Leigh Blackall, an educational technologist that ‘specialises in the use of socially networked media and communication and its relationship to socially constructed learning’ at Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand has written a telling post on connectivity. His post looks at the premise that content is king and he argues that it is connectivity that is important in education.  Well worth your time to read. I could not agree more with Lee’s sentiments.

iGoogle has proven to be a handy tool this year. I mainly use it to keep tabs on the blogs that I read via its Google Reader widget.

I have some news services piped in and I embedded a Wikipedia widget as well. I have always had an interest in astronomy so the Astronomy Picture of the Day and the Moon phases get a look in as well. Google maps are there too.

I added the Christmas theme to iGoogle last week and I do feel it is quite nice. Australia does not often have a white Christmas but it has been known to happen when a blast of cold air from Antarctica reaches the southern states such as Tasmania and Victoria.

Would be nice to embed a similar banner or theme that dynamically alters during the course of the day within a blog or web site . Would not alter the functionality of the blog but would certainly add a touch of lighthearted fun to the process.

Do you have a favourite iGoogle theme? Do you think that they reveal something about our personality?

I have been catching up on my reading and procastinating a little at the same time. But, to get to the point. Sue Waters and Michelle Martin have written simply excellent posts about Twitter and blogging respectively. They actually compose excellent posts all of the time and I wonder if I will ever manage to do the same. I can only hope.

Sue Waters posted some excellent advice on how to manage your twitter community and how to keep relatively on top of it all. Sue’s advice is practical and straightforward. Her advice is always useful. I haven’t been watching Twitter that much in the last week or so but I shall see if I can manage a Twitter moment each day and see what crops up.

Michelle’s post last week was on why people do not comment on your blog. I read her advice closely of course as I do not attract many comments. I am not that paranoid about it but it would be nice to obtain more comments. I will follow her advice and make some changes to my blog and writing style. Michelle has written a great follow up post as well.

Maybe my writing is too scientific. Perhaps it is too academic? Is it boring? Is my writing clear? Is it too verbose? Enough.

Frankly, I would like to let go and post about life at work and what I see happening at school and in the local area vis-à-vis educational technology however I felt that would simply become a rant. So, my present goal is to converge my two separate career backgrounds, history and technology, and focus my blogging in that area. I shall try and merge with other other history~ humanities educators and build up a community that way. I will of course write about the tools but at least attempt to add a curriculum example as part of the tool review.

Do yourself a favour and read Sue’s definitive post on Twitter and Michelle’s invaluable post on blogging. Don’t forget to tag their posts in del.icio.us and share them via Google Reader and the like!

Somewhat off task for a teacher of history yet this article written by Dean Giustini in BMJ describes the evolution of the semantic web in a clear manner. Dean references Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his work on the semantic web. The article includes a brief yet useful glossary and a comparative table that lines Web 2.0 up against Web 3.0.

As you read the article replace the word ‘doctors’ with ‘educators’. Terms such as ‘medicine’ and ‘health-care’ can be replaced with terms such as ‘teaching’ and ‘classrooms’. 

The Footnote site is a rich source of primary source documents and images. The majority of the files are free although some do require a subscription. The collection has an American emphasis yet there is quite useful material for students of history in Australia.

I have found the documents from the Japanese photographic archives recovered after WWII to be particularly interesting since my father was a guest of the Japanese following his capture in Malaya by the Japanese army in January 1942. A number of the photographs in the Japanese category were taken in Singapore. A tip of the hat to Larry Ferlazzo for his post pointing to this site.