Eight Random Things

You may recall that a little game of tag went around the edublogosphere sometime last year. In this game, many edubloggers were called upon to list five little-known facts about themselves and then tagging the meme on to five more bloggers. It was a fun exercise to help share the love, and a good learning experience in getting to know more about tagging your posts for Technorati.

It seems that round two has started… Jo McLeay just tagged me for a similar meme that’s floating around the edublogosphere at the moment. Jo posted a list of Eight Random Facts about herself, and tagged eight more bloggers to help pass along the idea, incuding myself. So here goes…

  1. I spent 4 years at Art School in the early 80s, and majored in Screenprinting, Photography, Multimedia and Film/Video.
  2. In the 80s I was in a band called The Jellybabies and for a few years we played regular gigs in lot of pubs around Sydney .
  3. When I was 8 years old, I won the TV Times Sesame Street drawing contest. First prize was an above-ground swimming pool.
  4. I drove a cab in Sydney for three years, from 1987 to 1989. I also worked in the Taxis Combined radio room for 8 months calling taxi jobs on the air.
  5. I entered a rally car in the 1988 Wynns Safari (now known as the Australian Safari). It was one of the most incredibly hard but fun things I’ve ever done.
  6. I have two children; Alex, 15, and Kate, 12. They are fantastic kids and I love them heaps.
  7. This year I will run my first ever City to Surf event.
  8. And for the last 8 months, I still feel that Life Is Not Designed Accidentally.

So there you go. Eight things. Eight very random things. And I’m just noticing how many times the number 8 occurs within them. Weird huh?

So, now I believe it is my turn to tag some folk to see if they keep this going… Let’s see…

Simon O’Carroll, Neil D’Aguair, Jess McCulloch, Steve Madsen, Bryn Jones, John Pearce, Paul Wilkinson, James Farmer

There ya go guys and girls. Tag, you’re it. Have fun.

Oh yes, here are the rules, just in case you weren’t sure…

  • Post these rules before you give your facts (or after…)
  • List 8 random facts about yourself
  • At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
  • Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

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Data Projectors for Dummies

Back in the day, when data projectors were still somewhat of a novelty, it was probably acceptable to be a little unsure of how to set one up. But these days we are finding them in great demand and although our school techs are still willing to come set it up for teachers if they ask, I think there ought to come a point when we learn to do these things for ourselves. I mean, you don’t ask a tech to come set up an regular overheap projector for you, or a TV and DVD player, so why would a data projector be any different? As our classrooms start to depend more and more on a range of “devices”, surely we need to know how to use them for ourselves?

Anyway, In an attempt to ease the way (and more-or-less gently drop the hint that it’s about time some of you figured out how to do this stuff for yourselves) I made this little video that explains the step-by-step process of using a data projector the right way.

After adding it to our intranet, I had a copy just sitting on my hard drive so I figured I may as well share it with the rest of the world on my blog (Not that the rest of the world reads my blog mind you!) It might be of some use to someone.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/Ly1Y4ytO100" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Your comments are welcome. And yes, I know I needed a haircut.

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do u no ne1 lik dis?

My daughter Kate spotted this rather insightful cartoon in the Sunday paper last week and was quick to show it to me.  She said she thought it was something that might be useful to me in my work with other teachers, so apparently it’s not just the cartoon that is insightful…  I think the cartoon is funny, but would be funnier if only it were not so true…

How many people do you know who refuse to adapt to newer technology because the “old way” still seems to be so much more efficient?

sms cartoon

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