Reflective Practice - blogging and learning

Michele Martin has a series of posts on reflective practice relevant to blogging for learning. In her latest Web2.0Wednesday assignment, she asks us to share our favourite blogging for learning activity.

My activity is all about what I’ve been researching for the last 5 months since I started blogging. It’s really a series of activities rather than just one pursuit.

This all began with Michele Martin. Her May post invited people to participate in The Comment Challenge and got me into blogging. In all fairness to this particular Web2.0Wednesday assignment, the whole series of activities in The Comment Challenge was really based on reflective learning.

I joined The Challenge because I wanted to learn about blogging. In New Zealand, the acme of male achievement is to attain the legendary certificate of a good bloke. My goal became to achieve the imaginary certificate of a good blogger.

I use a simplified action research technique. It involves a cycle of actions by which alterations can be made to improve practice.

Action research uses an action cycle similar to this:


The cycle can be thought of as beginning with reflection.

Reflect:

This phase relies on recorded data and evidence gathered from experiences.

I assess recorded data and think about what it means in terms of my aims and objectives. I often ask the question: “Does this data show that I am moving along the ‘improvement’ pathway?" The answer isn’t always ‘yes’.

In this phase I don’t need to be sitting at a computer. I can reflect on things travelling on a bus going to work.

Plan:

The planning phase is usually based on the reflective phase. It is the phase where decisions are made – the let's-try-this phase. It is based on what transpired in the reflective phase while examining available gathered results and reviewing those.

I have to be creative in this phase, the how-the-hell-can-I-do-this stage. It is the phase where I may have to change old methods, or look for new ones.

In this phase, I may have to seek help or advice from others, or do a bit of finding out from the Net - web pages, web data, or other blog posts.

Act:

Here I put into action the plan that fell out after the reflective phase. This is the phase where I build, and attempt to put into action the ideas that I’d given time and thought to. Friends may have helped me with those or recommended that I try new things.

It is the ‘doing’ phase. It is the phase where plans are rolled out and methods are implemented. New tools and techniques are tried. Mistakes are made or acted on.

Gather:

This phase takes place all the time, but mainly during and following the action phase. A number of tools and techniques are brought into play.

I call upon expert bloggers during this process by emailing them or from feedback in comments. There are many blogging experts who help me, either directly or from posts on their blogs. Many of them are in my commentsphere.

What is gathered is recorded in a log or diary. To a large extent, the blog becomes an extremely important diary in itself. But it is not exclusively what I keep as records. I also keep notes that I refer to in the reflective phase.

I use a number of Web2.0 tools, such as Google Analytics, that provide data about my blog. Recently, I’ve been monitoring text in posts using the Flesch Reading Ease.

No cycle is exclusive:

I have several cycles operating at once. None are mutually exclusive. From time to time the outcomes of one series of cycles could well affect what I do in others.

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My Friendly Commentsphere

Michele Martin’s Web 2.0 Wednesday assignment - to uncover one’s personal brand - makes several assumptions. One of them is that a personal brand is, Michele quotes, as Steve Woodruff defines it:
(amended 14/09 see comment)

When people see you, think of you, and relate to you, words and images and feelings come to mind. That is your personal brand.

Another is that I wish to uncover my personal brand.

I’m not sure that a single personal brand exists. My impression is that people are so diverse in their personality, likes and dislikes, points of view, etc, that how someone may view me would certainly be quite different from how another may see me, even if it was just from an online perspective.

To average all these perceptions in some way, and come up with a categorisable description, strikes me as being similar to finding an average letter for the alphabet. Casting all ridiculousness aside, I approached this challenge from as wide a perspective as possible.

I didn't conduct a survey on my commentsphere. Surveys are difficult to devise, and their results are notoriously poor reflections of what they are meant to convey.

Acknowledgement

My choice is to acknowledge my commentsphere for who they are – a wonderful group of people who, over the past few months, have helped to shape the blogger I am becoming. The participants in my commentsphere around newmiddle-earth.blogspot.com have been patiently keeping me on track.

Over the period from early May 2008 until today they have provided me with much pleasurable discourse and I have learnt a lot from them. You may appreciate the pattern their names make in the Wordle blimp at the top of this post. Here they are in alphabetical order of first name:


Amazing comments

My precious commenters have provided me with an amazing 13, 833 words in comments! I sifted the comments, gathered in a single text file, removing all small words such as and and to, the and but, etc. The key words left behind were made prominent by their frequency, and are displayed in a Wordle blimp shown here:

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How do I manage my online time?

