Daily Archives: December 19, 2005

Every now and then it's good to bask in one own's reflected glory/progress/reflection and look back at the journey so far. I've only been blogging since mid year but you know what - a lot of the blogs I read (just check my blogroll) aren't much older and they produce stuff that gets my mind buzzing all the time. So this is post No.50 and it's just in time before Christmas so why do I continually refer to this blog and all it entails as the best professional development I've ever done in my teaching career?
I started this off in late July after stumbling onto Teach42 following a podcast link and was blown away by what I read and heard. I've always longed for a web presence, my own website but what would go on it and who would care? Steve's site provided that answer. It was cool, his reflections attracted comments galore and provided me with heaps of links to follow. It wasn't long before his blogroll led me to David Warlick and Will Richardson and I was hooked. Right at this time, my school were ordering and taking delivery of these interactive whiteboards, ActivBoards from Promethean and if anyone had asked me in July what the most exciting thing happening for me this year in my job, it would have been that. But blogging blew that right out of the water. In fact, I thought initially the two technologies were a match made in heaven. But although my day job involved a steep learning curve grappling with flipcharts and configuring USB ports and e-teaching and teachers' laptops, my time away in the evening drew me into the blogosphere where I refined my Bloglines accounts, I read more, I started to leave a comment on other people's blogs and gradually posted more content to my new Blogger account. Blogger was a great place to learn the ropes but it didn't have what I saw more and more on other people's blogs - categories. I somehow stumbled upon edublogs and opened my account there and have never been happier. I shifted all my posts over to their new home and only had to leave one comment behind. So over five months my humble little blog has grown a lot - here are my 50th anniversary highlights.

1. Blogging my first T&D session - "The Magic of RSS" I saw Steve Dembo do this really well and my first go was a bit of poor cloned imitation.

2. A quality reflective post on my team's achievements in our ActivBoard training day where I realised that if you forge forward with enthusiasm, others will follow.

3. My first comment from outside Australian borders from the legend himself, Will Richardson. It is a real confidence booster to get comments and when it comes from someone who you read and respect, the connectiveness really makes sense. Apologies to Jo McLeay and James Matthew - I've appreciated your regular feedback. I probably sound a bit starstruck with this highlight.

4. Being a featured blog here at edublogs - still on the front page next to the edublogger award nominated Smelly Knowledge after James said that we'd be featured for about a fortnight (two months ago!) Bit like those pictures you see of fans in photos next to their favourite celebs!

5. Brightening up the blog with images. Now if you see my son Joshua here, you can be sure he inherited his good looks from his mother, not me!

6. Participating in 2 x EdTech Talk Brainstorms. Still waiting to download the second one, 15b = come on, Jeff.

7. Anytime this blog has been mentioned on another! Blogrolls, Stephen Downes, Weblogg-ed, and Xplanazine.

So, the bit of self indulgence is over - I return you to normal blogging matters.