The Sydney Morning Herald has created an excellent multimedia resource focused upon the history of Antarctica and Australia’s role in that part of the world. This resource would be useful as a supporting element for teachers of Geography in NSW wishing to implement an ICT activity focused on broad continental patterns (Focus Area E7). It would also be a useful support for teachers of History.

The interactive timeline has links to video and still images. It is superbly designed and features rich imagery. The site also has a valuable set of links to worthy web sites that also deal with Antarctica. This excellent multimedia resource is on a par with another available on the SMH web site, SS Misr ~ 1947 Journey. It is the story of immigration to Australia after the Second World War.

Today I chanced upon a brochure for an exhibition featuring artefacts from the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. This museum houses the Iceman, the celebrated gentleman found frozen in the Similaun Glacier in the Otzal Alps. The exhibition is being held at the Australian National Maritime Museum.

The brochure included links to an Iceman blog on MySpace as well as a feature page on the museum’s web site. The museum’s web site also has a link to that MySpace Iceman blog. The blog is titled ‘Who iced Otzi?’. Otzi is the nickname given to the Iceman. I think that calling the blog ‘Who iced Otzi?’ is in bad taste.

The museum describe the blog as follows: “Through the wonders of MySpace, Otzi himself shares a creative story tracing his last days alive.” The story is purely fictional of course. It relies in part on some of the archaeological evidence found with the Iceman’s body (clothing, tools, personal belongings and evidence of injuries incurred).

What I find interesting is the use of the adjective ‘wonderful’ by the NMA staff to describe MySpace. I feel that MySpace is one of the most visually repelling web-based mediums. The Iceman blog features banner advertising in addition to the cluttered design, ragged fonts and busy layout that are the hallmarks of the design nightmare that is MySpace. How can the National Maritime Museum possibly consider MySpace to be ‘wonderful’. No doubt the curators or project officers involved with the exhibition felt it would be hip with the kids. The Iceman has 182 ‘friends’ to date. They include Rene Descartes, Stephen Hawkings, Tutankhamun, David Byrne, Ice T and Vanilla Ice.

Surely the National Maritime Museum could have created something a little more visually pleasant and authentic than that awful MySpace blog? They could have emulated Pepy’s Diary or at least used WordPress or TypePad as the blog engine.

I have been attempting to categorise the various blogs that I read or scan through every day or so. I use Google Reader. Anyway, one aspect of Google Reader that I was quite fond of was its ability to generate a blogroll script that you could copy and paste into any web page. The script can be reformatted to fit in with the style of your site.

Well, as you may have guessed, Google has altered the script and the blogrolls now appear in cute little boxes. One cannot readily alter their appearance other than the colour scheme. It is frustrating. There was also a link to an OPML file which allowed readers to easily download your blogroll and inport it into their own reader. That feature is also lost.

My blogrolls previously would be neatly accommodated into my site’s right sidebar but no longer. My solution is to create a dedicated blogrolls page with the six embedded blogrolls.

If you disagree with the category for a particular blog(s), especially if it is your own, please drop me a line. I seek and would appreciate any feedback.

Read a nice post by Graham Wegner just then. Graham was blogging about a productive mathematics lesson created by Dan Meyer. I shared the post with my mathematical colleagues. I commented on Graham’s blog as I was amused by Graham’s reference to the age difference between he and Dan. I am intrigued by this and I now wonder what is the average age of teachers that blog?

It seems that there is a number of baby boomers present when one considers a stream of edubloggers in a Twitter line-up. What is a baby boomer? A Google search uncovered the suitably titled Aging Hipsters web site. It defined baby boomers as those individuals born during the time period that stretched from 1946 to 1964. Wikipedia qualifies that further with a prequisite that a baby boomer was born in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada or Australia.

I was born in 1958. I was one of seven children. Six of us are teachers. My sister is a librarian. All of us are baby boomers by definition. Am I also an aging hipster?

So, what is the average age of an educator that blogs? I know I am not a digital immigrant and I am not a digital native. Perhaps I am an aging digital hipster?

Sachi and Lee LeFever of CommonCraft have created another excellent video, this time demonstrating how useful blogs can be for their creators and readers.