Digitalkatie's blog

Back to blogging

I haven't blogged for a long time.  I don't get much time sitting at a computer and I got really put off blogging on my phone when a large batch of blog posts (about a dozen) got deleted by the Typepad program (its a stupid program - deletes posts if there's an error rather than letting you correct it, and won't let you pick entries to publish - it's all or nothing, hence the backlog of posts waiting to publish.)  I still don't have the program working on my phone yet, but never mind, here I am back again.

I'm back at school now too. I went back for a week in June which went well. I wasn't timetabled for classes so I got a lot done that I'd been trying to do since I arrived.  I'm back part-time now, with Wednesdays off to play with Louis (and catch up with sleep!)

I'm amazed what difference energy levels make to teaching.  I'm happy at school!  In the last month I've only had one stressful moment, which was about IT faults and beaurocracy not kids.  I'm having fun helping with a badminton class after school on Mondays, I'm starting a lunchtime thing on Thursdays doing more traditional games outside rather than on computers, like bowling and dominoes.  I may also be getting involved in a Duke of Edinburgh Award group that is being started.  They need help with the skill section so I've offered a) a lego robotics competition b) games making or c) sign language.

There are still problems, but they're not phasing me as much as before.  Slow computers (at times not logging on till 7min before the end of the lesson!), internet and printing down, useful websites blocked, etc.  I'm trying to have a GTD mentality, getting things done there and then, and off my desk.  It's working, and I'm slowly getting through the backlog of tidying and organising.  I'm also getting better at documenting classes and doing decent handouts and activities as I go, fixing stuff that didn't work well before.  I'll finally have a good set of lesson plans as the curriculum changes!

Hugh and Loic's Bloggers dinner

Monday night we went to a blogger's dinner. Hugh MacLeod (the doodle marketer guy) and Loic Le Meur (a French blogger who organises the Le Web conferences) both happened to be in town so hosted a dinner.

We met some very interesting people, although it was mainly an opportunity to sell startups for many people. We had fun talking to people and asking for their sales pitch with the disclaimer that we have NO money. Loic and his wife were lovely. I hope they have a smooth move to America from France.

This was a rather strange event. It was also one of the most expensive meals I've had in the States, particularly considering it consisted of nibbles occassionally being carried round on trays. I ended up sitting in the smokers area (as far as I could see Hugh was the only smoker) and ordering a salad just to get something slightly more nutricious to eat.

Also, there was no wi-fi access! That would be unthinkable at a similar event in Scotland! In fact, there was nobody with laptops out, just a couple of cameras and a few mobile phones or iPhones being flashed around.

It was a lovely venue though, despite the lack of wifi. I'm sure it would be a fantastic place for a more conventional dinner. They also project foreign films onto the wall in the courtyard area.

Are you incapable of restraining yourself or do you take pride in being an insufferable know it all?

I was looking through the list of search terms that people have used to get to my website when I came across the phrase "are you incapable of restraining yourself or do you take pride in being an insufferable know it all?"  I googled it to find out what it is, and it's a quote from Harry Potter which is mentioned in the guide to teaching using the Harry Potter films.  What's surprising is the link to my site is top of the list!  I'm just glad it wasn't about me personally ;-)

South America!!!

Hello Uraguay!!  Hello to South Africa, Russia, China, Chile, India, too and all the other people around the world that have popped on and read my blog!  I am learning about all sorts of different places around the world.

I love blogs :-)

Clustr Maps and Geo visitors are great.  It's like playing a game of real risk ;-) Actually, my latest addiction is playing risk online using Conquer Club.  (You can go and see how badly I'm losing here and search for digitalkatie)

I'm hoping to blog more now that the nasty term is over.  The summer term is much more relaxed so I should be able to bore you all about Second Life, mobile phones and other things geeky and vaguely educational!

Update: I've found the longest running Conquer Club game - three people have been playing a game since 18th July 2006!! 

Blogging in Polish

  An unfortunately named publication from Richard Hammond 
  Originally uploaded by digitalkatie.

 

I love Technorati.  Michał Dzierża has used the word digitalkatie in his Polish blog, because they've used one of my Flickr pictures.  This picture actually.

"Moi" - le blogging has commenced in school

The blogging has started at Forthill!  My fifth and sixth year pupils set up a blog page and accounts for each student in an S4 French class, and yesterday the S5/6 taught the S4 how to blog!  I am so chuffed with them :-)  It was really a practice for when the S5/6 pupils teach the staff how to blog, but hopefully the S4 pupils blogging successfully will encourage the staff to do the same for the school news site (not yet active)

The S4 pupils (half credit and half foundation Standard Grade) worked really well, not getting distracted by meebo as usual, and blogged little pieces about themselves.  They then had a little time at the end of the lesson to comment on each other's posts which they did without any editing being required.  They seemed to like blogging, but seemed most interested when I said that they might get comments from people outside the school.  So here I am begging you all - please please please go here and put encouraging comments up :-)  Thank you!

PS - I should add that I don't speak any French, so I don't know what they've written but it looks very impressive (especially the student who ends with "danke schon"!).  I'm going to use babel to translate for me :-)

New blog

Meeting everyone at SETT last week and going and visiting more new blogs has persuaded me that I want a blog that a) lets people comment properly, b) lets me see how many people read my blog and where they come from, c) and lets me add javascript and cool thing in the side bars.  So I'm moving from Livejournal to Typepad.  My blog is now digitalkatie.typepad.com.  You can still get at my old blog posts (because I'm struggling to move them across even though both sites are the same company!) at digitalkatie.livejournal.com.

I have also thought long and hard about the separation of "Digitalkatie" and my real life details (my RL alt ;-)  I no longer think its necessary to keep my name secret.  In the last two years in schools I have only seen one pupil try and find me online, and that's just my RL website.  I also don't feel the need to rant about problems in the classroom.  I'm getting better at dealing with bad lessons, and more professional in what I'm posting. 

So........ my name is Kate Farrell.... hello!

I won't be revealing the name of the school I work in though, as I don't want my blog appearing when parents do google searches, so for now I still work at "Forthill".  If you REALLY want to know, email me ;-)

I've also been playing about with other geeky things this weekend.  I've found another RSS reader solution (Netvibes is really slow these days and won't work on my phone).  I'm trying out a combination of Newsgator Online and Newsgator Mobile, which syncs up so that if I read blogs on the bus, when I log on to my PC it knows which posts I've read!

I've also been playing with wikis.  I'd looked at PBWiki before and got fed up trying to figure it out, but the wiki used for the TeachMeet gathering looked nice so I've been playing about with that and really liking it.  I've now started working on a wiki with pages for Second Life, moving image education, and mobile phones.  I toyed for a while about having seperate wiki spaces for each topic but figured this way I'd only have to pay once to remove adverts, but I now realise there aren't any at the moment.  Never mind.  Theo has also been doing the same thing this weekend, and has put together a wiki for Online Video.

Next step is to keep transferring information onto the wiki and to update my website.  Maybe not tonight though :-)