Male bravado?

The Pew Internet Post provides New Numbers for Blogging and Blog Readership. In their spring tracking survery they used two new questioning measurements of blog reading, each of which captures a slightly different set of behaviors.

Our first measure of blog readership uses the present-tense question, “Do you ever read someone else’s online journal or blog?”. In total, 33% of internet users (the equivalent of 24% of all adults) say they read blogs, with 11% of internet users doing so on a typical day.

Our second blog readership question is based on a slightly different question construction: the past-tense “Have you ever read someone else’s online journal or blog?” This figure is consistently higher than the one discussed above; this is because its wording captures people who once read blogs but now do not for whatever reason. 42% of internet users (representing 32% of all adults) answer this question affirmatively.

Apparently because of the power of questioning, we are seeing a difference between males and females.

male and female internet users are equally likely to say that they do read other people’s blogs (35% for men, 32% for women). However, among internet users men are more likely to say that they have read other people’s blogs (48% vs. 38%). We suspect that this is due to the male-heavy nature of the initial blog readership population–men are generally heavily represented among the early adopters for most.

Oh please! give me a break. Even if there is research that says males are more likely to be early adopters – you can’t just assume this is the cause of the difference in response.

Maybe guys felt easier about saying the they have read other peoples blogs than owning up to not reading blogs …. easy to stretch the truth and make it look as if they’re cool.  Maybe its something else entirely.

Either way – ‘Apparently!‘ wouldn’t be quite legitimate social research analysis would it!

Konrad Glogowski and Jokaydians

We love inspiring each other! So those Jokaydians who are at NECC were stoked to be able to meet up with Konrad our fellow Jokaydian whose research and thinking provides the bedrock to educators working with online tools, and in-world tools.

In true Jokaydian fashion we jumped on the opportunity to stream Konrad’s presentation into Jokaydia, for our SL friends. Dean Groom, Al Upton and myself grabbed our gear and set up to stream into Second Life. Will Richardson came into the room and jumped in with us to Ustream the session!

Konrad’s presentation Blogging Communities in the Classroom: Creating Engaging Learning Experiences inspired us in ways to transform our classrooms into a blogging community that will help students become competent writers and capable, critical thinkers.

Catch the video/chat recording at Will’s blog. Jump on over to read Konrad’s Blog of Proximal Development.

Blogging – a reflection #2

Series of posts for the ASLA Online 2008 conference.

It’s interesting to look at blogging as a form of communication – in the broader context, not just in education. Blogging has become a highly interactive experience, and permiates so many parts of society, not just education. The media have adopted blogging, companies have adopted bloging, mums and dads have adopted blogging – the world is certainly changing.

Lets’ take the Sydney Morning Herald as an example. The Herald has quite a number of blogs throughout the site. You can see the full range at Blog Central! When you looks at the Herald’s most viewed items, blogs are amongst the ones that are covered.

The uptake of blogging in the media, and the corporate world accentuates the importance for teachers and teacher librarians to stop, recheck, then adopt blogging in some form or another. The Read/Write web is with us, and citizen reporting is a crucial part of the developments taking place globally.

Moving Forward is an excellent wiki that covers many aspecst of our mulitmodal education journey. On this wiki you will find that key Blog Posts have been archived, so that you can revisit some of the foundational or provocative blog posts to date. These posts have generated significant discussion in the comments section and/or in the blogosphere as a whole.

But back to the broader context! If you haven’t already seen it, then this video from the Commoncraft Show explains how blogging emerged and how blogging now fits into our world for fun, hobbies, family, news and more.

If you’ve discovered something new, or would like to add to these ideas, please share it by adding a comment to this post.

  • Blogging – a reflection

    Since the emergence of Web 2.0 – the Read/Write web – we have seen the establishment of a new kind of ecology of technology enhanced learning that focuses on open access, collaboration, and professional exchange which has given us a chance to make a real difference in education and lifelong learning.The shift in professional practice has been profound for those of us who have been willing to step into the Read/Write web – and because we have experienced the extraordinary benefits for ourselves and for our students, I invite you to join the global transformation in learning.

