Back from holidays

OK, so I've actually been back for over a week and I've neglected my blog! Ah, terrible! Well, of course, I was back at work the next day. I was greeted by a couple of hundred emails - loads of spam and a fair bit of legitimate stuff. I had a couple of tasks to complete in the week which I caught up with fairly quickly which was a relief. Spent 4 days with my head down, in a half empty office as my colleague, Anne, was on hols. Then I took Friday off as I suddenly realised I had more holidays to take and made an early start on using them up! Spent some fun time with Jen (my beautiful daughter who is 9 going on 19!), including a movie marathon - Harry Potter and Simpsons at the cinema, then Lord of the Rings 2 on DVD at home. Finally crashed out around 1.30pm! And then had a pretty good weekend.

The holiday? Well, that was brilliant. We all had a good rest as well as enjoying the local area, seeing some sites, shopping at markets, etc. Will try and give a more detailed report when I get the photos off the digital camera. Sitting in front of the home computer has not been my top priority when we've had good weather and I sit in front of the computer all day at work!

A couple of projects coming up - possibly starting a new Guide Unit of my own, and being a sub-camp leader at next year's County Camp. I think I may be busy.

Short term - we're looking forward to seeing our friends from Lancaster, PA. Tom and Marty Brown were like my adopted parents when I went to summer camp back in 1988, and we've kept in touch ever since. It will be good to do some catching up in person instead of via email.

Back to work now, but hope to post again soon!

Intute : Environment - promotion needed

On a professional note I have launched the new Environment section of Intute and have started to send the usual emails. I'm hoping for increased usage but also some comments on whether we are on the right track. I am busily looking for new resources to put into the section and tidying up the resources we have under the new headings. Our stats aren't likely to go up much in the summer but I'm hoping for an increase next term. We'll see how it goes!

Hols coming up

Yes, we are counting the days until we go to France. We'll be staying at a gite which is in the grounds of our friends new abode, a lovely water mill - Moulin de Benin. Dad is coming with us to carry on with his recovery from his triple bypass and Ali will hopefully be able to relax after her redundancy. The kids will just be so happy to have finished school and get some sun - the pool looks very inviting to all of us!
More to report on return!

Licensed to Camp 2007

Before Christmas I decided that I was going to get try for my Camp License (a Guide Leader needs this to be able to take a group of Guides on camp anywhere in this country). Got the support of Alyson (my Unit Guider), Ali (partner and soon-to-be caterer for camp), Jen and Alisha (my girls, now joined Guides), my Dad (before his heart surgery, actually this was before we knew he was poorly), etc.
Gradually a plan started to come together and we decided to camp at Whiteley Woods in Sheffield (well before any threat of floods). We picked a date at the end of June and I made the booking. Then, it all snowballed!
Nearly all the Guides wanted to come and I was only allowed to bring 24, so a few were disappointed. Alyson, Ali and the other Guiders/Unit Helpers got behind me with the planning. And the dreaded file started to come about - its like getting an NVQ in terms of providing evidence for everything, or being OFSTED inspected! I have a large, blue, lever arch file bulging with "stuff" about camp.
One day I jokingly said "after all this I'll be Licensed to Camp"! This became the theme for the camp - all the Guides would be agents-in-training, we would do adventurous activities like archery, canoeing, adventure course, etc. and we would have a bomb-making session - bath bombs of course!

