Week 2 thoughts

Week 2 is over and I have only submitted 1/3rd of the assignments - the blog link. And I managed that at the beginning of the week. Oh dear.

However, I have managed to track down other participants' blogs and signed myself up to follow them - and very interesting they are too. It was quite easy to find them thanks to the ELSS tag (I see... so that's how tags work). Memo to self, check I've tagged my blog appropriately.

Otherwise, I've been creaking my way through the VLE to find comments and posts, but all that seems to have moved out onto the blogs.

Not surprisingly, as the blog interface seems (to me) much easier to use, and gives a better sense of communications as coming from a particular source - ie a sense of people discussing something. The VLE seems somehow to anonymise, if that's a word.

Partly it's just the non verbal stuff, like everyone's blog coming in in colours and layouts that the blogger has themselves chosen: a similar effect to the tones of someone's voice.

Blogs, purely as a means of self aggrandisement, are quite appealing. I'm afraid mine is mostly grumble so far.

Had a look at deli.ci.ous but not wildly inspired (and, as an English teacher, predictably irr.it.ated by the skin rash of punctuation).

Will go back to it and have another bash.

More thinking

Have done no more actual work on the topic but just a bit more thinking.

Part of what I teach here comes under the heading of "career preparation" - focussing on skills in English which will be useful when our Business and IT and Engineering students get jobs. The kinds of tasks we ask students to do include job applications, CV writing, etc.

For example an assignment was to find an advert for a job you really could do and write a letter of application for it. But naturally most of the jobs the students look for are advertised online and don't even give a land address - it would be odd to reply to an online ad with a letter unless it was specified.

Students tend to use email principally as a private-life means of communication, which means that they are not usually familiar with the norms of business-style email communication... sign offs like "I miss U" etc abound.

So it needs some thought and a bit of work...

Well there you are

I decided to start this blog when I googled myself and discovered I don't exist.

This was not an exercise in pure existential angst (well, not intended for that, anyway) but an assignment on a course I'm doing from Oxford Brookes University UK about using social software to enhance student learning.

It's only the start of Week 2 and I've already had to rethink my entire existence... or at least, the part of it that concerns my professional profile.