While I’ve written my reflections for the Challenge for Day 1 - 10 on the same day I’ve broken it into two posts to make it more readable.

Day 5: Comment on a Post You Disagree With

Michele’s tasks for Day 5 was to comment on a post I disagree with.

Most Challenge participants haven’t enjoyed commenting on posts they disagree on. I think this is a reflection of human nature that we don’t like to be disagreeable in a public setting — most of us don’t like to rock the boat.

Ok, I have been know to be pedantic and outspoken (I rather not say disagreeable).  So it wasn’t hard to find a post were I had be a tad disagreeable.

1. What happened as a result of you disagreeing with the blogger?

Tony Karrer is well known in corporate elearning and his posts (Social Conference Tools - Expect Poor Results and Reframing Conference Social Tool Participation) were in response to David Warlick’s Reaching Out With Your Conference. Tony questions the value of social networking tools because of low participation rates in conference attendees using them.

I was a bit outspoken (as were others) as I’ve seen social networking tools like Skype, Twitter, Ustream opening up conferences to global participants. Results were:

• Tony did an excellent job interacting with the commenters.
• We both expanded our conversation using Elluminate — I showed him how educators are using the tools and Tony told me more about the corporate sector.
• Tony has even joined twitter now (that’s weird somehow my twitter account unfollowed him by itself — I’ve fixed it now).

2. What do you usually do if you find a post with which you disagree?

I prefer not to be too disagreeable in public, so if I totally disagree I may move on without leaving a comment. If I do disagree and leave a comment I try to explain my position and ask questions to understand their position more.

3. How do you feel if people post comments where they disagree with you?

No issue because most let me know that I’ve made a mistake (which helps with my learning) or explain their position to give me insight into how they feel.

Progress = Completed

Day 6: Engage Another Commenter in Discussion

Michele’s task for Day 6 is to engage another commenter in discussion because as Michele says “Conversations can become richer, though, if we also respond to other commenters”. 

Yep I do this (sometimes too much). If you read comments on Tony’s posts Social Conference Tools - Expect Poor Results and Reframing Conference Social Tool Participation you will see this in action.

Mmmm Brent feeling definitely neglected re-twitter (ROFL)

Progress = Completed

Day 7: Reflect on What You’ve Learned So Far

Michele’s task for Day 7 is to reflect what I’ve learned so far.  I’m pleased that this was one task I completed on time and here’s my response — Online Participation, Commenting and The Comment Challenge.

Progress = Completed

Day 8: Comment on a Blog Outside of Your Core Niche

Michele asked us to comment on a blog outside of our core niche as our Task for Day 8 but I’d argue that I already do it. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Progress = Completed

Day 9: Should We Be Commenting on Blogs?

Michele’s Task for Day 9 was to reflect on the value of commenting on blog posts compared to writing posts in response.

Some bloggers disable comments preventing readers from adding their comments to the post as they would rather their readers respond by writing their own posts. The most important aspect of blogging for me is the conversations. My belief is disabling comments limits conversations (like going to a conference presentation and not being allowed to ask questions).

It’s definitely better to build community through a combination comments and conversations occurring across blogs (i.e. respond to ideas by writing our own posts). I use a mixture of both but am more likely to write comments than a post since posts take considerably longer to write and comments are easier for other readers to follow the conversation.

Progress = Completed

Day 10: Do a Comment Audit on Your Own Blog

Michele’s task for Day 10 was to do a comment audit on my Blogs. I think I’m doing an OK job building a sense of community on my blogs that invites people to leave comments.

What I will say is I feel some bloggers have conflicted emotions about comments on their own blogs. Partly probably because they 1) feel others may judge a blog’s success on the level of commenting 2) know new bloggers become despondent and stop blogging due to lack of comments 3) feel worrying about whether people will comment on their posts impacts on their writing.

My response to their concerns:

• Don’t worry what others think — we all judge our own success using different measures.
• Don’t give up blogging because of lack of comments (I hardly had any the first few months I was a blogger). It takes time (and work) to build your blog’s community. It helps to learn to be a more effective blogger and learn about community building.
• If you are blogging as part of your personal learning — comments and interacting with your commenters means your learning will be greater than what you gain by writing blog posts.

Progress = Completed

FINAL THOUGHTS

There’s still time for you to join us for 31 Day Comment Challenge! Just go across to Michele Martin’s blog to get started with the tasks and add your name to our participants page.

