eLearning Games and Simulations

Attended the eLearning Games and Simulations Conference at Normandale Community College and was pleased to see a mixed audience of higher education, and postsecondary faculty and others in attendance. The conference had some 200+ registrants for this one day event and a well received mix of sessions on gaming and simulations on virtual worlds and opportunities to learn how to connect students with interactive technologies. Am pleased to report that I was one of many women in attendance at this conference.

While current research reports that women game less than men, some groups are doing what they can to grow female gamers. Found some information on the web about sholarships that WomenGamers.Com (valued at $945) were offering two female students ages 8-18 for one week at the National Computer Camp (Nccamp.com) . The camp experience has already been snapped up by two essayists who submitted an application and and essay by the May 18th deadling deadline. Applicants were asked to respond to the following question:

"What will video games of the future be like and if you were in charge of designing a game, what would it be like?"

The essays from the young women who responded to the scholarship challenge are fun to read and provide some real insight into what they think about games and the kinds of games they would create and play.

Sifry: The State of the Blogosphere

Just found an excellent resource information on the state of the blogosphere. Sifry's State of the Live Web has data from October 2004 through April 2007. Lots of visuals for are provided and are freely available for use under a Creative Commons license. Users are asked to keep Technorati logos and links when charts and data are shared. Sifry's most up-to-date portrayal on growth of weblogs is as follows:

• 70 million weblogs
• About 120,000 new weblogs each day, or...
• 1.4 new blogs every second
• 3000-7000 new splogs (fake, or spam blogs) created every day
• Peak of 11,000 splogs per day last December
• 1.5 million posts per day, or...
• 17 posts per second
• Growing from 35 to 75 million blogs took 320 days
• 22 blogs among the top 100 blogs among the top 100 sources linked to in Q4 2006 - up from 12 in the prior quarter
• Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37%
• English second at 33%
• Chinese third at 8%
• Italian fourth at 3%
• Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%
• English the most even in postings around-the-clock
• Tracking 230 million posts with tags or categories
• 35% of all February 2007 posts used tags
• 2.5 million blogs posted at least one tagged post in February

I started this blog because I wondered, Where were the women bloggers?", but now as I learn more about social networking and blogging I wonder, where was I when people started blogging? While my adult children were telling me about MySpace and Facebook I was dismissing what they told me because when I did look at these social networking sites I saw much of it as juvenile, bawdy, and in poor taste. The sites did not hold my interest. What I did not know until I began to research women bloggers and blogging sites in general was just how informative and learning focused well-done blogs could be. While there is the not-so-good and seamy content, there is a wealth of well-done, well written, and education friendly writing going on about the topics I am interested in.

Who knew? Well it appears that since 2004 through 2006, a whole lot of people blogging knew.

Webheadsinaction.org; Global Webcastathon

Just received an email invitation to this happening. It's free, easy to register, great venue, and looks like it will be fun as well as educational. I registered to attend and will take in as much as I can when I can at the WIAOC 2007 WORLDBRIDGES WEBCASTATHON - MAY 17-MAY 20. The information below is copy/paste from my invitation.

Posts that contain Webcastathon per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

"Begins at 2200 GMT and wraps up at EdTechTalk 75 hours later.In between, there are 47 planned sessions, including keynote presentations by Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Etienne Wenger, Robin Good, Barbara Ganley, Teemu Leinonen, & Leigh Blackall. This is also likely to be an unprecedented unconferency very global gathering of educators and technologists who like to play with collaborative social media tools ... shouldbe fun. So, stop by when you can to check out some sessions and/or hang out in the virtual hallways. You can tune in from any Worldbridges site, but the real action will be at [http://webheadsinaction.org/].
A presentation schedule is at:
[http://www.webheadsinaction.org/wiaoc2007/Presentations]We will also try to bridge to a teleconference when possible. 1-712-451-6100, Access Code: 999374#"

The conference hasn't started yet, but there are lots of places to poke around, things to read, links to resources, and tutorials. This looks like a winning combination of people, places, and things!

