Monthly Archives: July 2011

Jul 31 2011

Matt Damon’s Speech

This article has been making the rounds recently.  It captures the speech given by Matt Damon at the Save Our Schools march in Washington.  The speech ends with a vote of support for teachers.

Please know that there are millions of us behind you. You have an army of regular people standing right behind you, and our appreciation for what you do is so deeply felt. We love you, we thank you and we will always have your back.

The message, captured as a Tagxedo appears below.  If you’re an educator, make sure that your read the entire article.

Powered by Qumana

Jul 31 2011

Response to “Blogging Pet Peeve Number One”

I enjoy it when I read a blog post that expresses a strong opinion that I can agree with.  It lets me know that I’m not alone in my feelings.  I ran into such a post about blogging yesterday morning.  "Blogging Pet Peeve Number One" by Barbara Swafford talked about one of the blogger’s frustrations – that nobody reads your blog.  The timing was so perfect as I had just sat in on the "comments4kids" presentation at the Reform Symposium.  As I’ve noted before, this is a "Hashtag You Shouldn’t Ignore".

Towards the end of the post, she talked about some suggestions for bloggers.

  1. Write shorter posts
  2. Use bullet points
  3. Use photos or white space to break up the verbiage
  4. Ask questions at the end which don’t “test” to see if the visitor read our post, but instead are relevant to the content.

These are good solid points of advice for anyone who blogs and should lead to a more successful blog and subsequent following of it.  I know that it describes my reading habits – I want to get in, get the point, and be on my way.  I like to think that the content in this blog is created the same way.  I’d like to think that I take up to two minutes of your time for me to say whatever it is that I’m saying and then you’re off to the next stop of your reading journey.

Think of your own reading habits?  Do you spend time reading long epistles or are you the quick in and out type of reader?

Barbara ends her posting with a question "Do you have any other tips on how a blogger can improve their chances of having their posts read in their entirety?

My answer to that is reader loyalty.  I think that once you establish that, they will read it – particularly if you follow the suggestions above.  But, how do you get reader loyalty?

I believe that it stems from posting regularly.

If you establish a regular posting routine, it honours the reader and lets her/him know that dropping by your blog is worth their time and effort.  How often do you find one good post and then wait for months for the next?

I’d like to think that I follow this myself.  I try to make sure that there are things posted here regularly.  Not every entry hits it out of the park but you never know what will entice your followers.  Now, many people blog to push a business entity and you’ll read about people blogging their brand.  I’d like to think that I’m blogging my brand as well.  For me, it’s about constantly learning and I’ve always shared what I’ve learned with anyone who cares to read/listen.

When I worked for a local school board in the role of Computers in the Classroom Teacher Consultant, I felt that it was imperative to share what I’m learning.  After all, I didn’t have tests to mark or report cards to finish – I thought that my job was to learn, research, and share so that others didn’t have to – flatten the learning curve, if you will.  While I was a blogger, we also had a private conferencing system where I shared so much with our teachers.  Once a month, I also put together an online newsletter.  It was part of my bigger Computers in the Classroom website.  While I’ve declared my content deprecated now, the content is still online and you can read things from the last May newsletter all the way back to the first online newsletter in February 1998!  Even back then, I had no sense of design but hey… The nice thing was that I always had an opportunity to create my own resources for the workshops and presentations that I did.  You could set your watch by the announcement of a newsletter.  It was always available at the beginning of the first Monday of classes in any given month.

I do agree with the content in Barbara’s blog post and would encourage you to read it in its entirety.  I know that I’m going to follow it – maybe she’ll talk about "Blogging Pet Peeve Number Two"?  I think she’s nailed it with her suggestions and I think that having regularly posted content will establish better reader loyalty.

Powered by Qumana

Jul 31 2011

OTR Links for 07/31/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jul 30 2011

Best Extension In a While

For the longest time, I was a real Firefox fan.  What appealed to me was not only was it a great web browser, but with all of the add-ons, you could truly make it your own personalized browser.  With the add-ons, you could actually make it do things that were unique to the way that you browsed and processed information.  It was the beginning of “life in a browser”.  I still have Firefox on all my computers and keep it up to date.  There are still some websites that work best with Firefox.

My primary browsing is done now using Google Chrome.  Its appeal is largely the same as Firefox – I can make the browser my own.  My browsing experiences are so much better the more that I enhance basic Chrome with its extensions.  In fact, my extension collection looks like this.

Can you name them all?

In this post, I want to highlight the newest extension to my collection.  It’s located on the far right and goes by the name G+me.  When you click to configure it, it sure doesn’t look like much.

However, if you’re a Google Plus user, it does so much.

I was actually getting frustrated with Google Plus.  I know that it’s new and that there are lots of new user trying things out and building their own networks and all that stuff.  But, after a while, I must admit that it was overwhelming.  Good people posting good things and then comment after comment just kept piling it on.  However, G+me changed things dramatically.

