never mind the optics

I’ve moved my blog away from edublogs.org.  I’ve been blogging since 2001 although that particular blog only lasted until 2005 when I realised it might provide too much information for eager pupils when I discovered that they had been googling me.  

I made the move to edublogs on October 2006, a little over 2 years ago.  The service was good and I stuck with them through their problems toward the end of 2008.  What did annoy me was the time I discovered ads inside my blog posts.  I have no issue with ads around the sidebar, it’s a free service after all.  But there’s something particularly invasive about embedding advertising inside my content.  At this point, I felt the need to upgrade to supporter status.  It allowed me to get the adverts removed but I resented the way in which it was suddenly turned on without notification (no courtesy email, no message in the banner of my blog’s dashboard – both methods they have used in the past to communicate news).

The final straw came last week when I realised what kind of adverts edublogs was serving up on occasion on the blogs of people who had not subscribed.  Margaret Vass blogged about the kind of content that was being seen by parents and possibly pupils as young as 6(!) in her post enough is enough.  I was one of a few people who responded to Margaret’s concerns and gave advice on how to self-host her blog, i.e. move it away from edublogs and run it from a web space of her own.  Margaret now blogs at mvass.net.  I had been running a self-hosted classroom blog for 3 years now at mrmackenzie.co.uk and it made sense to self-host my own ramblings there too.

I understand completely that edublogs needs to make money.  I even understand why ads are being used, although I disagree with the decision to place them inline with a blogger’s content.  What I cannot accept is the placement of inappropriate material (adsense Google ads of an adult nature) in blogs being generated and read by schoolchildren.  While more adult material may appear on a blog hosted at wordpress.com, they are not marketing themselves as a blog host specifically for education of minors.  Edublogs should be leading the way with best practice in safe use of the internet.  Instead they have found a tide of criticism and bad publicity.

I had a disaster just before Christmas.  My destructive pup, who had already half-eaten my firewire webcam for the iBook, wagged his tail a little too hard and tipped a drink into my laptop.  I’ve been using a school laptop since the start of term but have now finally got round to ordering a new macbook.

I can’t help thinking about it’s aluminium unibody being machined to order as I type.  I went for an upgraded hard drive and the option of preinstalled iWork09.  I had iWork06 on the iBook and, although I didn’t use it much, I loved the way Keynote could be used to export into so many different file formats.  It made uploading of files that had started out as PowerPoint presentations to my website so much more pupil-friendly.

From what I have seen, Office 2007 for Windows is awful and so I am reluctant to buy the Mac version, even at LTS prices.  Wonder if I can get by with a combination of iWork09 and OpenOffice.org?  The order status page says it will ship in 3 days.  I’m not going to tell you how long they think it will take to reach me up here though.

Following on from the comments I received after blogging about being approached to write a chapter for a book on digital literacy in science teaching, I’ve started work on the piece.  I’ve created a wiki for note taking and am now drafting the chapter.  I seem to have plenty to say, the problem will be keeping it within the context of science education.  How often does a person get the opportunity to write for an academic textbook about using their favourite web2.0 tools in the classroom?  There’s a danger that I end up submitting something too edupunk for either the editor, publisher or both.

I received an email today from an academic I know.  It was an invitation to write a chapter for a book that is being put together on digital literacy in science teaching.   I’m very flattered to have been asked but not yet sure if I should accept.

I am very grateful for the professional learning network I have acquired through my use of twitter.  Several people contacted me with advice and they were unanimous in saying I should take the offer.  I have a few doubts.  One of these is my lack of teaching experience, I am only in my 3rd year since obtaining the PGCE.  How would I be able to justify my use of ICT in the classroom with pedagogically sound evidence given my short teaching career to date?  Would the reader, or the editor for that matter, see my use of ICT be as technology being introduced just for the sake of it?

The other aspect that troubles me is how little time I have had to use ICT in the classroom.  One response from twitter captured this quite well.  He pointed out that few classroom teachers will have been making effective use of ICT, especially for 3 years – 4 if you count teaching placements where you are expected to have all-singing ICT through the 18 weeks you are in school.  I discussed this with a friend from my PGCE year and we finally agreed with his perspective.

So I’m back to the teaching experience thing.  Well, that and the lack of an accessible reference library from which to back up any arguments I might want to put forward in my chapter.   Given the remit of providing a realisation of how digital literacy is facilitated by science teachers, it is perhaps unlikely that I would find much in a book anyway.