Synthesis

I've been hacking the Simpla WP theme all weekend and really enjoying the journey.

So much so I've decided to keep synthesising my main conversational placeholder.

After 200 posts I'm happy to move on from Blogger and pick up a few PHP hacking skills to complement my HTML insights.

I'm assured you'll enjoy the change of direction.

Please change your RSS only marginally for me - http://alexanderhayes.com/blog/?feed=rss2

I'm now pressing publish over at http://www.alexanderhayes.com/blog

:-)

Tim Brunero : 201

Tim Brunero.

Access to resources. Access to knowledge.

Interesting chap. Public vs private. He's a showpony he says.

What he did so made great sense.

Journalist and media commentator. Right on.

It's an interesting discussion I must say. Pig iron ? The democratisation of the media. An exciting time. Sheesh.

ABC prime time television here in Australia and there's talk of eroticism. Parental issues. Divides. Boundaries. Generalisations.

"Fucking male bitches" even got mentioned. Who said swearing is reserved for the audio media.

MMORPGS. Distopia. Generation Y. Long way deferments.

Marraige.....life satisfaction. Models of society. Choice and tyranny. Turkey slapping.

Today's youth growing up with mobile phones in one hand and a mouse in another. Banning YouTube ?

It's in their hands you idiots.

It was and is such a serious problem however this type of SMH blurb gets my goat. And on the eve of a dear friend voting with her feet.

Not a good day. Bad kalma for some. Crap for others.

A no assholes day.

A day to lament over whether Keith Richard actually did snort his father's ashes. A day of Chaser quotes like ;

" I'm really prejudiced against bigots."

"Bullshit may baffle brains, but by fuck it sells stuff!"

A day of tragedy beyond belief.

200

Well somehow I've made it this far without being hung drawn and quartered. 200 posts hey ?

Sue Water's ( aquaculturePDA ) posted things about Commeeko and other comic related fare over at her household and I wanted to congratulate her however the comments feature keeps logging me off.

Oh well. I'll just lead this one back in the vain hope that she reads;

".....Great post Sue. There is some great dynamics going on here. There is something wrong with your comments feature as I cant seem to login to comment so I'll place this over elsewhere and ping you back. Something about "cant find user ?"

Please advise.

No Assholes Rule

I dont often mix business with pleasure ( I'll let you guess which is which ) however in this instance I'm taken with my colleague's take on keeping the playing field fair.

No jerks - no assholes.

Seems logical to me yet I'm left wodering how we would get that descriptor for online tyrants past the petty politic police.

Re-assembling Education : Blogging for Escape

It's a dilemna for all educators alike , whether they call themselves teachers, trainers or facilitators to remain true ( and ethically bound ) to their form and function in the community while retaining some semblance of reality around their progressive online outpourings ( no one in the supermarket knows your a web 2.0 teacher....yet )

The reason I say this is that it would be nice to nominated by your peers for your efforts provided your blog didnt appear in this list.

Extending on that.....wouldnt it be good to show a little humanity and mud amongst the waterfights. Drinking too much at the party. Riching out of literature that's got one too many pictures. Laughing in staff meetings and forgetting to hand in your timesheets.

I'm writing this cause' I'm concerned lately that a number of online colleagues ( the majority whom I'm yet to meet ) feel that making sure they have enough content to garnish their links is the way to go. That each post must follow the other in theme, that the dots have been dotted and that none of the scribblings go outside of the black lines. That the the trackbacks and the pings will bring them greatness and adoration.

In a time and age when the boss admits he stumbled as a lad and has paid his dues. Where vast collectives of grey nomads congregate at inter-state functions stuffing their handbags full of party pies. Amongst countless spirit crushing meetings designed to cause the most amount of morale heartache and bewilderment. Waking up to more timetables, and uniform checks and yard duty and rolls upon rolls upon rolls.

Spitting and late assigments and failed logins and PD and CD and LD and other forms of useless expert centred professional servitude. To start with.

I think we need to get back to the question of what is a blog and wait for it.....what is a wiki ?

Are we as educators just hijacking these forms we flounder around within and force learners to engage in slippery conversations in the hope that we selfishly know best ? I'm trying to answer this question as much as you could consider to do so if you could be bothered.

Are we human too and how would our learners know so from our ramblings ? How would we explain to the family if we had been nomiated for the most boring blog of all time ?

Welcome to the Fold

What entertains me is the idea that some bloggers think that comment moderation prevents the world knowing of others comments until such time as they are released.

It's a bit like making a phone call and thinking that only the person you rang and yourself are the only one's involved in the conversation....

I cant recall who subjected me to the following tactic but it sure as heck worked;

"....Excellent blog post. I've spoken about this over at http://alexanderhayesblog.blogspot.com It's an interesting thing as soon enough you'll discover that you are creating history rather than being subject to it and that watching footy is really just disguised war. I look forward to you genuinely using this space to let us know of who you are and what your capable of. Welcome to the Fold...."