Michel Martin’s Web2.0Wednesday assignment this week is:

“How do you manage your online time”.

I’ve given this some 24 hours of my thought, both in careful inspection and in aimless reflection, and come up with, “It varies”.

Today, for instance, I did my usual morning at work, attending the bevy of meetings before I eventually ended up in front of my PC. I’d just been given a new laptop. But I didn’t have much time to play around with it, for I was already behind with much of my student study-assignments for today. But because I had been hassled over sorting out all the settings and defaults on the machine, I thought I might as well have a look at Google Chrome, since I hadn’t set up my browser the way I’d like it on the lap-top anyway. I then took the liberty to skite about using Chrome in a comment on Christy Tucker's post.

Chrome was really easy to download and install. Though I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at all the features, those that did show themselves indicated that this browser showed promise. All else that I can report at this stage is that I liked the ‘new tab’, how it put the most visited pages in a default display. Maybe it was just because it was the manila Chrome, but it gave me the impression of being uncluttered (BTW Chrome doesn't like Windows 2000).

Surprise visit

I didn’t spend much time online with students today, but I did get a surprise visit from Nancy White, almost immediately after I’d browsed to my blog on Chrome, as she’d left a comment - I’d met up with Nancy recently at the DEANZ Conference.

As you can tell, there is a lot of serendipity associated with what I do online at work – there certainly was today.

Nothing like a cup of tea

First thing in the morning, over a cup of tea, I check my email and if I have time I might check my blog for comments - then it's off to work in the City. Nearly all of the time I spend on blogs, including my own blog, is in the evening at home. Sometimes I do a bit more at weekends, though I’m weaning myself off that, as the better weather creeps in. Tonight, for instance, I checked my Reader for new posts on my favourite sites (there was one on Andrea Hernandez’s blog for instance) and responses to comments I’d left on older posts (one on Kate Foy’s). And I checked my blog (again) for comments.

I would usually spend about an hour reading what takes my interest from Reader and leaving comments where appropriate. If I feel a post coming on, or I’ve got one broiling in draft, I’ll set to and get it ready for publishing. Posts don’t usually take that long. This one has taken about 10 minutes so far, between the phone ringing and a new email arriving that I’ll re-read more carefully later. I’m just parking this as I got called for dinner . . .


. . . but time online? Most of the time I spend writing a post I’m not online. In fact, I tend to go offline to get the draft done, then go back on from time to time to check things, perhaps a previous post here, maybe another’s post or comment that I recalled there, or to do a Google for other required information.

I find being online is a distraction when I’m writing a post. Now that’s strange, since that doesn’t affect me when I’m writing a comment on another’s post, or replying to one on my own blog. When I write a post it’s usually in Word. When I’ve got the rough draft ready, I’ll copy it into Notepad and paste it from there into a draft post, and that’s when I go back online again, of course.

Stuffing a mushroom

I check the draft in preview, prepare an image in Photoshop if I need one, and bang the whole lot up on the Net once I’ve checked it as best I can. I will probably spend as much time pottering around with the look of the post online after it’s published as I spent writing the thing. I know! Stuffing a mushroom Shirley Conran would call it. Yes, I’m showing my age again!

Then I might do a bit more reading in Reader at the new posts that have arrived since the last time I checked (it’s amazing what time people publish their posts round the world!) I may also do a last check on email, have another cup of tea, and retire to sleep on it all.

Have you noticed that all the bloggers mentioned in this post, apart from me, are women? I assure you that it's sheer coincidence.

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Views from Tangi-te-Keo

This week's Web 2.0 Wednesday assignment from Michele Martin is to create an icebreaker. Created specifically as an introduction to Wellington City this slideshow uses a 360 degree panoramic series of 15 pictures taken from the summit of Mt Victoria, Wellington.

Tangi-te-Keo is the resting place of the manuwairua, Te Keo, of the unfortunate taniwha, Whātaitai (see A Taste of Middle-earth).

The photos were loaded as a photostream in Flickr, made into a slideshow, and the resulting embed html pasted into this post

Update 29 Aug 2008 (Thanks to Virginia Yonkers!)
Participants in groups of twos or threes view the slideshow, then share with each other something about a geographical feature of where they come from (island, hill, mountain, river, sea, lake etc.) If they are from Wellington they share something of what they know of Wellington.

