Connected…or at least, connecting!

The department supports its employees’ participation in social media online applications such as social networking sites, wikis, blogs, microblogs, video and audio sharing sites and message boards that allow people to easily publish, share and discuss content. The above quote is the opening statement in the new Social Media Policy released by my employer, the NSW Department of Education of Training (recently renamed the Department of Education... Read More

Flickr CC Attribution Helper(s)

Many bloggers want to create their own images as frequently as possible, with camera or software, to accompany their written text. However, often, a near-perfect image is legally available online. Ensuring the image is attributed correctly is very important, especially for educators encouraging students to source images appropriately. Thanks to quick responses to a tweet this morning, from @heyjudeonline and @deangroom, my attribution of Flickr... Read More

Best Australian Blogs 2011

The Sydney Writers’ Centre blogging competition involves an eclectic range of blogs, many of them new to me. These competitions are always a good way of finding new Australian bloggers in order to share the best of what is out there with a larger audience. It is very cool that 570 bloggers are being celebrated! There are four categories that will judged – business, words, commentary and lifestyle – with a People’s Choice... Read More

The 2010 Edublog Awards

The Edublog Award nominations are now open for 2010.  It is great fun to recognise the people who fill our readers with enjoyable, thought-provoking posts about learning and technology, education and ideas. What I really like about the awards is that they lead to the discovery of many new blogs and bloggers, tweeps and teachers. For example, check this list from last year out for some the most interesting people in the edublogosphere There is... Read More

10 IDEAS: blogED Prezi

This is a draft of my presentation, to be delivered next week at the Office of Schools conference, Engaging learners through innovative practice, about blogEd, the NSW DET blogging platform. Actually, the presentation is more about using blogs at school and in class, rather than anything specific about using this great tool for students and teachers. If you are keen to see more about the actual blogED platform check out this great video overview,... Read More

Thelonius: WordPress 3.0

WordPress has a video explaining the new features available in Thelonious, their WordPress 3.0 release, that may interest anyone considering an upgrade. I have installed the Organic Themes template Structure and am starting to understand what it can do. For example, the left sidebar disappears when one navigates away from the homepage and also, one can have featured rotating images which is very nice. Anyone else looking at upgrading to ‘Thelonius’... Read More

Miscellaneous Voices: Australian Blog Writing

A post by James Bradley, at his City of Tongues blog, led me to buy and read Miscellaneous Voices: Australian Blog Writing, edited by Karen Andrews.   Australian Blog Writing I would not usually buy an anthology of ‘online’ writing as it just seems too silly, losing all the hyperlinks and hyperconnectivity, but felt happy to invest in this project when I read: “This anthology is an experiment to see how this writing, these... Read More