Gaza

Oh dear, this latest development in Gaza is distressing. Those poor people!!! It has got through my apathetic crust. Even went on a demonstration just before New Year. One hopes - probably futilely - that maybe Barack Obama might still be open to persuasion not to blindly back the Israeli war machine and anyway there's not really much one can do. I'm not a one to get off my backside usually in my comparatively comfortable middle-of-the-road middle-age. Got to thinking this morning that there must be demonstrations against the war going on in Israel. Had a quick google. Yip. Check this out. Also, Coalition of women; News report, Gush Shalom, Yesh Gvul ("which arose in response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, as growing numbers of soldiers grasped that the campaign, with its bloodshed and havoc, was an act of naked and futile aggression in which they wanted no part".) Ah well, that's enough. Couldn't fit this on my facebook one-liners which I have discovered are more my style.

Books Books Books

The mechanism of reading can be a pleasure in itself. I read a lot of crap for escapism. I think most of us can recognise and enjoy brilliance but the crap one indulges in is very individual. The details of my crapulous penchants are not something I want to publicise. Occasionally, however, I come across books that I'd like to remember and am not embarrassed to admit to, so that's what this post is for. I think I'll just keep editing it as an aide-memoire. So here goes.

Dan Fesperman, Lie in the Dark - novel set in Sarajevo - got me thinking.
Maira Kalman: The Principles of Uncertainty

Web 2 in Education

This was just a test post for an article which can be seen here in issue 4 of magazine I edit.

Web 2.0 has enabled communication and interaction to be coalesced into social networking tools which provide a significant community or social aspect to the web. Social software includes a range of web-based programs allowing users to interact and share data with other users. For example, social sites like MySpace and Facebook and media sites like Flickr and YouTube. In an education environment, tools such as blogs, wikis and social bookmarking allow the user to create online communities with common interests and give everyone an interactive opportunity to have a ‘voice’. This is the first of a series of articles on Web 2.0 tools and their potential application in education. The focus will be on blogs.

It is important to consider copyright when working in an open environment. One way of obtaining material is to find work which uses a Creative Commons licence. These licences offer a variety of levels of copyright (some rights reserved). You can, for example, use an image like the one from Flickr at the left which is published under the creative commons licence by "Laughing Squid". When you click on 'some rights reserved' you go to a Creative commons page which reflects the rights Laughing Squid wants to retain. In this case you are free to copy, distribute, display and perform the work under these conditions: attribution, non-commercial use and no derivative works. You can see more of Laughing Squid's work at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/

BLOGS

A blog is formed with a list of entries like a personal diary or journal posted on the web. There are numerous blogsites such as www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com. Depending on the type of blog you have setup, you would write commentary or news on a particular subject, record personal events, research, work related travel, politics, links to web sites of interest, or use it as a tool to engage with students. Each blog entry can be a combination of text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to the topic. Your blog can be accessible to the public or restricted to invited readers or contributors of your choice. Readers can post comments on your page about your entries, (though you can delete any comments you don't like), link to it or email you. This form of interactivity between the reader and the author of the blog is an important part of many blogs making blogs an ideal collaborative space for interaction between students. Academics may also use the blog to communicate with their students or colleagues. Blogs are informal and easily accessed without the need for special software or training. They can build the profile of the author, showcasing them within an institution as having talent and expertise to engage and inform an audience, develop relationships and present a human face for the organization.

Communication online

Testing out the plethora of available tools is time-consuming. It can be fun or frustrating... and this is really just a test to see whether or not blogger.com behaves the same way as a non-public free site we're currently testing does.

And no it doesn't! It kept the text - what a good facility! The text I lost in that environment by accidentally hitting the back button from the blog we're testing was much more interesting than this one! Sod's law.

ACC and all that

National Radio, Monday 31 July, first up, a great interview with Melanie Trevethick, who has multiple sclerosis and is challenging the legalities of Ministry of Health funding. FAR OUT!!! Someone's actually doing what I've been too slack to do any more than talk about! There is a website related to this challenge - Equity for illness. You can sign the petition, email MPs and generally find out about/support the cause.

Here in New Zealand we have two streams of health funding each governed by different entities:

• the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) for those injured in an accident
• the Ministry of Health for those who develop an illness.

While both deal with New Zealanders with similar levels of need, there is a vast difference between the support (especially financial) you will receive if your need arises through an injury rather than through illness. It is a situation which frequently sends the blood-pressure soaring.

A few years ago, I was randomly selected to attend a seminar run by ACC. They were paying $50 a session and I thought I should go - maybe an opportunity to change things. Eventually I blew my top... I think it was the suggestion that a person suffering from a condition (I forget what) shouldn't be eligible because they might have a genetic predisposition to it. (Shades of Mengele or what?) The lovely young guy who took the seminar said he agreed it wasn't fair, citing the case of his girlfriend's mother who'd struggled in to work during the final stages of cancer because she couldn't afford not to - but she'd have been on 80% of her pay if she'd had an accident rather than a terminal disease.

Enough about my blood pressure. I was SO impressed by Melanie's calm and rational tone during the interview. Here's hoping it was effective.