Using Notebook PCs to Breathe Life into Presentations

Just finished a quick, two-page read in a Campus Technology article titled Beyond PowerPoint: Building a New Classroom Presenter. Provides an overview of how presentation techniques impact faculty teaching, from blackboard and chalk to electronic presentation software like today's Powerpoint. The article goes on to discuss how use of slide presentations have "sucked the life" out of lectures and emphasizes the importance of adjusting presentation materials to audience reactions and allowing for on-the-fly additions to materials during the presentation.

Details on how use of a tablet PC allows lecturer to add personalized notes and use of product called Classroom Presenter that can be used in real time and in online courses is provided. Includes information on how Classroom Presenter can be used with One Note and how it supports student interactions and additions to notetaking process in the classroom. Just got an IBM tablet PC through work, albeit without a pen [still trying to figure that out!].Once I get a pen plant to integrate use of the table feature and One Note into my work.

Also found an online resource that encourages people to Just Say No to Microsoft with some good information on presentation software such as Keynote (for Macs) and Astound which I used in the mid 90s and loved, but forgot about once Microsoft Office Suite was adopted in my workplace. This site and the information it contains is worth a visit. Not suggesting we all mutiny and quit using Microsoft, but am suggesting that there may be other presentation products out there that are worth a look-see. Keynote creates very sophisticated and beautiful presentations.

Stifling Women Bloggers

This posting is connected to my dismay over reading about the harassment that women face in the blogosphere. My intent was to write and post my thoughts and opinions on technology, higher education, and leadership, but increasingly I find this project like going through the "looking glass" and my thoughts and opinions shifting as I learn more. It appears the blogosphere is mirroring many of the same iniquities, prejudices found in the real world and Internet harassment includes death threats for successful women bloggers like Kathy Sierra.

Ellen Nakishima’s, article is filled with scary eloquence on the seamier and darker side of what can happen to some women bloggers as they "gain visibility in the blogosphere" (April, 2007). The Washington Post article, Sexual Threats Stifle Women Bloggers, is full of information guaranteed to promote use of pseudonyms for women and they may"censor themselves" or use "private forums and closed comments" while blogging. Nakishima and the people she interviewed believe this will "make women reluctant to join in online -- undercutting the promise of the Internet as an egalitarian forum". Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post) a blogger who gets a lot of press and traffic of said, "anonymity online has allowed "many those dark prejudices towards women to surface."

So, in the blogosphere people are writing about the lack of women bloggers and the harassment of women bloggers. Here is another medium built for and by all that appears to be serving some more than others and allowing some to frighten and silence women in a brand-new way. I probably should not be at all surprised there is carry over of these kinds of issues from one medium to another, but I am.

HLC motto: Serving the common good by assuring and advancing the quality of higher learning

The 112th Annual Meeting of the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), is in full-throttle this Sunday, April 22, 2007 and I attended two conference sessions this morning illustrating the HLC organizational motto of, "serving the common good by assuring and advancing the quality of higher learning". The first session, Using Student Ratings to Improve Program Quality and Student Learning, included a panel presentation and overview of Kansas State University's The IDEA Center and first hand accounts of how use of The IDEA Centers "learning -centered" surveys support an institution's ability to demonstrate an "understanding of teaching and learning and improve the use and interpretation of information" to provide statistical evidence of meeting AQIP's Category One: Helping Students Learn in systems portfolios.

The second session's panel, What Remedial Freshman Can Teach University Administrators, focused on issues of remedial students in higher education and how their issues were connected to administrative issues at their university. This panel presented in an engaging, humorous, and story-telling manner and at the same time pointed out the serious problems underprepared students have when they enter higher education.While I found value in each presentation panel it was this one that fired me up.

Higher education knows underprepared students are a serious and growing problem. Long's (2005), The Remediation Debate: Are We Serving the Needs of Underprepared College Students, reported that "only one-third of students leave high school prepared for college" and while national research suggests that students provided remediation "have better outcomes than students with comparable backgrounds and preparation who do not take remedial courses" (Long, 2005)", national debates rather than action are still common place.

As the debates about cost, appropriateness of course work below college level, and squables over who, when, and how students might be served take place, 2001 saw the California State University system kicking out over" 2,200 students-nearly seven percent of the freshman class-for failing to master basic English and math skills " (Trouson, 2001).

