But sometimes, like this chap, we can’t and we have to make the best of the here and now. It’s like a game we occasionally play where we sit outside a city cafe with our expresso, our backs to the road and pretend there’s a harbour behind us. A way to survive the city.
I see other people finding their own ways of creating a bit of personal space, on the trains and tubes. Mostly this seems to involve iPods, phones and newspapers.
I like this chap. I’m not really sure what he’s doing there, just sunbathing, maybe saving a parking space? Who knows? All I know is that there he sat, in the sun, relaxing and he made me smile.

The other thing I know is that if I hadn’t had my camera with me I would never have seen him. It was only because I was casting around for something to photograph that I saw him at all.
So there he is - a slice of city life. Did he make you smile too?

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I’m following my twitter friend Amy’s series on photography with great interest. Amy is always a great source of inspiration and I really love the way she mixes words and images. Her first couple of posts on the theme have made me think hard about why I’m not taking many photos these day and I think I’ve worked it out.

Mostly I have always photographed scenery, nature, flowers, things I think of as beautiful. I make an exception for Paris because though it is undoubtedly a city to me it is one of the most beautiful places in the world. However, the city I now live in does not look beautiful to me.

Now I’m prepared to believe that this is just me, that the beauty is there if only I could find it. So that what I’m going to try to do for the next few weeks. I’m going to take my camera everywhere with me and try to find some beauty here every day.

The trouble with this image is, I fear, I’m looking at the sky and the river, listening to the quiet, and filtering out the city. Generally not what I’m trying for but it’s a start.

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A classic combination of questions in action research. I’m going to use them to try to help me reflect on this blog. I got very bogged down in the 31 day Blog Commenting Challenge. It made me really think about what I’m doing with this blog and, well, why I write it at all. I’m going to use a reflection technique to help me sort it out. It’s one that I used a lot when I was at uni and which might just be helpful now.

What?

State the problem -

I’m only a very part time educator these days. When I do work in education it is with adults and it is very limited. Most blogs that I read or comment on are primary school teachers. After 18 months out of school I’ve lost my common ground with them. I thought I’d find adult education bloggers to be my peers and provide a new community. I haven’t. They are either not there or I can’t find them. It’s not like I can just use university bloggers either - their issues are as different to mine as the primary school teachers.

Mostly now what I do is write: blogs; articles; wiki pages. Some about education, some not. I like to write. I enjoy it.I love the whole gamut of writing from simple factual things about dates and times to long, in depth, opinion pieces. Mostly it’s the sort of writing that combines words and images. Heh - I wasn’t going to get less visual was I?

Put simply then, the problem is that what I read (blogs and twitter) and what I write about (and reflect on) here does not improve my practice. My practice has changed.

So What?

Why is this important? Well, it’s important because I still want to take actions and improve. It’s just that what I do has changed. I still want to use a blog to help me do that. I know it’s a useful tool and I want to use it.

Now What?

Now I get to re-invent my RSS reader and this blog. If you come with me on this journey you are very welcome. If this is where we part company, thanks for being around and goodbye.

I’m going to use these insight to plan radical changes to the blog over the next couple of weeks. It might get a bit bumpy along the way. My focus is going to shift to writing and reading in all it’s forms.

So here’s a few questions for anyone who’s still here after this announcement.

Who writes really well?

Who should I be reading?

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I’m a little behind with the 31 day challenge so this is my day 7 reflection.

Progress to date:

1. Audited my own commenting behaviour,
2. Commented on a new blog,
3. Installed a blog comment tracking service,
4. Asked a question in a comment,
5. Commented on a post I didn’t agree with
6. Responded to another commenter on a blog post.

Task 7 is to identify 3 things I’ve learned in the challenge so far. I’m to think about what I’ve learned about myself as a commenter, what I’ve learned about the act of commenting, and how I think my recent commenting activities have impacted me as commenter and a blogger. The idea is to quickly identify the significant learning. Familiar and not all together comfortable territory from Ultraversity days First the:

Reflection

I learned that I am a reluctant to post comments part because I worry about what people will think of me. I think I sometimes misjudge the tone of what I write and there can be cultural differences that make global blog commenting more difficult. Yet I have no problem commenting on lots of flickr photos, engaging in conversations about the images and their meanings, implications etc. I am more confident in that environment. I also discovered I’m quite likely to respond to a blog post from a contact on twitter rather than on their blog.

Recurring themes? Feeling safe, comfortable and ownership

About commenting in general I’ve learned that it’s harder than I thought. It’s given me an insight into why people might be reluctant to comment on my blogs. I read so many things and am interested and enjoy them but I still only respond to a small minority. It’s made me more aware of the need to get a response from the blogger, to be made welcome and comfortable even if I’m disagreeing with them. Hard! See the point above. I might just face the fact that avoiding conflict is a deep seated personality trait and stay in my comfort zone.

Recurring themes - difficulties, balance, conflict avoidance

Now for some quantitative data:

There seems to be a 10% responding to 90% reading balance now compared to 2% - 98% before the challenge.

