The Jaiku server is down. Again. I like Jaiku. It gathers in updates from a variety of feeds and displays them in the Jaiku badge. It acts like a “What’s new?” for my main site, etc. It has not been quite the same since it was purchased by Google.

Friday saw my last workshop for this current excursion up to Singapore. It has been a busy week with workshops and presentations on each of the five days. The last workshop which was conducted in the School of Computer Engineering multimedia lab #3 at NTU covered blogs, wikis and podcasts. The tools we explored included WordPress, PBWiki, Audacity and Propaganda.

It was a hectic workshop as problems with WordPress slowed us down during the first half of the day. Why is the WordPress server so slow I ask? The PBWiki and podcast publishing functioned at lightning speeds given the 100mbps broadband connection in the lab. WordPress was sluggish. Pathetically slow. I switched across to Blogger at one point and its server was fast. No more WordPress workshops for me in future.

Participants from Nanyang Technological University, the National Institute of Education, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore Polytechnic and Marsiling Secondary School attended the workshop. It was an eclectic group of participants.

During the course of the week I had two loyal participants that attended nearly all my workshops at NTU this week… Ms Teo Juin Ee, a teaching fellow of the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Academic Group at the National Institute of Education attended three of my sessions. As well, Mr Chang Boon Hai, Chief Information Officer at Singapore Polytechnic and Director of the Department of Computer & Information Systems at Singapore Polytechnic attended four of my sessions during the week. I feel honoured and also proud to share with educators of the calibre of Juin Ee and Boon Hai.

Mr Chang Boon Hai and myself

Ms Teo Juin Ee and myself

 The workshop moved along gradually during the day as I juggled with the temperamental WordPress server and a stomach-ache caused by a mix of Yakult and a roti-prata with curry combination. Please avoid the combination at all costs. It was as if I had a miniature volcanic experiment within my stomach. I am sure the rumblings within set off some seismic equipment within the Asia-Pacific region.

[You may note I am becoming reluctant to utilise the term Web 2.0. I think its currency is about to expire. I prefer to utilise the terminology read-write web. It seems to be a more appropriate descriptor. There is already a Classroom 3.0 Ning group. I just joined. Goodness gracious me. ]

Last Thursday afternoon, after taking a taxi ride from the Singapore Airlines Training Centre to Bukit Timah Road, Singapore, I conducted a presentation and workshop at the Hwa Chong Institution in Singapore. The Hwa Chong Institution is a centre of learning excellence that evolved from a merger between the prestigious Chinese High School and the equally famous Hwa Chong Junior College. I felt quite honoured to receive an invitation from Jasmine Tey to conduct the workshop. We had met following my presentation at Nanyang Technological University last February.

Jasmine Tey, centre, and some of her colleagues following the workshop

I covered such points as the evolution of the read~write web and the fact that the Internet allows for participation. We are no longer consumers but producers. We are no longer simply passengers along for the ride on the Internet. We are now guides and even drivers.

During the workshop…

We had a hands-on session with WordPress and we looked at a few other tools such as Twitter and del.icio.us. As I have blogged elsewhere, I am not too impressed with some of the new design aspects of the WordPress look and feel, the slow WordPress host server and the fact that javascript is no longer welcome.

A teacher and his students preparing for an event

Following the workshop I took the opportunity to photograph some of the activities around the Institution. It is an amazing campus. Inspiring in fact. Jasmine and the team at Hwa Chong Institution took great care of me during the afternoon. They were all excellent hosts and I felt most welcome. It was a most valuable experience to visit and present at the Institution.

Students hard at work in their own time following school

Practising for a comedy sketch

Honour rolls and the school vision statement

This week I have been based at Nanyang Technological University. I arrived last Sunday via Singapore Airlines on the new Airbus A380. Amazing aircraft. It is school vacation time back in Australia so here I am in Singapore, my second home.

First up on Monday I gave a presentation to a group of educators from across the island on current trends regarding web based technologies as well as illustrating some of the possibilities relating to the application of mashups and data scraping to your RSS feeds.

Flipping between a Mac and PC

The audience begins to arrive

Lecture theatre 12 is a great venue, not too big, not too small

Nice smiling faces

On Tuesday I gave a reasonably straightforward workshop on some of the tools that one can use to manage their news feeds and bookmarks. We looked at readers, del.icio.us, blogger, wordpress and twitter. During the course of the workshops I posted micro-blogs to the ‘universe’ on Twitter to demonstrate aspects of its possibilties and the universe responded with an engaging shower of meteororic responses from Sue Wyatt, Siva, Sarah, Russel, Chris, Alec, Keamac, Helen and Jane.

I have mixed feelings about the WordPress upgrade to 2.5. There are some interface improvements. Other interface let-downs. I am  most unimpressed that it will not allow javascript in your widgets. Bad move WordPress. I just might switch blogging engines again later this year. I will certainly never use WordPress as the basis for my workshop. I will revert to Blogger. The WordPress server was slow, dead slow actually on Thursday and again on the Friday with frequent time-outs.

CED Traing Room, there is Dr Jacob Gan in the foreground

Wednesday was quite an exciting workshop. We looked at RSS feeds in a little more detail. The types of tools we explored included Yahoo! Pipes, Dapper and AideRSS. We also performed an autopsy on Google Reader to see how we could derive greater benefit from the tool. We performed CPR on Google Reader after we stitched it back up and you will be relieved to learn it performed to our expectations.

It was quite an interesting day and admittedly I was a little apprehensive as some of the technologies are a little quirky. Everything went quite well. It is quite neat when you can create an RSS feed from a site where none previusly existed. We “collected” data from a number of sites that did not possess feeds, established the feeds and then merged them into a single feed. In that manner, when the sites were updated we were informed via our readers, such as Google Reader.

More happy participants… Wednesday’s workshop was quite fun actually

Yesterday I gave a workshop at the Singapore Airlines Training Centre, the home of the world famous Singapore Girl where the newly recruited attendants are trained. During the afternoon I gave a workshop at the Hwa Chong Institution. Today I have an introductory workshop on what I call the core tools of the read~write web. I will post on those tomorrow.

Well, that was a surprise. I whipped across to Twitter not long ago and I observed a sequence of messages between Sue Tapp, Jess McCulloch and Sue Wyatt regarding a Flash Meeting. I signed up and jumped on board. There were eight teachers in the meeting at one stage… Sue Tapp, Jess McCulloch, Sue Wyatt, Sarah Stewart, NRWatkins, Simon Brown, Fiona and myself.

It was the first time many of us had used Flash Meeting. I quite enjoyed the spontaneity of it all. These asynchronous tools require a little self discipline and the evolution of protocols. A bit like CB-radio. “10-4 Good Buddy” and all that.

We chatted about potential uses and planned for regular meetings as a forum for Australian and New Zealand educators interested in regional issues down here, underneath the planet. We all reside down here, downunder, and like Atlas we prop up the rest of the edublogosphere with our solid foundations and matter of fact approach to education and the classroom. Hey! Hey! Thanks for setting it up Sue! Legend.