Underprepared students (Bettinger& Long, 2006)are a growing concern for all of higher education and and might be alleviated by collaborative curriculum endeavors. There are content experts trying to address this need. One example is Minnesota's Mindquest Academy a series of online Adult Basic Education modules created by grant dollars and successfully used to get many Minnesota underprepared students prepared.

Because remedial course work is resource intensive; money, people, and vetted curriculum to effectively move underprepred students content is needed. Online digital content projects that were funded to create these kind of resources for the underprepared should be culled and harvested. I am sure that there are other successful curricula and courses out there to tackle this problem one place to look for them might be Curriki.

Curriki might provide an opportunity for good minds and good content to be massaged, manipulated, and shared to move students through content designed to get to the courses that "count" in a degree plan. According Curriki , "Anyone with access to the Internet can contribute and use the material found on Curriki to teach themselves or others. Whether its algebra, reading, or physics, they will be able to access the curricula online, print it, and/or save it to a CD".

According to Dr. Barbara"Bobbi" Kurshan, when fully operation Curriki will provide easy-to-use tools and a place to create shared curriculum from content developed by world wide contrubutors. Curriki is unique in that its focus will be on complete curricula solutions and not just textbooks and lessons plans(Wikipedia, 2007). The collaborative work that will take place in Curriki will use technology to provide users worldwide access to quality digital content. Founded by Sun System Curriki is an Open Source curricula .

Arts, music, language and information literacy resources

Have you heard about Karen Ellis and the Educational Cyber Playground? Well, neither had I until just a few days ago. Developed to improve literacy through arts education the site provides numerous web base resources to promote art, music, language, and information literacy. Educational Cyber Playground received a lot of media attention and awards during the late 90s and early 00s and provides a lot of free instructional content and information about online resources to educators, parents, and web surfers.

According to the information on the site, Ellis has been online since 1991 and her site has been used and visited by people all over the world. While the site looks like it could use some updating and has broken links there are many good resources to support educators and home schoolers. Why am I blogging about this? Well, the point of this blog is to find, write about, and link to women who are leaders in education technology.

Karen Ellis' site indicated that she is one. A self proclaimed "webmistress, site architect, curriculum content developer and RingLeader for the Educational CyberPlayGround" she has helped "over 2 million people a year" through her website. She has collected several "Hot Site" awards, USA today, MSNBC, The New York Times Learning Network on the Web: Parent Connections, and several Grammys . More recently, she created the National Children's Repository of Folksongs in 2003.

Women's Voices on Learning Objects and Learning Objects Repositories

In my first search of women blogs connected to learning objects and learning objects repositories found an article by Diane J. Goldsmith on Assessing Learning Objects: The Importance of Values, Purpose, and Design. It was unusual to read a woman blogging on learning objects and issues surrounding their use in education and I hope to find more over the next year. Besides citing some of the energetic male discussions surrounding the use of standards to create learning objects (Downes, 2006:Norman, 2006:Wiley, 2006), Goldsmith (2007) proposed there is opportunity in integrating assessment principles into developing learning objects.

While the discussion surrounding learning objects is focused on definitions, standards, context for use and reuse Goldsmiths’ (2007) article discusses learning objects and connects them to faculty values, purpose of LOs that is connected to what the objects might assess. She poses a set of questions to frame developing LOs and ask faculty and development teams to consider:

1. Why should a particular learning object be developed?
2.Who are the stakeholders? Users?
3. How will one know if the learning object is successful?
4. What determines success?
5. How can the cost of developing a learning object be justified?
6.What is the intended purpose in developing the learning object?
7. How can assessment of the learning object be factored into the development process?
8. If the object is published to a learning objects repository (LOR) how will data be collected on its use, reuse, and outcomes be assessed?

Finally, Goldsmith (2007) asks faculty and developers to consider what they will do with the data they collect and how any need for improvements will be communicated. This article also provides a list of assessment models for learning objects that included, MERLOT, the University of Wisconsin, Connecticut Learning Consortium, Center of Academic Transformation, AliveTek, and Wesleyan University's LOLA project.

