will certainly have an opinion. And it is also good to pick up on topics that are being readily discussed. Here are some examples of posts that caught fire:

4. Make sure your about page is up to scratch

The about page on your blog is arguably one of the most important pages as many new readers who come across your blog will want to know more about it and the person behind it. Who are you? Why do you write this blog? How often can they expect to see new posts? These are just some of the questions a new reader may have. I am working on improving my about page at the moment, using this guide.

5. Minimal design helps your readers to focus on the content

I am at heart a minimalist. If this was nothing more than a personal journal it would probably look more like this. However, this level of minimalism is a step to far (less?) for my blog which is as much an online portfolio as it is a reflective journal. Therefore, I have found a compromise, balancing minimalism with important features that help my readers navigate my blog and hopefully keep them there. These include static pages listed in a menu under the header, a range of methods for readers to find interesting posts including: categories, tags, recent posts and a blog archive. I currently use the WordPress theme: Plainscape, which I have tweaked to my liking adding a few unique features, but these are minor and took very little time to put in place.

6. Harness social networks to spread the word

If you wish to grow the number of visitors to your blog you must harness the power of social networks. Twitter has been one of the most powerful tools in driving people towards my blog content and had helped connect me with many other bloggers who share similar ideas and write about similar topics. This has helped me to develop my blogging practice while also giving me a network who read and retweet my blog posts. I use Feedburner to manage my blog feed and Twitterfeed to autopost it to Twitter. After more than a year of sharing my disdain for Facebook, I have reneged on my principles, reactivated my account and established a Facebook page for my blog, here’s why.

7. Remember it’s not all about you

Let your readers know what blogs you like to read, this is very easy to do as most blogging platforms include a blog roll feature. I also use a range of tools including Google Reader, Delicious and Amplify to share things that I have been reading and I feel will be of interest to the people that read my blog. To make it easy for them to find this information I have installed the Lifestream plugin and generated a page on my blog to display this information.

8. It is about discussion

Most bloggers are looking to generate discussion around their posts. This is what the blogging thing is all about and it’s really important that you respond to comments from people. I would advise that you install the Disqus commenting system to your blog. It offers a wide range of management features for comments on your blog allowing anyone to log in and comment on your blog while being an effective tool in blocking spam. I try to reply to comments within 24 hours although occasionally life gets in the way.

The commenting does not end there though. As I have already made clear, it is not all about you. If you want to drive people towards your blog and encourage them to comment on your own posts then you must comment on other people’s blog posts. It raises your profile amongst the blogging community and will encourage people to look up your blog when they have seen you comment on their own posts. Be careful though and avoid committing any commenting faux pas, use this post as a guide about what not to do when commenting on posts.

9. Understand SEO and analytics

Without going into too much detail, if you are serious about blogging and see it as more than an opportunity to collect your thoughts then it is worth taking a bit of time to understand ‘Search Engine Optimisation’. In very basic terms this is making your blog more visible to search engines like Google. I could end up writing an entire post on this and only scratch the surface in many ways. Instead I will simply say that this post is a good place to start and if you are using WordPress then you can make a decent start by installing the following two plugins: All in One SEO Pack | Google XML Sitemaps

To really get a handle on how your blog is doing it is also worth signing up to Google analytics. Again there is a very handy WordPress plugin to help with this.

10. Learn a little HTML

This one is going to be a bit geeky but for that I make no apologies. When it comes to my blog I decided from the outset that I was not going to compromise when it came to way that my blogged worked and looked. I knew that if I was going to really have control of my blog I needed to learn some of the basics of HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Having started this blog initially on Blogger there were not as many features in the editing window as WordPress and one thing that niggled me about my posts was that links would open in the same window. This resulted in me learning my first bit of HTML. To get the links I was including in posts to open in a new window I learned to add the following HTML tag: target=”_blank”. From there I gradually learned more HTML so that I could effectively tweak my blog’s theme and code my own buttons in both my blog’s sidebar and under each post. I have blogged and shared the HTML/Javascript for two buttons that I addapted the code for:

This site is an excellent place to start learning HTML and it allows you to test out your code before you go and try it on your blog.

And with that I will bring this post to an end. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the last twelve months of blogging and I’m very excited about the next twelve. I’ve got some fantastic projects underway at the moment and I’m also right in the middle of my MA, so expect lots more posts over the next few months!

—

Image: inf3ktion on Flickr

Writing: From idea to published post

For the second time in less than a month I find myself inspired to write a blog post after sharing a screen shot via Twitter. Last time, it focused on how I was using Evernote to organise my notes for my MA. This time is slightly less direct in that the item I’m going to write about had nothing to do with why I tweeted out the screen shot.