Views from Tangi-te-Keo
photos by Nicolas Allan.

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A Message from Middle-earth on ItCanSay

Michele Martin's Web 2.0 Wednesday task was to select a Web 2.0 technology from a list of 100 useful technologies on a College@Home post, 100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner.


It was serendipitous and quite coincidental that Michele posted her Web 2.0 Wednesday task just as I had written a post on technowhelm citing the same web site.

I must admit that I got rather wrapped in some of the technologies. Many are quite technical. I spent a lot of time trying things out.

Facebook was one of the Web 2.0s listed. I already have a Facebook account, so I downloaded one of my zaney mug-shots I had on a Facebook photo-album and put it on this post.

ItCanSay is a technology that converts text into audible speech. It permits it to be saved as a wav or mp3 file. What I liked about the software was its simplicity and ease of use.

My plan was to write a message and upload it to my blog. But the plan had to be re-jigged! Blogger accepts only video files. Not to be outdone I recorded a video file while playing back the wav file and uploaded the resulting mpg to this post. The video is. . . em . . . of our black cat, Boots, stalking a black rat out the back garden - at midnight.

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Haere Mai!

The traditional Māori welcome to a marae is called a pōwhiri. Sometimes the wero is made before a pōwhiri. This video shows the wero, an ancient Māori challenge used to determine whether manuhiri (visitor) comes in war or in peace. The taki is the dart which is laid in front of the manuhiri who must lift it carefully. If the taki is lifted by its handle, this indicates that the manuhiri does not come in peace.

The people of Taranaki do not wish to incite war. They lay a Raukura (white feather) instead of a taki. The Raukura is a symbol of peace.

The wero is, of course, a symbolic ceremony where both the manuhiri and the people of a marae can demonstrate their peaceful intensions at a Māori welcoming.

I take this opportunity to welcome you as a commenter to come in peace onto my blog. I offer you the invitation to comment and in so doing, lift the Raukura.

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Index Page for Blogger in Middle-earth

http://www.pnbst.maori.nz/what-we-do/cultural-well-being/history/te-raukura-2/

A Taste Of Middle-earth

photo by Clare Allan.
Click to enlarge.

Michele Martin's Web 2.0 Wednesday asks us to tell something unique about where we live. The above photograph (click photo for enlargement), looking to the east across the harbour, shows the famous Wellington cable-car that travels up from the heart of the City in Lambton Quay to the Botanical Gardens near the suburb of Kelburn in Wellington. Looking across the highrise buildings of Wellington CBD we see Mt Victoria. Tucked behind the populated suburbs of Oriental Bay and Roseneath lies Miramar Peninsula. At the other side of this natural harbour is the town and resort of Eastbourne. The Rimutaka hills rest at the horizon.

In the suburb of Miramar is the now famous Weta Workshop, co-owned by Peter Jackson who has a home in Miramar.

A Māori fable has it that the harbour was once a coastal lake where two taniwha lived. Their exploits gave rise to the natural harbour that is Wellington Harbour (Te Whanganui-a-Tara). At the top of Mt Victoria is Tangi-te-Keo, a place that took its name from. . . well, you can read the poem I wrote about it for yourself:

Adventures In The Sun


On a beautiful South-Sea island long ago
Two taniwha lived in a shingled coastal lake,
Each day they planned where each they longed to go
And kept a friendship fine as friends could make;
This affection as long as they'd remember
Was wide as wind and deep as steepest hollow,
But Ngake of a fearsome eager mettle
With courage broad and heart a burning ember
Caused Whātaitai a weariness to follow
And wrought his thought and would his sense unsettle.

His afternoons were often spent in yearning
While tears of loneliness dropped to the sand
As Ngake stirred impatient by his learning
Of crashing waves beyond the southern land;
He often longed to swim beyond the reach
Where he believed the sea swelled large and deep,
His lashing tail would smash the rocks to silt
Beneath the craggy shore where sea sprays breach,
While Whātaitai sank in shallows fast asleep
To dream of precious days their friendship built.

