Education.au Blogfest 2010 has been a real eye-opener for me. To start with it has exposed me to new tools, new ways of doing things and broadened my perception of blogging and other social communication technologies. It has also alerted me to my own limitations but at the same time encouraged me to explore more in the world of blogging.
The task based approached worked well for me as I tend to commit myself once I'm into something. Obviously it does not suit everyone as evident from the blogs of other participants and I can understand that. I particulalrly enjoyed tasks where I had to add/insert items into the blog in spite of some frustrations experienced with me.edu.au blog. I made another attempt last week to insert a video in the html format of the blog but the alignment was completely out of wack.
I wish we had an opportunity to explore new and emerging technologies such as:
Google Moderator - a tool that allows audience/participants to vote for a preferred topic, questions, ideas.
Google Wave - helps users communicate and collaborate instantly and live on the web. Users work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. It is also a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allows developers to embed waves in other web services and to build extensions that work inside waves. Both of these applications have a wide range of applications and I can see them being integrated into or embedded into a number of Web 2.0 applications (Moodle? ).
Though officially BlogFest 2010 comes to an end with this task, I wonder whether we can all explore maybe half a dozen new/emerging techologies and discuss how they can be integrated into our teaching and learning. We can do this through own own usual blog or through an extension of this BlogFest
I'd be honestly embarassed if I was mentoring an online group and find myself tailing off. And I'm not sure how I will handle it. I'd of course have an introspective examination of why I failed to meet my commitments, followed by an honest exposition of the circumstances without being too personal and do my best to reinstate the original momentum.
I will continue to blog and hopefully apply some of the ideas that have been exposed and discussed through this BlogFest.
I'm glad to hear you will keep blogging Nick. There is so much to explore.
ReplyDeleteHi Nick
ReplyDeleteI perservered with me.edu.au and found I could do all the things I wanted, although inserting a video did need some adjustment to the size so it fitted nicely in the blog space. But I am only in the early stages of blogging and not too ambitious in what I want to achieve. I agree I also learnt a lot more, and there were many tips and links that I've not been able to get to yet.
Hi Nick
ReplyDeleteDoesn't it feel good to have successfully completed BlogFest 2010! Thanks for your comments, and for the link to Google Wave. Having a play with Google Wave has been on my to do list for a while and you provided me with a leg up.
Good luck with you furture investigations into new technologies.
Caroline