My day in dot points:

• Started cautiously at my local coordinators' cluster meeting where my frustration at the lack of direction, domination by loudest voices and general lack of commonality has been brewing for the best part of the year. Thankfully, thanks to a visit and offer of support from one of our district's Learning Band Coordinators, some direction was established and a suggestion that coordinators across the cluster provide free training for all schools was squashed. It wouldn't have fitted my still to be finalised PD model for our staff. But I am sick of hearing about standardised testing as being the way of the future and how progressive and forward thinking schools who are into data crunching are supposed to be. (Here's the worrying bit - my son's school is one of the keenest at pushing this particular barrow!)
• My comments woes are now fixed thanks to the diligent efforts of the wonderful James Farmer. For at least three days, comments were closed on my site but trackbacks and pingbacks were getting through. (Someone at Xplanazine reads my stuff!) James thought it was my theme initially but it turned out to be the gatekeeper - I think James has closed the loophole now as it probably affected other blogs - it's just that I'm a whinger. Thanks also to Doug Johnson, Al Upton and Artichoke who noticed my plight and e-mailed their comments to me. Thank you - I took the liberty of posting your comments myself. And yet another big plug for edublogs, James isn't in this for the praise but this is an awesome service for the whole edublogging community. If you agree and still can't believe it is still blocked by the filters in Australia, then head  on over to nonscholae.org where James' efforts are again leading the way.
• One of the busiest starts to the year so far - I'm only in the classroom half time but so far we have started Bike Ed., holding our parent acquaintance night where I am going to try and be a bit more transparent and next week we're off on camp in the Adelaide Hills at Arbury Park. Add to that planning for the start of the PBL program - I hope I find time to blog.
• Finally, a couple of noteworthy edubloggers are seeking greener pastures. Will Richardson has announced his plunge into the uncharted waters of professional blogging and it will be very interesting to see where that takes him. I love reading his blog and draw lots of inspiration from all of the tangential offerings he posts constantly. His comment on one of my early posts really got me stoked about the power of the Read/Write web, to use his words. So, good luck, Will - maybe he's a chance to be a big drawcard at the CEGSA conference in July. I'd be in the front row for sure.
  And Leigh Blackall is headed off to Kiwiland where he has a new job at Otago Polytechnic in Dunedin. I'm sure that he won't mind a consistent wage for a change and hope that he can still keep his finger on the pulse of the Australian edtech scene. I say Leigh is one of the best edubloggers going and if you have never read his work, it's a must-add for your Bloglines. Just watch the sheep and underarm cricket jokes, Leigh!

Now back to the real work that awaits me.