This article is a good one for people looking for information that goes beyond the debates about defining what a learning object is or is not and whether or not the whole notion of learning objects is dead. I favor two simple definitions for the term learning object, the first is the Southern Regional Educational Board's (SREB, 2005) definition of learning object (LO), "a LO is any digital resource that can be used and reused to support learning". The second is New Media Consortium's (Smith, 2004) definition that connects LOs to materials grouped in structured, meaningful content contributions that are tied to measurable education objectives.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering... I believe that the promise of learning objects to improve teaching and learning is still very much alive.

Bebo in the News: Safer Social Networking

While reading Danah Boyd I found a great research site about youth and their learning and experiments with digital media. Boyd and others at Berkley are contributors to this current and readable website. This site on "ethonographic investigation of innovative knowledge cultures" titled, Digital Youth Research: Kids Informal Learning with Digital Media is impressive.

Dipped into several articles, but the one that engaged me and kept me there for awhile was on Bebo and information about the safety that this social networking provides for its users and parents of users. Bebo has a BlogSafety Forum that provides educational information on safe blogging and social networking. Bebo states that this safety blog is about " social networking about the social networks" (Bebo, 2007).

I read a lot about Facebook and MySpace, but had never heard of Bebo a social networking site ranked third most popular and the most sticky site in the in the world(Stoller, 2005). Also voted Peoples Voice by Webby and Best Social Networking site of 2006, Bebo recently appointed Joanna Shields Managing Director of Strategic Partnerships for Google EMEA, as President in its new London office.

Shields' 20-year work history includes senior management positions in several leading technology and internet companies. In her previous position at Google, she built syndication networks around the world and was instumental in developing partnerships with "some of the world's largest media and telecompanies (Gavin, 2007).

Am always pleased to learn new things when blogging and through my research this week found out about the world's third largest social networking system and Shields, a woman making the news as leader in the field of technology.

Steven Levy(2006) asked, Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem? and then goes on to talk about Halley Suitt positing on same. The problem is the Halley's Comment blog is by invitation only and can't be read unless one is "invited". Not sure how to get invited, but will keep looking as it appears that Suitt may be a good read.

Can what Levy called a "grass-roots phenomenon" of self-publishing in the blogosphere be exclusive rather inclusive? Levy quotes Suitt as asking "people to each find 10 bloggers who weren't male, white or English-speaking—and link to them. "Don't you think," she says, "that out of 8 million blogs, there could be 50 new voices worth hearing?"

I certainly believe that there are many worthwhile voices out there and would love to hear them, but can't read Suitt's by invitation only blog. Would very much like to read a blog by a woman who writes on the "clubbiness" of blogs and of white people writing to white people. Will instead try to track some of her ideas down through open articles and conversations going on by others on the same topic.

Just learned something new through persistence (kept trying to read Halley's blog) and here is a copy & paste of what I found out.

"Halley's Comment: I've stopped blogging here and Halley's Comment is no more. There is a screen which says you need to be a member to read the blog, but there is no list of "members" or select people who can read the blog. That screen is just a standard feature of Blogger which comes up when you close your blog off. I'll be taking the blog down for good soon. Loyal readers, thank you for your loyalty. If I decide to start another blog, I'll post a link here to that new site."

Not sure where she went or if she will blog again, but will keep checking back. All the postings and writings I am finding about Suitt illustrate she is a good read.

Research on blogging and women bloggers

Still wandering all around the web looking for research on women bloggers, women bloggers who blog about education technology, leadership and higher education. I found a directory resource for women bloggers and an article (Taylor Eisenman) citing research on how infrequently popular male bloggers include female bloggers on their blogroll. This article was based on Clancy Ratcliff's dissertation research. Ratcliff's (2005) research focused on a "case study of gender differentials in discourse on weblogs (often called the “blogosphere”). To that end, I am analyzing the “Where are the women?” debates to ascertain the ways both men and women account for the gender gap in blogging"(Ratcliff, 2005).

