4 R's Meme: Favourite Posts

Help! And I thought I’d sneak through July without being tagged!
Well it just isn’t going to happen!

Paul Cornies’ recent post, 4 R's Meme: Favourite Posts, asks those tagged to select 4 of their favourite posts from their own blog, one from each of the categories: Rants, Resources, Reflections and Revelations.

The posts are then listed with a brief summary on each describing:

why it was important,

why it had lasting value or impact,

how you would update it for today.

The intrepid bloggers are to tag all of their selected posts with the label postsofthepast and then select five (or so) other bloggers to tap with this meme.

Here are my 4 selected posts, not all of them directly related to education:

Rants – What Do You Do With A Fan Of Links?


Infowhelm is ubiquitous and can even exist within a single post in the form of numerous links to dozens of associated and not so related resources. This rant-category post raged about the problem and brought forth sympathy, further discussion and some solutions. I’d like to be able to write more posts like this one.

Resources – Ship-shape and Bristol Fashion
I needed to write 'Ship-shape and Bristol Fashion' to find out, firsthand, that bloggers have their own strong beliefs about their practices in publishing a post. I was aware that some readers may not have been familiar with the possibility of hazardous html and how it may be introduced. What I did not anticipate was that in the territory of other experienced bloggers, this topic could be hallowed ground.


Reflections – Collective behaviour


Group dynamics is a current issue that’s the subject of numerous studies at different levels in society. The behaviour of the group, as opposed to the behaviour of its component individual acting as an isolate, is a paradox. This was a popular post that didn’t really put forward enough questions to stimulate further engagement through comments.


Revelations – In Praise of Plaudit

Positive feedback is such an important encourager for the learner and especially the isolated distance-learner. It is one of the cornerstones of learner engagement.

'In Praise of Plaudit' sparked a discussion in comments that affirmed the need for teachers, tutors and elearning technologists to embrace the importance of learner encouragement through feedback.

What I didn’t take into account when I wrote the post was that every educator has their own perspective on the learner. It is perhaps unclear to those who have not experienced distance-learner contact firsthand, the important differences between learners who have face-to-face contact with tuition and the needy situations so often experienced by isolated distance-learners.

I tag the following intrepid and much respected bloggers:

Andrea Hernandez

Café Chick

Ken Stewart

Manish Mohan

Virginia Yonkers

Remember to tag your post with the label postsofthepast.

Help I've Been Tagged - Again!

Sue Waters has tagged me to list

7 things you really don’t need to know about me.

Truth is, I’ve already put a comment on Diane Cordell’s post, though she didn’t tag me, and I said it all there.

Ah but, being tagged means I have to write a post about it - if I accept the challenge. Then I think, “What’s this got to do with elearning?" Hmmm.

Oh well. Whatever. ‘Tis the season. I accept.

Here are 7 things you really don’t need to know about me:

1. Despite my love of words, I'm hopeless at languages. When at school I got 11% for Latin and 17% for French.
   Parliamo Italiano?
   
   
2. Though I don't have a fear of heights and I like hill climbing,
   I don't like rock climbing or mountaineering. The only similar sport that I dislike more than these is potholing. Potholing gives me the hebes.
   
   
3. Of the many years spent in three different countries, I enjoy living in NZ the best - that's why I've lived here for 34 years.
   I was born in Scotland, but it is too cold there in the winter. Malawi is nice - called Nyasaland when I lived there as a child.
   
   
4. At Downstage Theatre in Wellington in 1980 I had a part in the play, The Suicide, by the Russian playwright Nicolai Erdman, director Phillip Mann. It was a long play, almost 3 hours, and the season ran for 4 weeks. The play was extremely successful, with a cast of 16 actors and one fiddler. I was the (token) gypsy fiddler. I never spoke a word on the stage, which was fortunate, but I appeared first on the stage in scene 1.
   
   
5. The only reason I was 7 years studying at university was procrastination. At a time when I was about to go on to study teaching, after I had graduated the first time, I was offered a post-grad grant. I went into teaching 3 years later.
   
   
6. When my oldest son, Nicolas, was just over 2 years of age, he could catch flies in mid air. He never harmed them. He caught a wasp once, examined it closely, then let it go and wasn't stung. Only recently, I found that I had the same ability, though in over 50 years I'd never tried to catch a fly.
   
   I found out that I had this dubious talent when my daughter, Hannah, kept a pet female brown tree frog, Rocket, in a large vivarium. Rocket needed live food and lived for almost 4 years on what I caught for her - a record age for female Australian brown tree frogs, who live in the wild for only 16 months on average.
   
   
7. I was born Church of Scotland. I've studied several religions, including Buddhism. My wife was the Anglican parish secretary for years in Island Bay where we live, and continues to attend Church regularly. My youngest daughter, Catriona, travelled to Fiji this year, and lived there for almost a fortnight while she pursued her Anglican mission.
   
   I've played music at the Church and read readings. I've read the Bible - a goodly book that I enjoy reading - and know many quotes. But I'm not religious in the least. I stopped attending Church with my wife a few years ago as people got the wrong idea. They couldn't understand my acceptance of the Church versus my personal belief.
   

Top Ten Commenters 2008 and a Wordle Meme

When I took part in the Comment Challenge this year, I not only became a blogger, but I also learnt a huge pile of techniques and different ways to go about writing a blog post. One technique I learnt was to cover more than one topic in a post – a very fine tack when attempting to follow a busy schedule of blog assignments.

I’m using that technique in this post for I am honouring requests from two respected bloggers, Andrea Hernandez of EdTech Workshop and Paul C of quoteflections.

Paul’s request for my 2008 Top Ten List brought me, once again, to consider my wonderful commentsphere. My Top Ten list is of the top ten superb commenters whose contributions have helped to make my blog come alive. Over 40 commenters made contributions to the posts on this blog since it began in May this year.

My Top Ten Commenters for 2008 are:

Virginia Yonkers
Ken Stewart
Sue Waters & Sue Waters (-: joint equal :-)
Britt Watwood
Paul C
Michele Martin
Bonnie Kaplan
Laurie Bartels (joint tenth equal)
Christy Tucker (joint tenth equal)
Shaun Wood (joint tenth equal)

According to the terms of Scott McLeod's fantastic commenter award, this entitles the commenters in my top ten list to display the award medal on their blog.

Very close to those were Tom Haskins, Andrea Hernandez,
Tony Karrer, Rose DesRochers, Sarah Stewart and Nancy White, who all made equivalent contributions.

There were many more amazing commenters who did not make this list. I pay a special tribute to those for the significant contribution they made to the discussions in Middle-earth this year.


Andrea Hernandez tagged me at the beginning of this month and I didn’t pick this up until very recently. Her request was to create a Wordle from my blog’s RSS feed, to comment on it, to tag others and to link back to Andrea’s post, The Wordle Meme.

I must say that I got a rather weird Wordle, for no matter how many times I tried, I always got a Wordle blimp and the word trust appearing as a separate display as shown above. I was surprised that trust was featured so prominently, though Andrea did say that Wordle draws from the most recent posts. Two of my latest posts were about trust.

The rest of the blimp reflects what I’d expect, with the foremost words being learner, time, people, resource and resources.

The contributors tagged in this post are invited to participate in the meme of their choice. Details can be found at Life is One Big Top Ten and The Wordle Meme.