Adventures in Teaching and Learning

Also thanks to Joe Dale, who let me know about the Isle of Wight Conference, 25 and 26 October. Unfortunately I won’t be able to go, but perhaps others will be able to make it! (Hopefully I’ll have some time to follow what is going on there on the web … we’ll see! Would like a little time to breath and a few minutes to mark at the moment!!)

That is the question that Terry Freedman is asking on his blog, and he is asking bloggers / writers to complete a survey which can be found here, with their views on the difference. So first of all, I thought I’d put up the link in case any of my readers would like to complete the survey to help Terry with his research.

Anyway, it’s an interesting question. I enjoy blogging, but some of the topics I blog about aren’t exactly what I would choose to write about if I were writing fiction, for example. Last November I took part in NaNoWriMo, and the resulting writing was quite different from my posts here. A lot of stream-of-consciousness, for example, which, although I do a little of it from time to time here, might not always get across the main point or link that I want to share.

Also, Samson’s book is completely different from his blogging style. I’m sure there are many other people who would be able to give such examples. After all, the purposes of a book, essay, short story or blog can be very different.

I suppose for me, the big question in relation to Terry’s article is, what is a writer? What makes a writer different from a blogger? Is a writer a novelist, an author, a journalist, a blogger? Are they interchangeable? Am I blogger on here, but a writer when I’m taking part in NaNoWriMo? If my blog were more literary, would I be a writer who blogs, or still a blogger who writes?

Well, it’s getting late now and I wouldn’t want to reflect too much this late at night! But I would look forward to any responses … (That could be another difference … a blogger should be able to get quicker feedback, presumably? If we have any readers? Whereas a writer might have to wait for longer and look for letters in the feedback pages of newspapers or hold their breath for reviews?)

It’s Activities Week. (Not sure about the use or not of an apostrophe there … I’ve been wondering about it all week. Feel free to let me know!) My “activity” is using ICT in the classroom, in particular using Voki and Animoto. We also wanted to use CrazyTalk.

I’m sure you know what’s coming next. Despite arranging before the weekend for these sites to be unblocked, and despite the best efforts of our ICT network manager to unblock them today, for the best part of the day no one could access either of these sites. Of course, the pupils are all able to access games which involve shooting or racing. We eventually managed to get a couple of pupils onto voki, and a handful onto animoto, but even then, in all but one case, animoto seemed to crash before they had their final video. At least the one pupil who managed to produce a video seemed pleased with the result!

Right. I’m off to upload the photos a couple of pupils took round the school and see if I can make a nice animoto from home instead, to wow them all with tomorrow!