Time went really quickly and of course I got very hassled as we got closer to camp, but everyone kept saying it would be worth it and to keep going. Then the rain started to come down, heavily, in June. Yikes, I thought June would be a good time to camp. Then parents start phoning me to ask if we were still going to camp - in Sheffield. I explained that we were miles away from the floods as seen on TV, nowhere near the rivers Don, Sheaf or Rother, and that we would put the safety of the kids first. We had an emergency meeting of leaders and decided that we could go ahead but be ready to change plans at short notice, be flexible and have lots of crafts ready in case we had to shelter a lot.
So, Friday 29 June came and it was a bit drizzly as we packed up the van. We arrived at Whiteley Woods around noon, started unpacking the van and realised we were putting up tents in glorious sunshine. With great optimism and a break for lunch, we got camp set up and the Guides arrived ready for a good weekend - never mind what the weather did!
We had a campfire on Friday evening and eventually got to sleep despite a bunch of Brazilian students having a party nearby. Yes, OK it started raining in the night and looked as though Saturday wasn't going to be dry at all, but we were determined to stay cheerful. We had to keep changing plans all day and the Guides were very patient. Why did we worry about what they were going to do when it rained? They brought a beachball and played out in the rain! Archery was off, but canoeing was on. The Adventure Course was off, but the blindfold string walk was on. Bath bombs were off, but badge making was on. And the caterers kept us really well fed all weekend - nice one Ali-G!

My assessor came lunchtime Saturday and was very pleased with everything, no problem! PS. She gave me a brilliant report and I'm nearly ready to hand over my file. I'll let you know when I get my badge and certificate.
We had fun sorting out our BBQs on Saturday night and smoked out the camping barn. The indoor campfire was great fun and showed how much our Guides like the traditions of Guiding that include making up stunts and singing daft songs. And yes, I took them on a Lion Hunt!

It really rained on Saturday night and well into Sunday morning - I didn't sleep much thinking that we were going to have rivers through our tents and have to send the girls home early. It always sounds worse on the side of the tent and we survived the night. Unfortunately, the midnight feast in the next tent didn't survive Bethany's stomach, so we had some cleaning up to do. Note to self - next camp parents meeting, tell this story and ask parents not to send "treats" to camp with their daughters!
It was sunny again on Sunday and we got most of the tents home dry. A few tired leaders and some differences of opinion caused some tension amongst the adults, but the girls enjoyed their last day and we just about got cleared up as parents were arriving. Thanks to those who arrived early and helped.
Alisha made her promise at the closing ceremony - Ahh, she's growing up! Loads of hugs all around as the Guides gradually left. Then it decided to rain again and we had to bring the store tent home wet. Thanks to Dore Guides for the loan of tents - they're all dry and returned now. Thanks to Pennine Division for loan of tents and other equipment. Thanks to Shirley at Whiteley Woods for being so supportive - shame she's moving on soon, we'll miss her. Thanks to my fellow Guiders for their hard work. Thanks to the Guides for being patient, cheerful, helpful and glad you had fun.
Roll on next camp! OK, after a break of a year or so!!!

Moving on ........

So, I went on the course, used my new blog to report back and now this blog is just sitting here! As some friends (also librarians) have started blogs to keep in touch with friends and family, maybe I'll do the same. I'll get a few more posts in and then send the URL to some folks to see what they think. What do you think?!!!

Paul found this

If you have a couple of minutes to watch this it helps to put Web 2.0 into context.

Step 2 - The Workshop

So, "Blogs, Wikis and Social Networking" is a workshop put on by Netskills, and this one I attended was held at Tapton Hall, University of Sheffield (good facilities including free parking, good food, shame about the fire alarm going off in the middle of lunch!). On the basis of this course I would recommend Netskills training - excellent trainer, good content, very useful booklet, and not too long a day.

Sessions :

1. Intro to the workshop
2. Introducing the blogosphere
3. Exploring the blogosphere
4. Advanced blogging and introducing wikis
5. Practical work with blogs and wikis
6. Social software : networking and sharing
7. Social networking in action

Session 1 - Intro to the workshop

Using a combination of PowerPoint slides and live Internet sites the workshop was introduced. there was going to be some presentation from the trainer and plenty of opportunities to test out the technology talked about; some group work as well. The workbook is self explanatory and includes useful information about the technology, gives lots of sites to look at and some description of how Internet users are making use of the tools.