    I am forever grateful for those early adopters who have been promoting Web 2.0 within education and library circles. We have all had our own ‘epiphany’, inspired by someone – because the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 is still not necessarily obvious to all so we continue to need help! My kapow! came from Stephen Abram of Stephen’s Lighthouse fame. I soon discovered Will Richardson (raced out to buy his book) and Michael Stephens. I have a long list of ‘good reads’ ready for you to discover on my blog. The connections have continued since then. Whether it’s the awesome Stephen Downes or the teacher or teacher librarian down the road, there are hundreds of thousands of teachers, students, and librarians online – and each of them brings a particular dimension to the learning landscape that IS our world.

    I am convinced of one thing – the future is being shaped by the multimodal world that our students occupy. Our teaching and professional practice is being moulded by the multimodal opportunities that surround us.

    What’s so important about blogging for professional learning?

    I know that blogging was the prime ‘lead’ for me to become an active participant in the future world of work and play of our students – a multimodal way of thinking, acting, sharing, knowing, and enjoying. My life as an educator will never be the same – and nor will yours.

    Welcome to readers from the ASLA Online 2008 conference. I would like to take the opportunity that this conference presents to me to reflect a little on blogging and professional learning and hope that you will join me in conversation along the way. I will track my posts on this topic with the tag “aslaonline08“, which you can collect by searching that tag, either on this blog, or through Technorati.

    So why are you blogging?

    Like everything online these days, while this post is the first in a series of posts for the ASLAOnline III Virtual Conference -it is also a post in response to Christopher Sessums question “so what are you blogging for?” That’s how things work these days! We’re all talking and sharing together.

    Oh….and a message to Will – I wish we had better bandwidth to share with you at the seminars in Sydney and Brisbane. What we lacked in bandwidth was made up a hundred-fold by the magic of working with you, and seeing you share your experience, vision and enthusiasm with good ‘ole aussies who love your work! Your blogging transforms our understanding.

    If you have a view about blogging as a professional learning tool, please add your thoughts for readers. Watch for other posts in this online conference thread too.

    Blogging: The Staff Experience

    Photo: Writing online

    Bling for your blog

    Bling For Your Blog – a wow resource!

    I just have to share this fabulous resource (better late than never) put together by another great New Zealand teacher from “across the ditch”.

    Allanah shared this link in Twitter – so I found out about it!

    If you need step by step instructions about how to set up and manage your blog at Blogger – then this is the ‘instruction manual’ for you!!

    Allanah is a NZ primary school teacher taking a year’s leave to be ICT facilitator in Tasman. Add her blog Life is not a Race to be Finished to your RSS feeds and learn heaps about technology integration from a super Web 2.0 teacher.

    Did You Know 2.0

    This video is an update to the original “Shift Happens”.

    I’m posting it here as a way of testing one of the many new features of WordPress.com, which allows me to post videos to my blog by the click of a button using my vodpod/wordpress toolbar button.

    WordPress.com has a whole new Dashboard design with plenty of slick new features thanks to WordPress 2.5.

    I’m pretty excited to see new things happening at WordPress.

    Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

  • Beyond RSS – with Alltop.com?

    I caught an interesting commentary from Clay Burrell on RSS in education – and got quite interested in the read for a while. I agree with Clay’s comments – to an extent. The thing is, there is more to RSS than mentioned here – but I’m thinking that it is outside the domain of teachers that we find the true power of RSS.

    How about setting up an RSS feed on info topics, based on good selection of key terms, which are delivered directly from comprehensive journal databases, or scholarly internet resource collections, or searches that your have “rolled” yourself?? That’s ‘serious’ information gathering! RSS is not just for web info collection – that’s basic – and eventually pretty boring! Any wonder kids (and teachers for that matter) are not much interested. RSS also drives the work of students participating in the Horizon Project. Perhaps it’s the purpose for which the RSS is being used that makes it work. Check out Sue’s post on How I use RSS to Make My Life Easier – that’s an important message for teachers too!