Greetings Technology Widower.

I'm still awaiting to see where the next posts are genuine or not or simply another media consumer. As David Wiley informs it's about bringing it down to the masses.

We need more creators and less fools. As always the clowns make us laugh however they are fantastic at subversion given the odd prod from the jester occasionally.

Kathy Sierra : Jacinta Gascoigne

What's the difference apart from names and geographical location ?

Oh....and for those still searching for connections between both peoples plight preface your reading with more from Michelle Malkin.

I'm disgusted with some of the most vile forms of heirachy descending around friends and colleagues who cower in fear at the threats and misogynist gesticulations from online animals who get great pleasure from watching the results of their dangeorus rhetoric.

I'm also amazed at the architecture that supports such behaviour. The skeletons and the musty cupboards and the veiled threats are equally distributed from the very forms which nurture and nourish conversation : connection : collaboration.

The open web is a complicated space. We can romatically talk of open and networked and learning and so on but the nourishment of the www is becoming more and more gap driven skills based audit trails punctuated with the odd glimmer of "out".

Well folks .....the fan has stopped. So much shit has been flung at it that the very power source to which the device is plugged into is threatening to blow out. Time for those who know what they know that dont know that they think we wont know ( you know whom I'm talking about ) to hang up their gym shoes and take a long earned rest from online contribution.

After they've relaxed and reflected on their actions long enough they will be taken on the tour of their life. The networked world of the incarcerated is infinetly more scrutinised.

Ps. I dont count myself as part of the techno-blogging elite.....perhaps thats why I'm prepared to be one of the few that say, " I'm an educator and I am not prepared to stand back and watch others get crucified online"

What's your take and what have you got to say ?

History

I wonder about bloggers that insist on moderation.

Zephoria

We need to meet this person

Muggles: Response For Incantations & Other Timelines

The Ralph Koster blog post regarding Muggles thanks to TALO's Janet Hawkin's has somehow bridged the comments on Ubiquitous and Human Computing in the NSW LearnScope blog with my first meanderings and posits .

Must be something in the water cause no sooner had I dwelt on Muggles then along comes Skype entries asking me to look to the WebDiary and check out where i was on the FutureWatch timeline.

Mind boggles. It's all making sense though.

Muggles ?

Social Networks : Mis-Communication Technology

Image: INSA

Today's been an interesting array of contact from afar.

I'm lost in tags ( RSI labour ) and completely inundated with login's which lead nowhere fast. I'm now a slave to my online identity and my social networks have taken on a new dimension with the onset of LinkedIn and Orkut spicing up the inbox.

Series4 is due out and growing gradually. Suggestions appreciated. Remember.... it's about dumbing things up.

Preparation for tommorow's capability development workshops with colleagues in the networked learning field's of Sydney has begun in earnest. Email's are flooding in with an average relevance content value of between 30-40 %.

I've installed the random delete feature. Random mis-communications often interspace the core community content and I've been using my wiki to learn ways to filter the gym bunnies from the junkies - so to speak. In this day and age of social networking technology their is plenty of glam amongst the glum. One facette interfaces with the other.

Things seem to be revolving and new knowledge nodes are appearing however it appears that many educators follow the same seven year patterns. seven years ago email came into play in our workplaces.

That's how long it's been since I used the term "folksonomies" except this time it appears that I've learnt a tad since my first attempt at articulating the lunancy. It's almost like an itch. We seek ways to connect that which was coined 'early-adoption". For the technology-averse we are simply geeks.......till they understand that they will now need to use it.

Re-shuffling is underway now that Labour's back in at the polls and with a national politic re-structure emminent Teacher Tube might just have a chance.

More emails coming in about the adjustments to politic's and new education ministers supplemented by the odd update on fax machines broken down in remote campus locations.

As always the socialist puritans are pushing against the liberalisation of education into an industry driven, economic facist-rationalist push for cost cutting and agenda serving. Meetings are fraught with who's eating who for dinner and who's paying the rent. I can hear them whispering sweet nothings into the cauliflower ears of those wearing bad suits and spotted ties.

I'm been approached twice this week with people suggesting how I show talk and to whom. They've even given me the agenda items and asked me to fill in the blanks. I'm begining to lose track of who's boss and who's steering the cart before the horse.

It's chaos and MySpace isnt helping. Should I have Beebo'd instead ?

Is there any mathematical reasoning behind all of this or am I simply trying to bring nodes into a more important picture ? There is sense in the adventure but not in the objective.

It may need a whole range of miscommunication to occur for the unconference to grow beyond a circus seeking soul mates.

Mrs. Burk : TeacherTube

Check out this rockin chick......woops....teacher.

Well by gosh...how to make really boring content into a re-usable learning object 101. This rocks Mrs. Burk.