Some of the reasons outlined for the gap in this study included:

women aren't self-promoters

women "can't handle agnostic nature of political discourse" of blogs

women use pseudonyms more than males

women don't blog about politics

While Clancy's(2005)dissertation research has a focus on rhetoric and politics it does ask the question, "Where are the women" and will provide me with more research based information to answer my questions about women blogging about this blog's areas of focus. I am looking forward to learning more about blogging and the discourse about women who blog over the course of this year and will link this site to Blogs by Women soon.

English posts that contain Women Bloggers per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Blogs, blog persona, and back to leadership issues

Went in to check my gmail account today and found an invitation to a EdTechTalk. It was past the date for the talk, but went there anyway to view past and upcoming calendar information on the talks with "educators dedicated to helping those involved in educational technology explore, discusss, and collaborate in its use". Started meandering around and found information about something called a Tumblelog.

You can create a blog with "less fuss" using a free tool called Tumblr. These blogs are highly visual and less text based than most blogs. The less fuss part is intriguing, but would probably prove to be more fuss for me as I would then need a digital camera (must be one of the few people in the world without one in my cell phone), and would spend a lot of time learning how use it and taking photos for the Tumblelog. To get an idea of what one of these might look like, visit Tumbleo.

Did some more meandering while thinking about blogs and how some portray the strong personas of their authors and others don't. Went searching for more information about persona and blogging and found another woman blogger, Dr. Helen, who blogged about this and women and leadership. The posting about women and leadership was connected to a MSN article titled, Men rule ---at least in workplace attitudes .

Food for thought from MSN , “To be a leader you have to be decisive and take charge. That fits fine for men, but when women do it they get labeled.” The jist of the article in a list:

men are still seen as more effective leaders than women, by both men and women

women don't want to be too confident or authoritative, lest they get called the "B" word

women worry about being called wishy-washy, indecisive, or emotional

most men would rather have a male supervisor and so would most women

in our society leadership is still a code word for masuline

Oh yeah, and Dr. Helen said, "If You Want to be a Leader--Quit talking about your Freaking Grandkids"!

Blogging to learn and learning to blog

My initial reasons for blogging were to learn and read about other women bloggers interested in education technology, higher education and leadership, but while I have doing just that ---am finding a blog may not be just about writing. Sorting through all the tools out there that can help give a blog a personality could require some time. Flickr, Song Spots, YouTube, Wiki, were not sites that I visted or talked about much back in December. Now, in January, February and March women blog readings and daily visits to these sites and others are help me to see that finding, reading about, playing with, and integrating these technologies into my skill set may help me to express myself with more than just words.

Am enjoying the fee free education that learning how to blog is providing me. March finds me making my my way around a conference wiki, using Flickr to store, upload, and ta-da posting a slide show of a co-presented session at the ODCE conference focused on faculty perceptions of courses created by others. Next thing I plan to learn is how to post so photos, presentations, and videos are embedded in the posting and not just provided through links.

Online Course Peer Review

Lake Superior College's faculty member Susan Bradshaw is blogging. Was thrilled to find another woman blogger and to visit her blog which is also a great resource on Online Course Peer Review.

Coincidentally, attended a conference in Ohio (ODCE 2007) where Quality Matters: An Inter-institional Process for Improving Quality Online, presented by Brenda Boyd of Miami Unviersity was recognized for the Best Session Award. She received a plaque and a free registration to the next conference as part of the award.

While the Quality Matters FIPSE grant ended, the organization still exists and offers institutional subscriptions, training, and a range of fee-based services.

To find out more about QM, the course review process, and the peer review process vist the QM web: http://qualitymatters.org/ and be sure to check out Susan Bradshaw's blog to get a sense of how Lake Superior College and other faculty in the Minnesota State Colleges University System and Minnesota Online have implemented QM into practice.

Success it is not the same as leadership but

Putting some ideas together for an upcoming presentation as well as reading blogs. Went on a search to look around for presentations tips and found excellent tips,resources, and samples of effective presentations (TED) from Garr Reynold's blog titled PresentationZen.

Watched a YouTube post of a short video by a gentleman named Richard St. John. The presentation and the information in it was of interest to me for these reasons:

1. The speaker was good and the visuals were very well done.
2. The St. Clair presentation has information in it that could provide one with ideas on how to lead as well as how to have success .

