Welcome to my Blog
Mood:  happy
At last, I feel like I've made a breakthrough. Accepted two invites to other community blogs so we seem to be getting to grips with this. Not doing the reading I should - too busy getting stuff together for three week holiday to Italy. I guess I'll just have to work doubly hard in September when I get back, what with having to submit the TMA late and all. Eeek.


I'm having a two-center holiday, Sorrento followed by Matera in Basicilicata. Get all the busy sight-seeing stuff done the first week then chill out for two weeks in the less well known region where fewer foreign tourists go. Just to make you all envious - here's pictures of the Amalfi coastline where I'll be staying. We have a villa clamped to the tip of the Sorrento peninsula overlooking the island of Capri.


There is a discussion in the H806 General forum on my trying out the PDA for study. I've set up one LO to do while I'm away and plan to keep a diary of what I do re: H806. I may post this to the blog when I get back - it will be short. I'll put it in the conference. I have a feeling that without the connectivity, I won't really get a great deal out of the experience. What would REALLY make a difference would be access to the conferences via mobile phone or PDA. Then I could really keep up.

Just the sort of thing we've been discussing in "From e-learning to m-learning". I still find it amusing that despite the subject matter of this course, the UKeU web site does not support and is therefore inaccessible to my PocketPC! I can get on the Open University web site with my wireless access no problem.

Now I see....
Mood:  a-ok
"Tony accepted my invitation to be a "buddy" and I have set him up as an administrator of this blog."

Wow - I heaved a sigh of relief when I read the above! I had logged into my blog management page and was astounded to see that access to Gill's blog had appeared in MY area. I thought I had done something really wrong!!!!

I'm looking forward to hearing how Gill gets on with the mobile learning.
Gill, Did this (you trying to study while on the move in Southern Italy?) come up in a discussion in the forum area?

Community blogging
Mood:  bright
I feel that with so many blogs, its a bit difficult to keep track of them. I've been trying to keep my H806 bloggers list up to date but that is difficult, particularly with the members of the other tutor groups.

Feel that I'm making progress with the community blog aspect of this blog. Tony accepted my invitation to be a "buddy" and I have set him up as an administrator of this blog. I hope that means he will be able to post entries himself. I've also invited everyone else from the tutor group who has posted a message in the 4104 Blogging discussion forum. I'm assuming they are the ones most actively engaged in exploring this activity and most likely to find and accept their invitation.

Only one more day until I go on holiday. I've downloaded one of the block 4 activities to my PDA together with all relevant material - sort of emulating the online environment as much as I can. I plan to try to do the reading, make notes and write the 500 word posting whilst on holiday. I'll keep a log of my progress (depending on what progress I make).

In favour of weblogs....
I've been looking into the pros and cons of web logs. As Sali mentioned in the conference, I think that in our context - that of a group of students on an online course with discussion forums - the use of web logs may hinder the communication between us. The more logs there are, the more likely each of us is to miss something. However I'm still keen to give it a thorough "trying out".

Ken Young lists many advantages of web logs and suggests that they can provide a valuable insight into "someone's work, interests and views without having to ask them. The possibility of making useful connections and of learning from each other is enormously expanded. "

He goes on to draw a similarity between IM and blogging, saying "Just like the use of instant messaging, personal publishing through weblogs is likely to get an icy reception in most firms concerned about security and "need-to-know" issues. But smart companies will see that the advantages far outweigh the negatives."

Coudal Partners and 37signals offer Business Blogging Workshops that cost $395. For that price, weblogging must be becoming a valid business phenomenon.

Just experimenting with posting an image as I have seen this done in other blogs I've been looking at. I clicked on the little blue and green box with the lollypop tree on the toolbar above.



This is a photo of my very first cat, Babbage.

I want to join in NOW
Mood:  celebratory
Hey Patrick,

Just accepted (properly) the invitation to join your community blog. Apparently you have been notified and need to finalize something before I can post.

We're making progress.

I await your acceptance of my acceptance oh relatively successful community blog creator ;)

Patrick's community blog
Mood:  accident prone
I don't believe this. Shades of the UKeU environment in the bad old early days. I just typed in a nice long post for this blog, previewed it, clicked the back button on my browser to return to editing it only to discover that it has vanished. Oh why did I not think to save the text.

Well, here goes again.

I received an invite to join Patrick's community blog. I clicked on the link in the email but reached a very confusing screen where I wasn't exactly sure what to do. Thought I'd successfully joined his community but it didn't seem to work. On this posting page there is a radio button to make this post either public or shared with community. I wonder if you need to do something else to your blog in order to share it. Will investigate.

I sympathise with Patrick's comments about the confusing instructions in this Angelfire system. When I first used it I was a little put off by the hip and youthful "computer speak" used. As I am neither hip nor particularly youthful I felt a little out of place. I wonder if this site is designed by and for a particular generation (say 13 to 15 year olds) who expect a certain style of communication and who are confident enough to just click around until they get what they want out of the interface.

I suspect that this is relevant to our EC topic. Any thoughts?

Windows!!!!!!!
Mood:  don't ask
Grrrrrrrr. Makes my head hurt. My nice Windows 98 system crashed/went down/became unuseable. So we've upgraded to Windows XP.

Is it always so hard to reinstall software......put your internet favourites back......set up your mail client......?

Makes my head hurt - and soaks up valuable study time.

Think I'll give up for the evening and hope things go better tomorrow

When do you work best?
Mood:  cool
Found other members of the tutor group had created blogs. Am still playing around with the blog settings to see if turning it into a "community blog" will enable others to comment on mine. I've even issued invites so we'll see what happens.

Having been away for the weekend and being back at work full time this week has left me no time for reading so I haven't really got anything erudite to add about blogging. I think I'll try to spend time in the evenings researching but I'm finding it more and more difficult to work during the school holidays. I think its the fact that I work best when I'm totally on my own, either alone in the house, or working late at night or early in the morning when everyone else is asleep in bed.

I can see some late evening sessions on the horizon over the next few weeks.

When do others find the best time to study?

To Blog or not to Blog...
Well, here we go. I woke up at 5am this morning worrying about how I was going to fit the next month's Open University activities into the two weeks before my vacation. Perhaps a three week holiday in August was not such a good idea. Then at short notice I need to be in the office all next week instead of my usual leisurely three days and all my study plans just fly out of the window.

The least I can do is get started on the blogging - but what sort of blog? According to James Brunan The Blogging Phenomenon there are two types of blog:

A filter-style blog in which the focus is on providing links to other content.

A free-style blog in which the focus is less on the outside world and more on the internal world of the author.

I am attracted to the idea of filter-style for totally superficial reasons. I like the sound of the term blogrolling (the process of linking, citing and networking in and between blogs) I am also amused by the word linkalist which is apparently a derisive term used by journalists to refer to filter-style blog writers. Realistically, though, I suspect that my blog will evolve into more of a free-style online "diary" of my thoughts and findings as I work through this part of my Open University Course H806 - Learning in the Connected Economy.

I will post links and references so perhaps this blog will act as a useful resource for my final examinable component.

If nothing else, I now feel much less anxious now that I have got it started. As it is only 6:20am, perhaps I can go back to bed and get some sleep.