By default, Google Plus is set to what’s identified above as “expanded mode”.  That gives you everything.  A simple radio button click later and list mode changes everything.  Instead of post and reply and reply and reply and reply…., you’re presented with a stream of one line per message.

My Ontario Educator stream, for example looks manageably like this!

It’s now a piece of cake to see exactly what’s going on in that world.  I get who, time, a snippet of the message and the number of replies to the message.  And, when there’s something of import, like a posting from Peter McAsh, it’s just a matter of moving your mouse over the one liner and the complete message along with any replies.

If I could make one suggestion for a change to it, it would be to make it configurable to various circles.  There may well be smaller circles where an expanded view might be better as a default.  It’s a small thing.

Singlehandedly, this one extension has changed my whole perspective of Google Plus.  I still get the same volume of information but it’s now manageable.  If you’re a Google Plus user and you use Chrome as your browser, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot.  For those big circles with lots of people and lots of posts, it really makes a difference.

Powered by Qumana

Jul 30 2011

OTR Links for 07/30/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jul 29 2011

A Little Statistics

Earlier in the week, readers to this blog will have noticed that I spent a little time focussed on spam coming into the blog.  Today, I wasn’t able to get out and about much so decided to just watch the blog and see what visitors were doing and if I could catch a spammer in action. 

As luck would have it, I received no spam at all today.  I remember something about watched pots and boiling.  However, in monitoring, I did end up with a bit of statistics that I found interesting.  On the bottom right, there’s a widget that I’ve place in the blog that provides information about visitors.  If I follow it to the administrative side, I can see visitors as they arrive. 

An entry might look like this.

It identifies this visitor as coming from Australia (Sydney, NSW in particular), using the web browser Safari on a Macintosh computer.  As I watched the visitors check in, I thought "hey, this is interesting data".  If I had a school blog or wiki or website, I could get some insights as to who is visiting.  It’s still raining so I fired up LibreOffice to have a go at it.

Countries
This is just plain interesting.  My blog post yesterday was about Creating and Nurturing PLNs and it did seem to attract a fair number of visitors.  Thanks to them all, especially those who dropped off a little ham.  But, by looking up and down the list and doing a little tallying, I was able to create this chart identifying where blog readers came from.  The count was converted to percentages. 

Operating Systems
Now, it gets a little geeky.  What operating system are people using when they visit the blog?

That I found interesting.  I would have guessed my Windows computers because they’re typically less expensive and perhaps more Linux given the international scope of the visitors.

Browsers
Geekier too.  What type of web browser are people using when they stop by?

Now, this I found really interesting.  I read the statistics about the world’s most popular browsers.  Traditionally, Internet Explorer is strongly in first place and lately Chrome and Firefox have been battling it out for second place browser.  Given the large number of Macintosh visitors, I guess that makes sense that Safari is the most popular browser.  But, look how much of a share Chrome has.

So, if I was profiling the type of frequent visitor, I would look for a North American Macintosh user with a Safari or Chrome browser.

It was an interesting activity to analyze the data.  I could see this working out so nicely in the classroom.  It’s good, solid statistics that can easily be turned into discussions of other things.  Given the type of visitor to the blog, if you were picking targeted advertising, what sorts of ads would you display?  Take a snapshot of the visitors for a week or over a period of time.  Is there a trend?  Does the type of visitor change?  Does the type of visitor depend upon the content of the blog post?  There are lots of great discussions that could fall out of an activity like this.  Why are some of the statistics "unknown"?  Is there another type of browser or operating system that is not captured here?

Powered by Qumana

Jul 29 2011

OTR Links for 07/29/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jul 28 2011

Creating & Nurturing Your PLN

Recently, I had the opportunity to work with Johanna Lawler at the Minds on Media day of the Ontario Teachers’ Federation’s Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century event.  We had our own station entitled “Creating & Nurturing Your PLN”.  The over 200 participants had either received some insights to or had created their first Twitter account on the previous day courtesy of Will Richardson.  Our task was to act as a resource to take folks from wherever they were in their learning and push them a bit.

I kept thinking throughout the day that we should have a continuum so that people can jump in where they need to be.  From our day, here are some of the bits of advice that we passed alongl.

Be the user you’d want to follow
It’s amazing when you discuss Twitter and ask people who it is that they want to follow.  We threw it back … shouldn’t you be that person?  It involves…

  1. Don’t be an egg!  New users have an egg avatar and we agreed that this didn’t exude a feeling of warmth and professionalism.  So, it was out with the camera phones and we changed the avatars right on the spot.
  2. Don’t be a puzzle.  Having a bio that tells the world a bit about you is important.  Typically, a potential follower gives you about a five second speed read of your bio so make it good (and interesting)!
  3. Don’t hide.  While you may not want to give out your address as 123 Maple Street, YouVillle, Ontario, it doesn’t hurt to give an indication of where you’re from.  A town and province is perfect.
  4. Bonus – if you have a website, blog or wiki that’s current, brag about it in your profile.  It’s cheap and effortless advertising that targets the right audience and you might just make a new connection.
  5. Start posting.  Thee’s no quicker turnoff than to visit a Twitter account where the message @xxxxx hasn’t tweeted yet appears.  When you see that, it’s an easy account to pass.