Session 2 - Introducing the blogosphere

Some definitions were given including Web 2.0, social networking, "blawg", "Plog", "Blogopotamus". The funnies I will leave you to explore (http://www.samizdata.net/blog/glossary.html) but the discussion on the way that Web 2.0 is providing access to users having their own impact on content was interesting. This is being discussed in various Intute groups, so this is a good time to find out more and consider how we can make use of it. We even need to try and anticipate what Web 3.0 might look like. See the bookmarks for examples of blogs - http://www.netskills.ac.uk/resources/blog/bookmarks.html

Some tools for creating blogs were introduced - we already know about WordPress as we use it in Intute, I am using Blogger here, and there are others. There is a comparison chart if you are interested in the different tools - some features were noted such as subject content, purpose, and design.

Session 3 - Exploring the blogosphere

This is where we got the opportunity to explore existing blogs such as Pepys Diary, and other educational blogs; Guardian Comment, and other media blogs; corporate blogging such as http://www.butlersheetmetal.com/tinbasherblog/; blogging activism such as http://conservativehome.blogs.com/; and tools for searching blogs such as Technorati. Note : the Intute : Social Sciences blog regularly hits the top of the Technorati list because other people link to it and use it.

Session 4 - Advanced blogging and introducing wikis

Further features of blogs were introduced including multimedia blogging, the use of mobile phone technology, sidebars, and tools to publicise your blog or get others to link to your blog. Then we moved on to Wikis, their use and purpose. Although in SET we have decided not to included many Wiki entries because we cannot guarantee the authority of the information, it is useful to know about the format of web tool and to use it with discretion in researching a topic.

Session 5 - Practical work with blogs and wikis

This is where my blog started as we created our first entries using Blogger. Its quite a nice tool to use for blogging and has quite a few features for customising or tailoring to a style you like. The features and settings are straightforward. Comments can be added by users. The ability to enhance your blog was explored such as Tagboards, Templates, Sideblogs, and Counters. I ran out of time but the workbook includes information for multimedia blogging and adding webfeeds, a couple of things I would like to explore for the SET blog.

Wikipedia was the main wiki we looked at but if you use the Netskills bookmarks (and library bookmarks) you can explore many others.

Hidden at the end of this section in the workbook is an appendix called "publicising your blog" which I hope to follow up on soon.

Session 6 - Social software : networking and sharing

This session introduced some concepts which were new to me such as "mashups", but more talk about Web 2.0 and sites such as YouTube, Myspace and Facebook were more familiar despite not using them at work. We need to keep an eye on these developments even when we can't find an actual use for them in Intute : SET. Many of our users will be very familiar with these social networking tools and we may want to consider whether we need to incorporate elements in order to keep the interest of students.

Session 7 - Social networking in action

As the day was drawing to a close we had a short amount of time to look at some of the sites identified under this heading, eg. Frappr (friend mapper), Furl (social bookmarking), and LibraryThing (catalogue your own books). The Mashups section has links to sites which use a number of tools in one, eg. Google Maps Mania, which uses blog, map and multimedia technologies together.

We ended with a group case study session which was interesting but not that relevant to Intute.

Don't forget the 2 bookmark lists if you want to look at loads of examples of sites and tools. I have a few action points to follow up on, eg. blogs to catalogue for Geography/Environment, blog tools to try and make use of for the SET blog, and new technologies to keep an eye on in case we can make use of them somewhere in Intute. Please drop me a line if you'd like to discuss any of this - you know how to get hold of my by email or Messenger, or the good old telephone.

Step 1 - Feedback from Blogs workshop

I just have a few minutes before I head off for the afternoon, but I do intend to write some notes on how the workshop went. In the meantime here are 2 lists of bookmarks which we used during the practical sessions and I will refer to some of those which I found particularly interesting or useful.

Bookmarks - academic, information, Web 2.0 related
Library bookmarks - similar but more related to the Library World

Of course, just the fact that I have started this Blog is some proof that I have been on the course, otherwise I don't know where I would find the time - one of the biggest issues to come out of the training - you need to put quite a lot of time into keeping your blog busy!

So, more to come - keep watching!

It all started at "Blogs, Wikis and Social Networking Workshop"

Having worked at Intute for almost a year, its time for some staff development. This workshop seemed to fit the bill as SET are pushing ahead with the Blog. We need more inspiration and we are hoping for some from today. I'll let you know!