“Who is taking a picture of me?” This during my last presentation at UNITEC.
Workshopping It flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)
This 3+ year old photo was recently discovered by Karen (partially in the left side), and was taken in one of the workshops I did during a visit to New Zealand in November 2004. This workshop, or BlogShop, [link is dead, try later version of BloggerShop] was your run of the mill introduction to blogging, and I had the participants run out to Blogger and create their own blogs, on the spot.
Some how Karem found the photo and took the time to write a nice comment, where she shared that she has been blogging since and having her students blog as well.
She blogs as Karen’s Blog on her teaching and travels, did her own version of a blog workshop as Taking control: How can blogs support students in their language learning?, has a shared blog with some colleagues where they share what they are reading, and used the original blog she made in the workshop as a travelogue for trips to Thailand, Australia, and India.
This is about as exciting a thing to discover as a workshop presenter, that people take what you throw at them in an hour session, and go much farther than you might even dream about. In fact, looking at the other blogs from these workshops, its nice to see that some played out a bit, some did not, but that’s okay.
I have to give a big nod to Google for not chopping off the 3 year-old blogs, many of them inactive, but even at a one post blog, they are a small ripple in the blogopshere.
Thanks Karen, and keep on blogging! And the power of this single comment has me mulling over an idea of something new to do, blog-wise.
Featured image: Screenshot of BloggerShop site:
I saw UNITEC and thought “no, he can’t mean in New Zealand…”, but you did!
Did you hit any of the other universities* while you were there?
* Yes, I know UNITEC isn’t actually a university, but AUT are, and they so cheated UNITEC out of it. I didn’t attend either – I went to VUW, and worked there too for a while.
Yes, I was there 3 weeks in November 2004, paid for by UNITEC and others. I did about 2 days of workshops at AUT, as well as one day stops at Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT)], and Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec).
I spent 2 months there in 2000 when I had the luxury of a 6 month sabbatical (http://dommy.com/az2nzau), with visits up and down the North Island, and 2 weeks of being a tourist on the South.
I would jump ay an opportunity to return; NZ is a magical place for me on many levels.
Hi, I am one of the people you were with at aut, havent done much digital narrative stuff since but am now blogging 🙂
(note to Patrick, “they” (a government decision) thought more than half a dozen unis in such a tiny country and such a small city (comparitively) wasn’t warranted and there were issues of research outputs etc. The decision was not aut’s to make. )
ailsa: I’m a New Zealander – and only left about a year ago, I’m quite aware of the politics surrounding the decision. Hence the “they” refers to the government, not AUT.
Hi Alan
we would be pleased to see you agian in NZ… anytime.
As for the great workshops, they will always be remembered by those of us who enjoyed the engagement, interaction and motivation to do something different for learning.
Sadly the area at UNITEC where you motivated the masses, has been turned into a booze barn…completly gutted in homage to the god of restructuring:-)
TTFN
Richard