Jonesieblog

K12 Online is an online conference “for educators around the world interested in the use of web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice”.

The conference consists of a series of presentations - videos, slideshows, audio etc, and the call for proposals for this year’s event has just been posted.

It would be great to have a strong Scottish representation, so go ahead and send in a proposal - I’m full of good intentions but only time will tell whether or not I actually put something together.

More details can be found on Darren Kuropatwa’s Blog

Stumble it!

This season I’m crewing for John Hookway in his RS400 dinghy. This is what we might look like on a good day:

I only started sailing last year, so I have a lot to learn! I’ll try to share some of the thing I pick up along the way.

The first thing that has become painfully apparent to me is that you need to be fit - in particular to have good core strength, as you spend a lot of time hiking:

Photo by dinghyman

So far, it seems that my main tasks are:

• Acting as ballast - moving around to keep the boat level in the water.
• Tacking and jibing
• Keeping the jib trimmed correctly
• Hoisting and dropping the spinnaker, and flying it when it’s up
• Adjusting the outhaul - tight for upwind travel and slack for reaches.
• Keeping an eye open for stuff that the helm might have missed.

I’m not particularly good at any of these yet, but at least I’ve got some things to work on!  John is a patient teacher, and we will be winning by the time the Summer Series gets going

Stumble it!

I’ve been working this afternoon on the code behind the ScotEduBlogs site, to speed up performance. Hopefully the blogs page should come up much more quickly now. I also reinstated the sponsors’ logos that I accidentally wiped a week or so ago!

To be honest, I am partly writing this post to check that the feed updating daemon is still working properly

Stumble it!

Since moving ScotEduBlogs to its new server, I’ve changed how the graphs are generated on the statistics page.  I’m now using Open Flash Chart, and have taken the opportunity to add a few more graphs - posts per month, posts by day-of-the-week and total posts for each authority.  East Lothian seems to be the most prolific by far.

Stumble it!

Two things brought this post into being - a conversation with my son, and a mandolin lesson.

The conversation with my son began with his declaration that he really likes art. I expressed my delight, especially since he had been much less enthusiastic at the start of the year. Through talking to him it became apparent to me that the change of heart is largely attributable to his teacher, Sheila Calder. My son used to be very anxious about getting art work “right”, but she has really helped him to relax and enjoy the process. My son said “You know how some teachers say ‘this is the way you have to do it’? Mrs Calder says that one of the things she likes about art is that it can be any way you want it to be.”

Thank you Sheila

My mandolin teacher is Andrew Brown. Tonight’s lesson was the first for over a month, as we have been away and prior to that my son had been pinching my lessons to do guitar with Andrew.

Andrew is hugely enthusiastic about music, and his enthusiasm is highly infectious. Before the lesson began I was considering letting my son take the lesson again, because I was feeling rather flat about my progress on the mandolin. By the end of the lesson I was feeling both positive about how much I have learned and fired up about the next steps.

Thank you Andrew

Stumble it!