In wretched depths the awful thrashing thundered
As yet the angered monster raged a fit,
And far above the hills the seagulls wondered
What evil power possessed Earth's deepest pit;
The taniwha had often mused with interest
The plan they would employ to burst these banks,
And, O, to wriggle free from yonder rocks
And span dividing ragged heights abreast
To ride on waves with Tangaroa's ranks
And leave the dismal stagnant watery stocks.

All at once bold Ngake had decided
To end his tortured term in nature's dungeon,
All the years impatiently resided
Had set his wrathful spirit in high dudgeon;
So plunging to the North he swam the lake
And plummeting to depths as far he could,
Binding all his fury with his anguish,
Nursing to extremes his wildest mood,
Lashing his tail fiercely fit to break
He furrowed South to execute his wish.

The North wind had doubled his intention
As in the wake it gathered up a storm,
Lightning seared and held the air in tension,
Then shook the rocks as if they would re-form;
But as the thunder died amid the blast,
And still the tempest raged towards the shore,
A louder rumble echoed round the bay
While Ngake drained his power to its last,
And hellish tremors shook the rocks once more
As the divide inexorable gave way.

At this the tender taniwha awoke
And popped his gentle head from slumber's pool
And saw his friend tear free as morning broke
To bathe his tail a bleeding broken tool;
But as Whātaitai watched him swim beyond,
With fresh horizons shimmering in the mist,
He pondered on some treasured moments rare,
His heart roused by an age-long friendship-bond,
Lamented at the chances he had missed
And the lost opportunities to share.

Whātaitai loved to swim the warmest shallows
With all their pleasure coves and shady crooks,
To bask near where the water-lily mellows,
Or steep in oozing sun-soaked mid-day nooks;
Still he longed to swim with Ngake near him
To keep his life's companion by his side,
So he chose to follow, yet again,
In search of what was once an idle whim,
But knew nothing of the turning of the tide
As water from the lake began to drain.

Up the swamps he started in an instant
And thrashed his tail with all his beastly store,
Then channelled with a resolution constant
Towards the narrow strait that Ngake bore;
So proud of his new vigour he diverted
His direction to the jutting cliff beside,
And crashed through rock and boulder in a storm
That surely would be soon by Ngake's side:
Alas this cruel energy deserted
Poor Whātaitai's straining shuddering form.

For many years he stretched in grievous bondage
Stuck fast within the debris by the tail,
The more he tried to loosen this appendage
The further he was shackled in the shale;
Even at high tide his toil was futile,
The windless days of sun sore seared his hide,
The lisping ripples barely reached his flanks,
The calmest days he relished were now vile,
He feared the pitiless summer ebbing tide
And rotten stench of kelp-strewn sun-parched banks.

At last came Nature's merciful reprieve,
An earthquake struck and land and sea did heave
And lifted poor Whātaitai clear the water,
Then meted out a bloodless horrid slaughter;
The winged manuwairua Te Keo
Flew up to Matairangi knoll to weep
For all the living Whātaitai had done;
Then left the knoll at Tangi-te-Keo
For Hawaiki of taniwha, to keep
The memories of adventures in the sun.

photo by Nicolas Allan.
Click to enlarge.
From Tangi-te-Keo, overlooking Houghton Bay and Island Bay where I live, mid right.

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Down To Earth Web 2.0 in 1 Minute

courtesy make your own comic
Web 2.0 Wednesday - Web 2.0 In One Minute

This is definitely not rocket science, after all I'm still a rooky with all this, but it's a practice that I've used with Web 2.0 stuff for months. While on The Comment Challenge recently, I found I had to refine the technique a bit. It is simply a way that I can quickly have at hand the tags or addresses that I may need. I can then copy and paste onto the blog when I write a comment without stabbing at the keyboard and possibly making more mistakes that way.


I have a Notepad file that I keep on my desktop. In it are listed my blog and email addresses for those annoying times I come across sites that don't default my blog site or email address. I also have a few html tags in it that I use as well as what I call the link formula when I want to include a link on a word or phrase that I enter in a comment.

Before I start writing a comment against a post, I open up the Notepad file and leave it open. If I'm writing a long comment I often enter it directly into a Word file and copy it from there into the Notepad file to leave behind the unwanted html I may pick up from the Word file. I then cut and paste the comment from the Notepad file into the blog. The other tags and addresses are also there on the Notepad if I need them, or if I want to paste a link onto a word or phrase in the comment.

That's it! I timed it. It took 58 seconds.

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