At least 3 blog posts per month: One on leadership

Went on a miniweb search to do my one post for the week on leadership. My search affirmed some of the reasons I believe women may not be recognized as leaders. Despite the recent selection of a woman as Harvard’s president (Women Increasingly Likely To Be Leaders in U.S. Higher Education) and the statistics from the BizDean's Blog that women make up slightly more than half of U.S. jobs created in the first part of the new decade the leadership issues from old decades do not seem to be going away.

Listened to, but did not enjoy Newsweek’s Barbara Kantrowitz msnbc audio on Women in Leadership that outlined women’s role models and tips for success. Perhaps women are not promoted to leadership positions because of the lack of women as mentors (most women in this interview were mentored by men). Perhaps it's related to this sad, shortlist of tips the women interviewees provided to aspiring women leaders.

Sample leadership lessons shared in the audio:

1. Never cry in the office. (This was identified as Number 1!)
2. Don’t create obstacles for yourself.
3. Be passionate about your work and what you do.
4. Work hard and don’t let criticism distract you.
5. Don’t sell yourself short.

Wonder how many male leaders got their positions by following a list of similar lessons? Wonder if the newly hired woman president at Harvard listed never crying in the office as a leadership strength on her CV?

Recent research from the Center for High Performance Development (CHPD), on leadership qualities among male and female managerial staff had results that indicated women performed better than men on three of the main leadership quality measures (thinking, developing and achieving) and equally on the fourth (inspiring).

Chris Parry of the CHPD stated, “ women are given fewer opportunities in a male-run organization” and that men are better at “getting exposure, being visible, communicating upwards, getting people to know” what they are doing. Women, according to Parry expect to get promoted on ability and do not display the self-confidence that men do in the workplace.

Oh, and did I mention, “the wage gap persists: In 2005, the median weekly pay for women was $486, or 73% of that for men -- $663 (Biz Dean’s Talk)”. I could just cry, but I won’t, as I am an aspiring leader.

Flickr and copyright

Was led to some thought provoking ideas related to copyright while reading the Accidental Pedagogy blog.

The Ecstasy of Influence: A plagiarism

One of the things Lethem (2007) wrote about photography struck me and I quote:

"It's worth noting, then, that early in the history of photography a series of judicial decisions could well have changed the course of that art: courts were asked whether the photographer, amateur or professional, required permission before he could capture and print an image. Was the photographer stealing from the person or building whose photograph he shot, pirating something of private and certifiable value? Those early decisions went in favor of the pirates. Just as Walt Disney could take inspiration from Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr., the Brothers Grimm, or the existence of real mice, the photographer should be free to capture an image without compensating the source. The world that meets our eye through the lens of a camera was judged to be, with minor exceptions, a sort of public commons, where a cat may look at a king."

Am writing about this today, because even after reading what Flickr has posted on its website and completing several searches on copyright related to use of Flickr images am still not sure if I am pirating from the pirates. Because of this blogs title thought it would be fun to find and post beautiful images of portals and I found a lot of gorgeous images on Flickr. I have been saving some of them as images in a My Pictures folder on my PC and was planning to rotate the images over the course of the next few months.

Some of the information found in my searches led me to believe that some folks on Flickr license their images through Creative Commons, but if that is the case I am not finding the information. Also, found some folks on Flickr pointing fingers at people who are using images without proper attribution.

Right now there is a single image of a portal by a photographer that identifies himself as, astrovine. Under the image I have carefully and prominently displayed the following: Italian Portal by astovine. I am wondering, is that enough? While there are active forums discussing copyright issues on Flickr, there are not definitive answers to people's questions in the forums. You can view astovine photos and his profile on Flickr, but I can't find anything on his site or on the Flickr site that makes me sure it is okay to use this image.

Might be nice if there was some information on the Flickr site and and on individual profiles that outlined how the photos can and can be used. The Creative Commons license would help people like me who come looking and want to use photos of portals ethically. Perhaps the information is there and I am just not finding it, or maybe all the issues surrounding copyright and intellectual property related to blogging and on the Internet were solved and I missed the announcement :-)

Who knew?

Truly had no clue when I started this that there was so much to read, see, learn, and do in the blogosphere. Even my goals seem diminshed by the quantity of of information that is available on topics that of interest to me.