Remember to follow our tagging recommendations for the Challenge.

And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

But before I do I liked to thank Michele Martin for the excellent daily tasks she has created. Thanks Michele (you’re amazing)!

Day 1: Do a Comment Self Audit

Michele’s task for Day 1 is to do a Comment Self Audit of my own commenting practices.

1. How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week? — Lets just say I’m a prolific commenter
2. Do you track your blog comments? — I use both cocomment and co.mment which feed into my Google Reader using their RSS feed. Means I can rapidly respond to new comments on other people’s blogs if I choose.
3. Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?– Always visiting new blogs

While I think Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments is good I don’t agree with all her tips — unfortunately to explain why would need a blog post. However Betty Gilgoff in her Day 1 reflections suggests Gina’s guide “would actually be a good resource for students when setting up blogging with a group”– which I think is an excellent idea (with some modifications).

Do you use a Guide to Blog Comments with your students? If so, can you share the link for us to check out?

Progress = Completed

Day 2: Comment on a New Blog

Michele’s task for Day 2 is to do a comment on a new blog (which I do all the time).

I try my best to visit and leave comments on:

• Blogs of readers who leave comments on my blogs
• Blogs that link to my blogs

While this is good practice for building a blog community, my main reasons are to thank the person and support new bloggers.

Progress = Completed

Day 3: Sign up for a Comment Tracking Service

On Day 3 Michele set us the task of signing up for a comment tracking service. As Michele says “To really engage in conversations through blog commenting, you need to develop some effective strategies for managing the comments you make on other blogs. A comment tracking service is a great solution.”

Cammie Bean introduced me to tracking comments, using Co-mment, during the 31 Days To Build A Better Blog last year when I complained that leaving comments on other peoples blogs frustrated me because it was too hard (time consuming) to know if the blogger responded. I now also use cocomment because its excellent for community building and tagging (here’s my post on how to use cocomment).

Progress = Completed

Day 4: Ask a Question

Michele’s task for Day 4 is to ask a Question as she says “One of the most powerful conversation starters is to ask a question. It’s one of the best ways to engage the blogger and other commenters in further discussion.” Whenever appropriate I ask open-ended and thought provoking questions for the reasons Michele highlights.

Don’t get disappointed if the blogger and other commenters doesn’t respond back — unfortunately not all bloggers respond back to comments on their posts and not all commenters using comment tracking tools. But when they do you see some amazing conversations happen.

Progress = Completed

FINAL THOUGHTS

There’s still time for you to join us for 31 Day Comment Challenge! Just go across to Michele Martin’s blog to get started with the tasks and add your name to our participants page.

Remember to follow our tagging recommendations for the Challenge.

And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

Why? Because finally I can translate Gabriela Grosseck’s blog from Romanian to English (click on this link to read her blog in English)!

Gabriela has been a loyal supporter of all my sites from almost the very beginning when I was just a podcaster. She has always provided encouragement and shared information with me and lots of other edubloggers.

Translating Other Languages

I’ve spent hours searching, without luck, for a free online translator for Romanian without luck.

Fortunately Gabriela recently discovered that Google Translate now translates more languages including Romanian. Now I can easily read her blog and repay all her support she has given me over the years — please take the time to visit Gabriela’s blog and say hi (you can even use Google Translate to write a comment in Romanian).

I’ve now added their Google Translate widget to my right side bar to make it easier to read my posts in words other than English as I have many readers that English is not their main language. I feel really bad that as an English speaker we expect people who speak other languages to read our language.

FINAL THOUGHTS

For some reason Google Translate didn’t include Aussie slang! WT? But the good news is you can:

• Translate any website into Aussie slang using the Aussie Translator (for all those wannabe Aussies)
• Translate Aussie slang words using the Australian Slang Dictionary (for those times when I accidentally talk my language)
• Find out more about Aussie Culture here and then practice for the Aussie Citizenship test (but be careful — you may get sent to Woop Woop if you get too many answers wrong!)

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Photo from Flickr photo Uploaded on April 9, 2008 by dellaert licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0.

Why the Comment Challenge

I knew from personal experience that commenting on blogs is a crucial aspect of blogging conversations for achieving the greatest learning. Trouble is factors often limit people’s commenting practices so they don’t experience this learning and fail to appreciate it’s value.