Ok - that’s pleasing This is partly because I culled my feeds and removed a lot of stuff I skimmed and wasn’t relevant to my current needs and interests. Even so I think it’s progress. None of these comments were just “me too” posts and I tried to add something and engage with the poster and other commenters in all of them.

However - I still commented on 3 times as many flickr photos as blogs! These comments were almost never of the ‘lovely photo’ variety

Themes - progress, engagement, visual stimuli

Significant Learning

I avoid even minor conflict - even on blogs,
Visual stimulus is important to me
I can change my commenting habits with a small amount of effort

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Exterminate!

Originally uploaded by Cloth cat

So they bring these kits out when I don’t work in a school anymore Grrrrr!
If you do work in a school they’d make a great change from fairy cakes. It’d be a great way to get through to some year 5 or 6 reluctant readers!
Or how about a post SATS Year 6 Dr Who project? The Beeb have some lovely multimedia resources you could use as well. See the Dr Who site for those including an interactive trailer maker.
There are lots of creative commons Dr Who images in the Dr Who Flickr group you could use too.
Have fun

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It’s so often the way of it. I’m busy, or a should be , and something comes up that seems worthwhile on the blogs. There are soo many other things I should be doing right now! But I’ve been feeling annoyed with myself for hardly ever commenting on other people’s blogs of late.

The Bamboo Project Blog: 31 Day Comment Challenge Begins–Day One: Do a Comment Self Audit

How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?

I comment when someone new links to the Classroom Displays Blog. So on average that’s once or twice a week. Then I also very occasionally comment on contacts blogs. I’m trying to say a maximum of three times a week on average but I’m avoiding it because it sounds so bad!

Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?

I set up co.comments a while ago so I could track conversations more effectively and discovered that mostly I don’t comment! I feed my tracking into my RSS reader so I can see if there are new comments added, and so then in theory I can go back and join in the conversation. I almost never do.

Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?

The people who link to Classroom Displays Blog are often trainee teachers, or, occasionally teacher educators. It’s not joining a conversation because they’ve mostly written the blog as part of a course and often I am the only person commenting who’s not on their course. They almost never reply. I suspect they’ve completed that aspect of the course and have moved on.

Otherwise I mostly comment on the blogs of a very small group of contacts and friends and then only occasionally.

2. Now review Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments and ask yourself how well you’re doing in each of the different areas.Are there any specific areas where you think you need to do some work? What do you want to do to address these issues?

The first thing she says is that blog commenting is like walking into someone’s living room and joining the conversation. Is this supposed to reassure me?? I’m the one that finds herself squashed on the uncomfy sofa, smiles a lot says nothing and then spectacularly knocks her wine all over the new carpet!!! Blogs are way less daunting than that

I’m not good with metaphors at the best of times and I hate it when people make online things seem like an equivalent of offline ones . Sorry, slight rant

Anyway, on to the meat of the topic, which is

1. Stay on topic - ok I can do that, except occasionally when I manage to leave a comment on the wrong post by accident
2. Contribute new information to the discussion - I am really good at reading all through the comments and then deciding I’ve nothing new to contribute. It’s one of the main reasons I don’t comment! She doesn’t actually suggest a remedy for this….
3. Don’t comment for the sake of commenting - OK, saying ‘nice post’ will get you tagged as spam. I wouldn’t do that but then that’s another block on commenting.
4. Know when to comment and when to e-mail - personal stuff belongs in e-mail, got you. Someone needs to tell some new blog commentators that public stuff belongs on the blog not in my e-mail though.
5. Nobody likes a know-it-all - got to be respectful when pointing out errors, typos or dead links. Erm. Ok. Actually I’d just rather people did it quickly I can use all the help I can get with spell and fact checking. Maybe that’s just me and my dyslexia.
6. Make the tone of your message clear - I can do this. No sarcasm, in jokes etc. Use emoticons. I like smilies. OK.
7. Own your comment - OH yes! I’m a firm believer in that.
8. Be succinct - I like the bit about long comments being for college professors, she’s obviously read some of the people I read I usually blog it rather than comment on someone’s blog if I’ve got a lot to say. Does that count I wonder? Where do trackbacks fit into this challenge?
9. Cite sources and link to them - OK good practice. Would you like those Harvarded? LOL been spending too much time writing assignments recently (which, BTW, is what I should be doing now!)
10. Don’t post when angry, drunk, upset or emotional - Good advice, I’ll try to follow it.
11. Do not feed or tease the trolls - leaving aside my feelings about labelling people as trolls, (Did no one ever teach these people to separate the behaviour from the person? Or to even think that there’s a person behind that text you are reading who might not understand why you think they are a troll?), I do know that it’s not a good idea to set out to upset or tease people. See 10 above for what to do if something someone’s written made you angry.

So that’s it then.

Day 1 Conclusions

I need some strategies to deal with my feelings of having nothing to add to the conversation and I need to find some different blogs to comment on.

I’m all set for day two, if I can get my head round whatever it is you are supposed to do with your co.comments. Some sort of group thing… er???

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