    I’m lucky – I can preach a different gospel of RSS coming from my library side, than I could coming just from my teacher side. There’s just more to learn about RSS – that’s all!

    The good thing was that Clay told us about Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop service. As a fan of popurls my interest picked up again. What a great writing task set up by Clay. OK, time for me to dig deaper into the potential of Alltop.

    Nah – no good! Well not for some of us anyway. Seemed to be a pretty slim representation of important education blogs. Even worse, I couldn’t find anything for education and library – either academic or school.

    Good librarians are great Web 2.0 information professionals – and they are the ones who can show teachers like Clay how else to effectively use RSS and a host of other Web 2.0 tools. Plus the information flow from librarian bloggers is fantastic too. Check out the Lib Bloggers in my blogroll, and you’ll get the idea 🙂

    In a Web 2.0 world collaboration is essential. It’s time that librarians, teacher librarians, media specialists and teachers learnt more from each other – and collaborated more. That’s what Web 2.0 is all about.

    Image: Light Bulb

    Virtual tips and tricks

    The enormously wonderful thing about social networking and passionate Teacher Librarians is  the ease with which they can source just the right information for your daily needs.

    OK, I’m smiling as I write this 🙂  But I do want to bring another blog to your RSS reader – especially if you are looking for quick hits of useful bits and pieces related to learning and literacy in schools.

    Joan joined me at St Joseph’s College just a couple of weeks ago in the role of Teacher Librarian – and is already a hit with her wonderful enthusiasm and depth of knowledge. She keeps us all on our toes!

    Joan adds value to her daily work by writing JDS BlogA Blog for professional learnings “Teaching without learning is just talking”.

    Drop by;  say hello;   and collect some great snippets of information.  

    Photo: what lies within?

    Meme – Passion Quilt

    Oh no!! here comes another meme 🙂

    Thanks to Joyce Valenza and Dianne Cordell I have been tagged to join in the Passion Quilt meme. Usually I don’t like memes, but this time I couldn’t resist as I will be meeting up with these two fabulous Teacher Librarians at ISTE’s conference in San Antonio later in the year.

    So what is my passion? what image will I add to the quilt?  Here ’tis!

    Refocus your mind! Recharge your energy! [R]evolution Web 2.0.


    My Picture

    In this picture simplicity and peace are juxtaposed with Web 2.0 in order to highlight a changing mind or vision in learning. I like the picture because it shows that it is not about the rush of technology that mandates Web 2.0 – rather the mindshift that embraces learning as a multimodal conversation in our Web 2.0 world.
    My Passion
    I am passionate about lifelong learning, for students of all ages.

    You’ve been tagged:
    I’m passing this meme on to five like-minded teachers and/or tech savvy librarians:

    Frances Manning HFS Conversations Teacher Librarian in Sydney

    Jo McLeay The Open Classroom Teacher in Melbourne

    Kathryn Greenhill Librarian’s matter Librarian in Perth (Australia)

    Ewan McIntosh Edu.blogs.com Teacher consultant in Scotland

    John Connell Passionate friend of teachers and librarians. Hails from Scotland, works in the world!!

    Meme: Passion Quilt

    The rules are simple.
    1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
    2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
    3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
    4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

    Mini-legends 08 – sweet stuff

    You’ve got to love blogging and the Web 2.0 platform! Today I ‘met’ my mini-legend called Zelda. How did I do this?

    Well, Al Upton is at it again – a new group of kids, a new set of wonderful learning experiences.

    Al Upton and the miniLegends 08 are going to be interacting with the world through a unique mentoring program.

    Al says:

    If you’re an educational blogger of any kind (or visitor) and would like to ‘mentor a mini’ then please leave a comment on THIS page saying who you would like to be connected with. The idea is to drop into their blogs from time to time throughout the year and leave a positive comment .

    Very simple … why not join in this educational adventure with the miniLegends of 08? They are after mentors for all students from as many different countries as possible. They are adding additional mentors, so there is still time for you to share a miniLegend with an international friend.

    Photo: Sweet Stuff