Kim Cofino, Silvia Tolisano, Michele Martin and I hoped a challenge that involved a month of focused commenting would help participants appreciate it’s importance and the benefits of learning as a community.

Comment Challenge Progress

The Challenge started on May 1 with Michele Martin posting tasks daily. The number of participants is still increasing and currently there are 116 adult participants and 12 Student groups (over 200 students).

You can check out the latest posts by participants on this page of the Comment Challenge wiki or comments by participants here! Much of my time this week has been making sure it is all happening by visiting participant’s posts to check out their progress and leave encouragement, troubleshooting challenges of technorati and fine tuning the wiki.

The behind the scenes tasks have left me little time to write my own reflections so I thought today I would play catch up using Comment Challenge Day 7: Reflect on What You’ve Learned So Far but reflect the three lessons I’ve learned from my experiences so far in terms of being a coordinator of the Challenge.

#1 Commenting & Participation in Online Communities

It didn’t surprise to me that many participants response to “How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?” was rarely. Concerns of saying the wrong thing or feeling their comments mightn’t be worthy were the main factors why they rarely commented. This surprised me because I assumed time was the main issue since majority are bloggers and use twitter.

It does have me thinking more about online communities user participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule:

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute)
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs

And Derek Wenmoth’s The Four C’s of Participation in Online Communities:

The 4 Cs are an attempt to illustrate the fact that most people appear to operate predominantly in one or other of the phases in their journey to becoming online citizens, and that there is some sort of progression that characterises this growth.

Below is Derek Wenmoth’s diagram that highlights the progression through the phases. Take the time to read his post to obtain a clear understanding of his thoughts (click on this link to view the larger version of the diagram).

I’ve always considered the implications of both online communities user participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule and Derek Wenmoth’s The Four C’s of Participation in Online Communities when using social networking tools with students and educators. Time constraints and not being a contributer (i.e. since majority blog, use range of social network tools and twitter) aren’t the barriers to why people don’t comment more.

Lots of food for thought with no answers but definitely a greater understanding, after 7 days of observations, of why people do/don’t comment on blogs.

#2 Technorati Continues To Mock Me

With over 100 adult participants and 12 student groups (over 200 students) , combined with the desire to encourage the community aspect, an RSS feed from Technorati was the easiest method for helping participants easily find each other and interact (we have the feed coming into our wiki). Best way to do this is to agree on a common tag term prior to the event.

Mistake #1 - Make sure the tag term is unique!

(DUH Sue!) I should have done a technorati basic search for the tag term comment08 because unfortunately test comments from cocomment’s blog were picked up with this search term.

Mistake #2 - Test Technorati easily picks up the tags prior to starting such a large project

After quite a bit of research over the weekend I discovered that technorati wasn’t picking up posts unless:

• Participants had joined and claimed their blog’s at Technorati
• Technorati hasn’t been pinging their blog (some of the blogs hadn’t been pinged for 90 days which meant we weren’t seeing any of the posts they were writing)

Also I discovered we had to refine the Technorati tag search to ensure it found all posts.

If we had known all this prior we could have given more detailed instructions to participants on how to tag (for each of the different blogging platforms) and for ensuring their tags were picked up by technorati.

Better late than never — Here’s my instructions for participants on using technorati.

#3 Community Learning Happens When Encouraged

True I did know this but have been pleasantly surprised, with the right circumstances, how rapidly this can develop considering it has only been 8 days. It’s impossible for me to showcase all the examples however I think what happening with video and video commenting — and the increased connections as a results — is pretty cool.

Kate Foy’s set up a Flickr Group and being using Seesmic to create video posts and use it for readers leave video comments. Greg’s being debating the pros and cons of video commenting. Kevin’s did a video tour of blogs he visited which inspired Silvia to create a video to summarise what she has learnt in the past 7 days.  Apologies I’m sure there are more videos (please let me know any I have missed).

FINAL THOUGHTS

Still time for you to join us for 31 Day Comment Challenge — just add your name to the participants page. It’s okay to combine several tasks and do in one day .

Would love to hear about the connections you are making, and the community learning that is happening, as a result of the Challenge.  Also your thoughts on online participation and commenting (and off course how you are going ).

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Photo from Flickr photo uploaded on April 24, 2006 by Christina007 licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0.