I thought of a folk song I heard years ago with lyrics focused on the hard time women have in life cooking, cleaning, ironing, etc.. Many versions of the lyrics to the Housewife's Lament are all over the web, but could not find out who authored the Housewife's Lament. Here is part of the lament:

Last night in my dreams I was stationed forever
On a far little rock in the midst of the sea
My one chance of life was a ceaseless endeavor
To sweep off the waves as they swept over me
Alas! 'Twas no dream; ahead I behold it
I see I am helpless my fate to avert
She lay down her broom, her apron she folded
She lay down and died and was buried in dirt.

While it used to be that I just thought about the irony of the last statement in terms of keeping my living space clean, now the words hit home in a new way because of the waves of technology and information seem to get bigger and bigger and the need to keep up-to-date seems to grow exponentially.

Am thinking I will easily find 25 women bloggers writing on topics of interest to me before the year is out. May well need to beef up the numbers and revise the goal statement over the course of the next few months. On the plus side, found good resources on WomenGamers and enjoyed a quick read of The kids are alright: How the gamer generation is changing the world.

Framing this Blog and Related Writing

I had fun this first month of blogging and as a I slogged and poked around the web I learned a few things about blogging I already knew and much about blogging that I hadn't a clue!

Because I have a purpose of finding women blogging about education technology, higher education, and leadership and in answering my question about where the women bloggers are.I decided to frame this blog and the related writings in a goal setting exercise using 5 tips found today in Enterprising Women magazine. Beller (2005) wrote:

1. Having a vision is important to goal setting.

2. Writing a plan to achieve goals is needed.

3. Sharing your goals with others will keep you accountable.

4. Letting go of the outcome and trusting yourself along the way helps.

5. Enjoying one’s journey toward achieving goals and related successes is the best!

ProEdPortal Blog Goals

Vision: My vision is to learn more about a new (to me) writing medium and to connect with bloggers interested in some of the same topics that I am interested in.

Purpose: To engage in writing activities and conversations that fuel ideas for articles, writings, musings, and that help me learn new skills.

Goals: Shared goals to promote my own accountability

1. Blog for one year.

2. Create and post at least 3 blog postings per month.

a. At least one of the postings should connect to leadership.

3. Stay connected to set blog topics, e.g., reflecting on and posting my thoughts and opinions on technology, higher education, and leadership.

4. Find at least 25 women bloggers who blog on similar topics and link them to ProEdPortal.

5. Connect blogging to at least 3 professional development activities over the course of the next 12 months.

a. Conference presentation

b. Submit a paper to a journal

c. Host a webinar

6. At the end of one year reflect, summarize year’s activities in the blog, and decide whether to continue.

Outcomes and the Journey: An Action Research Project that will unfold as the year goes by.

Reading Danah Boyd Writings on Blogs

A newbie and a latecomer to this whole blog thing am wanting to read and find out about other women who blog and have interests similar to mine. One of the most interesting and prolific women bloggers I am reading is Danah Boyd --apophenia. Boyd has been a blogger for a longtime and has massive archives and links out to other blogs and bloggers. Can only admire and be awe of all the blogging and article writing she does while enrolled as a Ph.D. student at Berkley!

A few things she writes about blogging are relevant to why I decided to experiment with blogging, for example:

1.I see blogging as way to be engaged with a community of people with like interests and can recognize the "social aspects of blogging"(Boyd, 2006).

2. In a way feel like this is Action Research, as I walk through producing
"semi-regular expressions" under what Boyd, calls a "digital roof".

3. Each new post is connected to my self-assigned readings as I explore this medium. Not sure yet how they all connect. In some respects this is just freewriting and eventually I will need to reflect and respond not only to my readings, but will need to capture my thoughts about all as this blogging stuff and to figure out what it all means. Does this mean I am "blogging to the blog itself"?


On a separate, but related topic as a parent of young adults (20-somethings), her musings and articles have helped me understand facebooking & myspacing a little better. Did not reduce all my concerns :-), but did put them in perspective. Her list of her articles, publications, presentations on topics related to this medium is well worth a bookmark.