The screen shots purpose was to document the fact that I was giving Twitter for Mac a try and was enjoying the small amount of screen real estate that it consumed; meaning I could have other apps open and visible at the same time. In this case Notational Velocity. Not giving a great deal of thought to this at the time I grabbed the shot not realising that the image also offers an insight into my writing process. What is revealed in the image is the earliest written draft of a blog post. I call this the earliest “written” draft as the first draft is the version in my head. Rarely the version that ends up on my blog though.

Ideas for blog posts come to me at all times of the day, from many different directions, but more often than not – after a day of work. At that time I’m not usually at my most productive so save writing posts for the morning or weekend. What I do though is write down the idea, usually as a series of points. This some times translates directly into the paragraphs that will make the post and other times the final post has no resemblance to the initial idea that was written down.

Most of the posts on this blog have gone through either 3 or 4 drafts. After making my notes (draft 1) I will leave the idea to simmer a little. I then return and flesh it out (draft 2). This is all done in Notational Velocity. At this stage I may have collated some links but certainly have not thought about visuals if I choose to use them at all. I have simply focussed on the writing – the most important part IMO.

If I am happy with this draft I will copy and paste it into WordPress, add all of the links and any images/media that is to be included; check the code; add categories and tags; and voila a post (draft 3) ready to be published. From time to time however I will get this far, read back over the post and decide that something is not quite right. If that is the case I will leave the post as a draft for 24 hours and return to it with fresh eyes. Nine times out ten I will realise what was niggling me, correct it and then hit publish (draft 4).

There are times that I’d like to be one of those prolific bloggers who posts daily, pushing out first draft after first draft but I just can’t do it. Partly because I’m a perfectionist and partly because many of the things that I choose to write about need a little gestation time. That said, I have found using Posterous for a more personal / non #edtech blog has given me a bit more freedom to post with a little less need for polish, but then that blog is not as widely read as this one.

Writing is a very personal process – it deserves focus, time and more than a little TLC. F,or anyone who is thinking about starting a blog the most important things you must do early on are: 1. Find a writing methodology that works for you and: 2. Find the right writing tools that will help you focus on the writing, whether that be pen and paper, direct into your blogs editor or on a dedicated writing app. Making your blog/posts colourful; embedding media; adding buttons and feeds are not as important as the writing. All of the bells and whistles can be built up over time but for people to return to your blog regularly the writing must be good.

Sharing What You Do Online – FTW!

A little under two years ago I had been teaching for six years but had not considered keeping a blog and I wasn’t on Twitter. Both of these outlets have had a significant impact on my teaching and the learning that takes place in my classroom. This morning I was reminded of just how valuable sharing what you do online is.

Catching up with tweets during New Years Day, I decided, very much on a whim, to have a go at a #365 project. A 365 project is where you take a photo a day for 365 days. I already had a Posterous blog set up that I had been using for posting photos and thoughts that didn’t really fit on this blog. Therefore, I had to do little more than start adding the photos. Having had a significantly hectic day yesterday, I got home, ate dinner and then, while working on my MA realised that I had not posted a photo for the day. In fact, I had not taken any photos at all during the day and there was nothing on my phone or laptop that I felt like posting. Instead, I decided that I would simply post a screen grab of what I was working on at that moment.

As you can see I am using Evernote to organise my MA. I have folders set up for each module and within those folders I have note books where I have recorded meetings, research proposals, notes on readings etc. I shared this on a whim, more out of ensuring that I kept up with the #365 project than anything else. I didn’t expect anyone to really look closely at the image. But in this I was wrong. If you zoom in on the image you will see that I was working on my ‘Action Research Proposal’ for my ‘Assessment for Learning‘ module. I have decided to put a ‘No Hands Up’ policy in place with two of my classes. This morning, checking my email, I saw that I had a comment from Christine Roberts (@Christiner733). She shared with me how she deals with the idea of ‘no hands up’ in her classroom and also shared her feelings on how her students respond.

What had been for me more a formality of keeping up with my #365 project; an innocuous post which had no intended outcomes, led to the sharing of good practice and ideas. Once again proving that sharing online is valuable.

For those of you who are not into your acronyms – FTW stands for ‘For The Win’ and I believe this to be true of sharing what you do online. Take the time to reflect on the teaching and learning that takes place in your classroom. There is no better way to do this than to write about it – IMO! Blogging is so simple, particularly with platforms such as Tumblr and Posterous that require almost no set up or web expertise to get started. And join Twitter, there are a plethora of talented and genuinely nice people out there who are willing to share ideas and help you grow as an educator.

In these tough financial times, the sharing of ideas and resources online may just well be the best way forward…