Cause of The Weight Problem

Apparently the weight issues happened during my blog cleaning when I changed my blog image header. (Sheesh and I thought cleaning helped you lose weight!).

Christy Tucker commented that:

Does it seem like the header image leads your image off the right side of the page though? Look at the line of the rocks and the direction the person is facing–it seems to all be pointing off to the right. I wonder if you flipped the image horizontally if it would work better. You’d have to move the text somewhere else, perhaps, but with the image flipped it would draw your eye right down to the content.

Just a thought–you might want to check with Christine Martell or someone else more visually inclined. It’s possible I’m simply imagining things!

Christine’s definitely the person to ask as she’s amazing with visuals. And I’m extremely grateful because she has done an incredible analysis of my new image header while explaining all visual aspects of what the image was saying, the messages it sends the readers and options to improve.

Make the time to read Chrisine’s Does my header make my blog look fat? post (and leave her a comment thanking her for helping me)! There is so much to appreciate when using visuals on blog sites and in posts; Christine’s excellent at making you consider the issues.

Impact of Images and Photos in Blog Posts

Images and photos enhance blog posts when used correctly but can have the opposite affect when used badly. These posts Christine wrote are must reads for understanding the issues better:

1. Are your visuals saying what you want? Part 1 Visual Element
2. Are your visuals saying what you want? Part 2 Color & Contrast
3. Are your visuals saying what you want? Part 3 Texture & Pattern

Also make sure you check out Gary Barber’s excellent post on the Psychology of Colour.  Fantastic post that explains the different emotions invoked by various colours.

My Solution To The Weight Problem

Well I decided to change my image header based on her re-design of my image however Bret Treasure has made excellent comments (read his comments as he makes really good points) on Christine’s post about the image I’ve chosen isn’t relevant to the blog content or engaging.  So it may be a case the issue continues to be debated as the weight issue may not be solved

Thanks everyone who has been trying to help me with my weight problem and my blog makeover.  I really appreciate your help.

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Today was my blog cleaning day! I’ve finished what I can but still not happy (are we ever totally happy with blog cleaning?). Anyway let me show you what I’ve done so you can give me your thoughts

Importance Of Blog Cleaning

Unfortunate fact of life, we do judge a book by it’s cover! People are more likely to both read our posts and subscribe to our blog if it’s pleasing to their eyes.

We need our blogs to immediately engage first time readers, highlight that we offer great information that they will like, so they want to subscribe to our blog.

Photo from Flickr uploaded on October 4, 2007
by metz79 licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0.

Changed Block Image Header

I use Cutline theme for my blog because I want a clean template, with pages along the top and ability to add a tagline.

The concept behind a blog tagline is to create a memorable phrase that sums up the tone and premise of a blog. Ideally all blogs should have a tagline since they instantly tell first time readers what your blogs all about and whether you write posts in topic areas that interest them.

Unfortunately Cutline doesn’t include a tagline but it does include a customisable header which means I can add the tagline to the image in my blog header.

But I’m not the most creative person so wasn’t happy with my image. Hoping my new image header with a person staring at the ocean and my tagline Helping Others With Web 2.0, e-learning and m-learning are better.

This is what my previous header looked like:

Decluttered My Sidebar

Sidebar clutter is bad because it can make your blog look messy and pulls readers attention away from what you want them to do (read your posts)!

Saying all that I think Kirsten’s comment on my I’ve Gone Widget Crazy post is important to consider:

I sort of view sidebar widgets as being partly for the blog owner and partly for their readers. So I guess if they make you happy then that’s what counts. I don’t see them as distracting, but then I’m a total global spatial and my mind is probably full of widgets.

But some of the clutter had to go!

1. Removed my blogroll

Bloggers often feature a list of their favourite blogs in the sidebar of their blog; this list is commonly called a blogroll and these are important to edubloggers. One of the reasons for adding a blogroll is so your readers can use this list to locate other blogs worth reading — you are saying “these are some blogs I like - which are worth checking out!”

Trouble is my blogroll list overwhelms my side bar so I’ve relocated it to a page on my blog. Sure some won’t be happy with this but it was that or no blogroll. And now have a pretty link to it

Check out my blogroll here!

2. Rearranged My Subscribe To This Blog Links & Information

I want new readers to subscribe to my blog!