Think Local
In any workshop, the first person that you follow is the workshop leader.  That’s how Will gets thousands of followers!  It’s not that he’s a bad follow, but …

  1. How about the folks around the table that you’re learning with?  Hopefully, you can continue the sharing after the event.
  2. Related to that, we had them follow the hashtag for the event #OTF21C.  Doing a little search revealed what others in the room are saying.  If they’re saying things of interest,  follow them.
  3. Ontario Educators – the list that I curate is a good place to find other educators in the province.  It’s at http://www.twitter.com/dougpete/ontario-educators.  There’s nothing better for discussions around education in the province that with other Ontario educators.
  4. Do you know someone in your school or district who might be on Twitter?  We did a little searching to see if we could find them and followed them if we were successful.

Thing Global
Discussions around the province are great, but a powerful PLN involves opening your eyes to other possibilities.

  1. We took a look at who Will follows.  In his presentation, he indicated that he deliberately keeps the number of people that he follows to a smallish number so we figured they must be good!
  2. We talked about people that lead or think about projects globally.  They often provide some nice insights about what being connected is all about.  Two that come to mind immediately are Canadian @downes and worldly @langwitches.
  3. Follow a newspaper or a few!  They’re terrific source for immediate information.  It was through @nationalpost that we stumbled into the news reports from Sweden.  It was such a powerful moment.

The Magic
But, getting an account and following people doesn’t make the magic happen.  It happens when you get involved.  Anything worthwhile requires effort and building your network through Twitter is no exception.

  1. Lurk.  It doesn’t hurt to get the lay of the land but don’t do it for too long.
  2. We talked about immediately replying to a comment from any of the above as they tweet them.  There’s a natural hesitancy, it seems, to want to just sit back and be passive.  It’s safe – nobody is judging you.  The nice thing about educators on Twitter is that they do embrace new voices.  Unlike the traditional forum approach to online discussion, I have yet to get into a shouting match with someone on Twitter.  Usually, if someone doesn’t like your comments, they just ignore you rather than challenge you.
  3. Diversify and keep trying.  It’s very seldom that you head to Twitter for one topic.  Be prepared to balance parallel discussions for incredibly magical learning.

Hashtags
During the conference, we used the hashtag #OTF21C.  It was a tough concept for folks to believe that there wasn’t a formal registration process if you want to start using a hashtag.  Once we got past that, though, the sky’s the limit.

  1. There are great discussion groups ongoing all the time.  Some hashtags are used regularly and so a sophisticated Twitter learner will check them out.  We referenced “Top Twitter Hashtags for Teachers“.
  2. Two of the hashtags that I suggested were great to look at were #edtech and #edchat.
  3. We even started one of our own — #Gr4Teachers.  I didn’t know if it would work but it served to demonstrate how easy it is to create one.  Without a word of a lie, after creating that hashtag, within half an hour, it had been found by other participants in the room.  I think it would be very cool if it does take off.

Get a Client
Very quickly, people realized that they needed more power than working just with the Twitter website.  We offered four clients as powerful tools for folks.

  1. Tweetdeck – Johanna uses this program as her default
  2. Seesmic Desktop – I use this program as my default
  3. Hootsuite – Another very powerful client for managing your network
  4. Twitter Mobile – There’s nothing better than the Twitter branded clients for mobile computers

Of course, this didn’t include all of the rich conversations that just sort of happened as a result of the format.  It was a wonderful day of learning for everyone.

Powered by Qumana

Jul 28 2011

OTR Links for 07/28/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Jul 27 2011

Day Three, Messing with Spam

OK, this is the third day that I’ve been pre-occupied with spam and my blog account.  It works nicely since WordPress and Akismet collect such great statistics about everything including Spam (the bad things you don’t want in your blog) and Ham (the good things you want in your blog).  In particular, I took a look at the statistics for the first six months of 2011.

So, I decided to try another way to represent how much spam comes through this blog and what better way in this day and age than via infographic.  So, on my laptop, I fire up Adobe Photoshop to have a go at it.  So, here is what happens when good statistics meet a poor artist with an ability to mess around with Photoshop.

Anyone want to chip in for art lessons?

As I was creating this thing, I was keeping an eye on my blog and, sure enough, a piece of spam arrived and was tucked away in the spam area.  I did a little editing to mask the real source and I was able to use a web service to track back the IP address that was attached to the spam.  It may or may not resolve to the actual originating address (spoofing IP addresses is another topic) but it does make for an interesting resolve.  I still can’t get over the 1:53 ratio to show the volume.  For each legitimate reply, Akismet is catching 53 that it determines to be spam.

Thank you, everyone, who contributes to the Ham!