It goes by "... How to REALLY Use The TI-84 Graphing Calculator - Part 1- Tips on how to get the most usage out of your calculator. No previous knowledge assumed."

Well well. I wonder how it will be before one smart Alec will garnish a whole nation and get SMH to ban TeacherTube cause teachers are just gettin' downright nasteee !

Shakin that butt !

Oh......here's the metal version of all the things you know about and dont want to say.....in words so why not TeacherTube it ?

Woot.

Get it onnnnnnnnnnnn !

Ps. Either that or curl up and groan in embaressment.

Wikipedia

And you thought wikipedia was just another dictionary - think not.

Imagine where it's taking fact and the description of history to nowadays.

Blah Blah

It has taken six weeks and an awful lot of of arguing and bickering but it finally looks like we have come up with a three stage business plan to be implemented over the next three years.

It seemed like we would never get there with all our differences and the complex nature of it all however, I'm so awfully proud that we got it pinned down and now have something substantial to present at the next ICAC meeting.

Well done team !

FLNW2

Today I built the FLNW2 page with the world. I'm exhausted and happy.

WikiEducator rocks.

FLNW2

E-Portfolios : More Dribble

Look at the dribble that FlickrCC brings up with "e-portfolio". Oh and....

Well , well.

Helen C. Barrett, PHD. ©2007 must be taking the piss with this one ....

How to create an electronic portfolio with WordPress

"....Purpose........... In this example, we will use an electronic portfolio to provide formative feedback on student work. ...."

Formative ? * quizically stumped look, jaw down, dribble*


".....Identify how you are going to organize the portfolio. Will it be around the outcomes, goals or standards that you identified in this first step? "

Outcomes, goals ? Oh man.... *feigns headache*


"....Set up a “parent” page that will serve as the opening page/Introduction to the portfolio"

Uh huh. * slaps forhead *

Then add lots of fancy words like artefacts, collection and standard and splice in some emotional rubbish like heart and soul and connection and interaction and dialogue and charge $500 US to yabber on about it.

Shoot me if I EVER engage with learners using a WP as an E-portfolio.

I've said it before - the entire internet is a portfolio. What's with E ?

Students need access to PHD graduates who live networked literacy, who instill the importance of digital identity, who advocate for open web publishing not in a box and whose standards are cognisant of one simple fact.

The internet is the e-portfolio.

Maybe two.

Learners need critical digital literacy skills to access, navigate and proportion real value to their creations.

Dang.

WWW3 As PLE : Mark as RSS Mentor

On the agenda at the TALO Swapmeet in Adelaide, Australia blogger colleague Graham Wegner raised ( razed ? ) the ambient tones with his renditions on what for me has become another capitalist push/sell product substantiation in schools and education settings - globally better of for known as the PLE.

Spread liberally throughout his blog is the term PLE for want of a better acronym - search it and look for Barrett.

In a box. One size fits the class. Or a series of spaces scraped into one management system which hopefully plugs into another one two years down the track when the learner graduates from university at the ripe old age of nineteen and assumes a rotating case workers role with the Department Of Community Services as a social worker and re-enrols in the third option they originally chose at the local polytechnic - multimedia mayhem.

Mark van Harmelen does a better job of PLE interrogation than I'll ever have time to afford it. Best I leave it to those who want to discover something through years of research and a Phd.

Better still why not go back a bit further and see what Mark Diggs . Or better still check out this PLE and social networks bibsonomy that makes my already spinning he do a complete 360.
Or check out where the CLCommunity left off whilst we gethered our thoughts and tackled the prims in SecondLife. Or wonder why and what's become of the Web 2.0 debate. Does too much money mean we abandon all sense and make rules as to how to use blogs and wiki's . Erk !

More rules suck big time. For whom the bell tolls.

There's too much out there for me to think that an LMS is a model of anything except for controlling knowledge and effecting admin. I dont care what brand does what - if it dosent transport then yuck. If it dosent allow open digital rights economy and digital media literacy the double yuck.

I consider my PLE as 'alexanderhayes ' - my name, my tag, my PLE. It will never change and I'll never be able to breastfeed.

The internet and all of of it's tendrils are my networked learning engine . I have no need for anything more than access and the ability to export.

I trust that the internet as we know it wont die my life time. I trust in it. The www knows more of me that I know of it.

What we will be battling with is how to integrate things like Zimbra, WikiEducator and BibSonomy into our aged educational architectures.

I concur with Leigh when he states " the internet is my PLE". It's mine too although my web presence probably dates back a little further. Only cause I'm older :-)

Thanks Mark. You rock.

Skype me some time : mobology

Ps. virtual micro-mentors ....got a feed for that ?

Pss. another take over here at Graham's post-moderated space.

TALO : SwapMeet Fly-By

Click To Play Meet The Outer Circle