Your RSS feed, email subscription and advice on how to subscribe to your blog needs to be obvious! So I’ve made it look nicer and hopefully it’s grabbing readers attentions with the icons I’ve added (check it out at the top right hand side of my blog).

3. Added a Translate This Page Widget

I’ve added a Google translator widget to my blog to make it easier to read my posts in words other than English as I have many readers that English is not their main language.

I also tried to find an Aussie slang translator but had no success. My readers definitely need this! As Kate Quinn pointed out in comments I used this aussie slang “main drag to refer to the main road through the town” in a post.

4. Changed the name of My Categories Widget

Tags, categories and search widgets are important because they help your readers locate the information they want on your blog (read more about the difference between tags and categories here).

I’ve changed the heading of my categories widget to “Some of the things I write about” because I felt the word Categories didn’t have much meaning to many of my readers.

5. Customised My CoComment Widget

Kirsten convinced me of the value of having a Cocomment widget on my blog when she said on my I’ve Gone Widget Crazy post:

As a blog surfing addict I like the cocoment reader widget - if something you have commented on else where catches my attention then I can follow it and explore further. I also know can come back to your site and follow other comments of interest - so I like that widget

So I’ve adjusted the size of the widget and changed my cocomment widget’s title to “My Comments on Others Blogs.”

6. Where I Share

I wanted to add a Show Yourself Widget like Vicki Davis has on her blog (located in her left sidebar under the title of “Where I Share”). Unfortunately this is one code I can’t seem to embed in this blog. So instead I’ve added an About Me Widget from MyBlogLog but it’s not really what I wanted.

If you know of a better widget please let me know

Added A Visitors Map

While I was busy decluttering my sidebar I couldn’t help looking at more widget to add.

I fell in love with Ronaldo Lima Frappr visitor’s map and had to have one. Absolutely no logic in my desire and since it caused clutter I’ve added it to my About page — which makes completely no sense!

But cheer me up add your name to my vistors map!

FINAL THOUGHTS

What have I missed? MyBlogLog for “Where I Share” isn’t working for me. Can you recommend a better option?

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For all those waiting for me to post my true thought on Facebook this video sums them all up but my words are a bit stronger. Perhaps not a good idea to show it to your kids .

Thanks to Alan Levine for sharing it from Suw Charman-Anderson post.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Happy for you to try and change my thoughts on Facebook.

But don’t even think about that Twitter song, Alan. I’ve got totally different feelings towards twitter .

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But since 68 % of readers of this blog and 87 % of The Edublogger readers (the other blog I author) don’t live in Australia I thought it’s appropriate to start with some background on where I live so you understand where I went on holidays. If you’re interested — here’s comparison of % visitors by country, for top 20, for both blogs using Google Analytics statistics.

Please note I’ve uploaded the photos directly to this post to make it easier for readers who read my posts from work because Barry reminded me that many school districts block Flickr. I haven’t added the videos however I’m happy to upload the videos directly to my blog that I have on Flickr (shows the fish and the kangeroos) — just let me know.

About Western Australia

It’s a long way from anywhere!

But it’s the largest state in Australia even though some from the Eastern States of Australia consider our State a “backward” civilisation due to Perth’s (our capital city) isolation. I should also add it’s the wealthy State of Australia due to massive mining and resource boom. The image on the right shows a size comparison of Australia with USA and UK (click on image to enlarge).

A widely-held belief is Perth is “the world’s most isolated capital city” because the closest major capital to Perth is Adelaide (2,800 km away) which takes three hours by commercial flight. Unfortunately Honolulu in Hawaii is more isolated (nearest capital city of Majuro in the Marshall Islands is 3,673 km away). I’m thinking Honolulu sounds nice .

Western Australia is composed of distinct geographical regions each with their own unique climate, features and tourist attractions. It would take me forever to talk about the wonders of each region so click on areas on this map to learn more — I’m based in Perth.

Our Holiday In Relation To Perth

Our holiday was spent in the South West of our State in the Busselton, Dunsborough and Margaret River region (250 km south of Perth). This is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the State due to it’s fabulous beaches, surf areas, vineyards, tuart forests and fine foods. It feels like every km you travel in this region there is another vineyard or more fine foods to eat topped off with a swim at the beach.

Here are some of the highlights:

Favourite Tourist Attraction

Definitely Underwater Observatory that they’ve built to the seafloor at the end of the Busselton jetty. As you walk down the Underwater Observatory, 8 metres to the ocean floor, you see the different marine life, in their natural environment, that exists at each level.

