The first round

Well that was the first round over. I took advice from Will Richardson in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. He suggested that I gave my students a topic to research first, which I decided would be something fun, so I gave the girls makeup and the boys cars. Quite sexist I know, but I thought it would be a good focus and would cause some discussion. Lots of the students stayed safe and looked at how the topic affected them, whether it was the fact that they didn’t use the product or whether they couldn’t live without it. Some students took a different approach as they researched their topic, they were guided by what they were reading, which was the whole point and showed that they were actually reading! We all created new blog sites successfully and with a variety of creativity, I am please to say. There are some little quirks with Blogger that I didn’t understand, such as when you choose a template, it does not always use a suitable font colour for the page background. For example, if you have a black background, a white font would be most suitable, you have to change the font colour yourself, which means that you can’t actually see the text on the editor page! (Obviously we just changed the font colour at the last minute.) The students seemed to enjoy the session, each was asked to comment on someone else’s blog, some comments were more appropriate than others, but this was just a test run. I hope to get the journal blogs going very soon though...I’ll keep you posted.

In the beginning!

In the beginning I began my working life as a computer operator in an American bank. It was a fabulous start for me and one that was to start me off in the world of technology. Little did I know the strange path I would eventually find though. To start with the job was mainly operating very large, slow by today's comparison, main frame computers, that had the capacity to process what we now expect from something in our pockets. So, I guess I could be almost a digital native as I was only 18 when it all began...or am I kidding myself? Well if nothing else I became what we term computer literate, which was great because at the age of eight I could not read and my mother thought I was illiterate, so at least there was some progress. Well in terms of IT, progress is a major influence and now as an ICT lecturer in Swansea Institute, this word progress is something I take quite seriously.

Take a look at the link if you want so see a little bit about my work and Swansea Institute
http://www.sihe.ac.uk/education/staff/peacem.html

I am intending to get my 1st year students to start a Blog journal this term, my hope is that they will continue to blog throughout their time here at Swansea Institute. I will keep you posted and hopefully put their links here too. So watch this space!