Profile pics

I think I've worked out how to add pics to our profiles too. It seems you have to have them hosted somewhere on the net first. In a convenient place such as here on your blog. This is a test. I'm uploading the pic into this blog post first, then I hope to be able to find the URL for it, which can be copied and pasted to the profile page. I read how to do it here. Profile pics have to be less than 50k, so I've had to shrink it first.

Unfortunately this system does mean it is here twice, at least until I write enough posts to make this one disappear into the archives!

Hope it works...

Pictures

I've just realised that I don't need picasa or hello to upload photos here. The little picture icon in the tool bar of the "compose" box lets you upload them without needing another program. I haven't worked out if it's possible to do captions yet, but I can live without them if it means I don't need another program. I like the "less is more" philosophy...

So this is a photo of the Bosphorus in Istanbul. From a distance, Istanbul is such a pretty place...

Still working on how to get a profile pic up.

Chat room

There is a chat room feature on our communications page of the OLT site that we haven't yet looked at. As I didn't manage to come into uni today for the session, I thought maybe I'd encourage people to use the chat rooms while they were in there, so if any of us can't get into uni on a friday, but can get to a computer with internet, then we can at least connect that way.
What do you think?

Blog Back in Black

It was somewhat predictable. Since my last post, all about me fiddling about with html, my blog has been nothing but a screen of block gobbledegook on a white background. That's what I get for fiddling with the template. It seems that at somepoint, possibly while using the faulty mouse my parents seem reluctant to replace, I managed to delete about half the code. I have now fixed the problem, and, as you can see, the blog is back better than ever. I have added all our blogs in links in the side bar, as well as other links I thought we should probably have as much access to as possible.
I have also used my newfound html skills to post pretty ads on eBay! Although I suppose I should also be using them to do work related things... right?

HTML skill sharing?

I don't actually have any skills at all in HTML to share, but I've been working on it. Mostly I'm working by finding something somewhere else I like, and copying it and pasting it. The results of my discoveries so far are pretty much all the side bar of this page. I've only really fiddled with font colours and links. I see Debra has added a 'toolbox' to the resources section of our CLN618 OLT site, but I haven't yet had a chance to look at it. I have, however, found this site , which includes a HTML tutorial, which has helped a little.

Distance Education

Listening to the live session with Alaska got me thinking about distance education, and the reasons I was first attracted to this technology course. Firstly, I did an undergrad subject a few years ago (1998 perhaps) called "technology in Education" which turned out to be really easy credit for anyone computer literate to start with.
That is NOT why I chose this course...
It was also interesting to think about the teaching possibilities of the internet and computers (which, of course, were a lot fewer 8 years ago)

I also did a seminar session on CALL a few years ago in Germany - quite by accident. I was invited to a professional development weekend for a job I hadn't been offered yet (and ended up not being offered, after they'd paid for my weekend away!) and one of the sessions was from the DOS of a different school that was working on CALL. From what I remember they mainly used chat windows and prepared exercises and tasks (and webquests, maybe?) and had regular phone conversations as well, either conferenced or just with the teacher. She described some of the interaction was entirely in the form of a role play: eg. They would arrange the time to call, and the student would call, and the teacher would pretend to be a pizza place. The student could then order a pizza and they could hangup without dropping their roles. Then they could discuss the conversation in an online chat straight after. The idea of sitting in front of a computer all day teaching was something I somehow found appealing - I even made inquiries about job vacancies, but there weren't any unfortunately!

Distance education is something that interests me in general. I've had my own experience of it - twice now, actually, although they were very different experiences. Firstly, I spent my grade 7 year living on a boat in the south pacific, so spent most of the year "attending" the Queensland School of Distance Education. As this was 1991 there was no internet. And as we were sailing, we were often lucky to even get post. I remember recieving a large box of booklets about once every 2 months, acompanied by a letter from my teacher, whose name I barely knew. Essentially, my mother taught us (my younger brothers were in the same boat...er... I mean doing the same thing). I don't remember if we had much in the way of deadlines for completing units or anything, but I do remember that I never did finish all the work. That means I never actually finished Primary school... hmm... Don't tell anyone! Someone might notice and make me go back and do it...

Welcome

I've started this blog as part of a university course called "Technology in Language Learning". We need to have blogspot blogs for the class so that we can all write lots of lovely comments. As I already have a pretty extensive blog here, which details my travelling experiences of the past year or so, and my recent experiences living in Istanbul.
This blog will, I think, primarily be about my learning experience in my current Masters of Education (TESOL) that I'm doing at QUT in Brisbane. Everything else can stay on my travel blog!