The Busselton jetty is the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere stretching 1.841 kms into the ocean. Construction commenced in 1853 and it was used for commercial shipping from 1865 to 1971.

It’s a lovely walk out to the Underwater Observatory (1.8 km) but not so much fun walking back in a thunderstorm in the rain (click on the photo of us walking back to see how far from shore we are).

Classic Moments

Always helps if you’re clear in providing directions.

Here is my hubby’s great instructions for locating him when I arrived after driving for 3 1/2 hours:

We are in Dunsborough at coffee shop (no idea of it’s name) near bakery in main drag.

I’m not sure anyone could interpret those directions?

Especially since there was several bakeries, coffee shops and main drags in Dunsborough and I’d never been there before.

Although I should be grateful– he could have always given me a map link like this so I ended up in the ocean .

Meanwhile you have my excellent directions:

Just keep going straight and it will take us to Cape Naturalist Lighthouse.

Well I got that one totally wrong and we ended up at Yallingup totally missing the Lighthouse

Honestly I thought the map showed the road we were on as a straight road that went to the lighthouse .

Favourite Moment

Has to be spotting the huge mobs of kangaroos (mob is the term used for a large group of kangaroos) in farmer’s paddocks next to the road.

Unfortunately I scared the first mob by yelling too loudly when we got out of the car but managed to video the mob I saw the next day. The farmers definitely wouldn’t have liked them in their fields.

While these kangaroos look lovely — you definitely don’t want to hit them with a car especially if you don’t have a roo bar. This is why I was very quiet filming them on the second day as there were probably more than 50 of them right next to a really busy road. Here is my video if you want to watch them.

Funniest Moment

We went away on holidays with several family groups.

Just about everyday the men would go fishing, for 3+ hours, and return home empty handed (I believe that is called conservation?). Sorry they did catch one fish in 7 days .

They were hunting the Australian Salmon (Arripis trutta) which any seafood lover will tell you is a poor tasting fish. Commercial catch is mostly canned.

Finally in frustration on the second last day I took my hubby fishing to show him how it’s done. Here’s a photo of the fish I caught — which taste much nicer . He also commented how much more fun it was fishing with me.

Although I think it’s much easier to grab fish out of the tanks at my work

Craziest Moment

Couldn’t sleep first night managing to wake hubby who then walked through cabin and when switched on lights blew them all out for the entire cabin. So with no lights (i.e. unable to get up to read) and not able to sleep I hide my PDA under my blankets (to keep light from waking my hubby) and played on the Internet.

Frustrating Moment

My hubby was responsible for booking the holiday accommodation. He went under guidance of our friend who organised the holiday and has been to the particular location about 5 times.

All I shall say on the matter is my hubby is never, ever, ever booking accommodation ever again!

Our cabin was falling down and not very nice inside. Our other friends (not the ones who gave hubby guidance) stayed at the same location, just one cabin behind us, in a lovely brick cabin with fantastic furniture and paid $100 more.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Definitely did a lot more than I covered in this post — which is way tooooo long. Here are the photos on Flickr that includes all the videos and lots more sights.

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But first let me share some cool tips I’ve learnt while getting ready to write about my vacation – I’ll tell you about our holiday adventures in my next post.

Image Hack

David Warlick demonstrated a really cool image hack that I’ve wanted to try.

If you post a smaller version of a photo in your blog post, but hyperlink to the larger version of the photo when readers click on the photo in the post they are taken to the larger version of the photo for a more detailed view.

Click this photo I took on our vacation to see the effect . Here are my step-by-step instructions (which I’ve posted to Flickr) for how to do this in your own posts.

As David Warlick says Wow! It worked!

Flickr Videos

Everyone’s been talking about how Flickr now allows you to upload videos provided that they are limited to 90 seconds in length, and less than 150MB in filesize. I like the idea of uploading my videos to Flickr since I already use the site for sharing photos.

Using the video setting on my digital camera to create the videos is an issue because the videos ranged up to 93 MB for a 90 sec video which isn’t ideal for uploading videos especially at an Internet Cafe. Ideally it’s best to keep videos less than 30 MB for uploading.

My solution to reduce video file size quickly was edit using MovieMaker and save Movie File as Video for Broadband (512 kbps).

Off course this got me thinking how does Flickr control the time limit on movies you can upload? Well it seemed obvious to me that they couldn’t and can only control by file size. So I edited and combined my photos and movies to create a 3 minute video which I then successfully uploaded to Flickr.

Here are my instructions on using MovieMaker. The videos uploaded considerably easier and there was no noticeable loss in quality.

Below is the video (which is hosted on Flickr) that you can check out. What do you think of video quality?

If you are reading my post in a feed reader like Google Reader or Bloglines the video will probably not be displayed so you need to check out on my blog or at Flickr.

My Map Of Our Holiday

I’ve been waiting for a long time for the opportunity to create a holiday map with photos and this was a perfect opportunity.

The easiest option is to Geotag photos on Flickr (geotagging in Flickr is the process of adding location information to your photos by dropping them onto the World map — here are my instructions on how to geotag using Flickr).

However I had two issues with Flickr geotagging:

• Flickr uses Yahoo maps that don’t zoom in sufficiently to show roads and many towns in Western Australia — which is really annoying
• You can only link to the map and not embed

So instead I created a My Maps using Google Maps that:

• I can embed into my blog post
• allows me to embed my photos from Flickr into the map (unfortunately it didn’t like the embed video code for the Flickr Videos).

Here are my step-by-step instructions (which I’ve posted to Flickr) for how to create your own My Maps using Google Maps. You will need to create a Google Account to create my maps (it’s best to create a gmail account to do this).

Below is my map that I’ve embedded in this post. You will probably need to check it out on my blog if you are using a feed reader.

View Larger Map

Embedding My Maps Into Edublogs

1. Click on the link icon at the top of My Maps and you will find the embed code.
2. In your post click on Code Tab then paste the embed code in the desired location and then press publish straight away.

NOTE: Make sure you’ve completely finished writing your post before adding My Maps embed code as you can’t edit the post AT ALL after the code has been added.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Hope you like some of the cool tips I’ve shared.

What are your thoughts on Flickr videos? People have differing views on videos on Flickr — check out Beth’s post and it’s comments.

Do you know of a quicker and easier way to create a Holiday map for sharing with friends?

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One of the trouble with blogs is you often have good content, that’s worth a read, but it becomes hidden away and new readers miss out (image by Amanda Bel).

Having a “Most Valuable Posts” widget like Vicki Davis does on Cool Cat Teacher blog or link to a page on “My Favourite Posts!” as Larry Ferlazzo does on Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… are an excellent idea for bringing these posts to the attention of readers.

Unfortunately I’ve run out of room on my sidebar at the moment and may have to face choosing a new theme.

Meanwhile here are my most popular posts based on pageviews:

My Advice On Being A More Effective Blogger!
The title says it all. I really need to follow it up with a more detailed post on tips for better blog posts (similar to the information I’ve written in the section of this post on my personal pet hates but with examples of what I mean).

Why Didn’t I install Google Analytics Sooner?
Having statistics on how readers find your blog, what content they like and how they interact with your blog is really important.

Many bloggers use several different stats counters on their blog and with an overwhelming amount of information it’s hard to work out which one to use– Google analytics is definitely one that you should install.

Al Upton & The MiniLegend’s Blog Given Order for Closure
Parental Consent, Use of Student Images and The MiniLegends Closure
Conversation On Al Upton Situation With Alec Couros’s EC&I 831 Class

Al Upton has been blogging with his students for the past five years and this year Al Upton decided to take student blogging, with his new group of miniLegends, to the next level and invited the educational blogging community to mentor a mini. Unfortunately there was concerns relating to perceived risks of cyberstalking and online predators with the end result being that he was asked to close his Al Upton’s MiniLegend class blog while the concerns were investigated.

Situations like what happened to Al have happened, and will happen to other educators, which is why Adocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety and Success has been started — focus of this group will be to coordinate actions to educate the general public and education decision makers on the importance of educating students on digital citizenship.  You can join the group here! I will talk about this more next week when I get back

Why Does Technorati Mock Me?
If you’re a blogger than it’s really important to understand how blog search engines work to ensure your blog and posts are being found.  This post explains how Technorati and Google Search searches blog posts and why you need to claim your blog on Technorati.

FINAL THOUGHT

Good luck.  I hope these posts help you; there are more I could have added but that will keep you going for now. I’m always looking for ideas for blog posts so please let me know

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