Change of face?

Goodness. That was exciting - and quite disconcerting. For a full 24 hours it seems I have been someone else, though it took a remark on the phone and ABF's comment on the previous post to alert me to the fact that I seemed to have turned into a Russian vocal ensemble, all without my noticing. How alarming. 

The explanation was annoyingly simple. I'd been setting up a new blog for my pal Jurij (he's not said if he likes it yet, so it may simply be strangled at birth) and had foolishly taken no steps to dissociate my own identity from it. Blogger didn't do this to me before - I already run two blogs, and to my knowledge I never appear as frankenstina - but the new Blogger is disturbingly more akin to Wordpress in its complexity (and no doubt in its flexibility) and strange things are happening. F'rinstance, the box I'm currently posting in doesn't look the way it always has - to the extent that I'm wondering if this post is going to arrive on the wrong blog. 

If it doesn't, and if I've reverted to my former persona, then all is well. But note to self: don't set up new blogs in the middle of a telephone conference. And don't work on them after midnight.

Simples!

Alien identity

I've just realised that I've turned into an alien when I post comments on Wordpress blogs! Because I was one of the contributors to Love blooms bright, the Advent blog run by Kimberly, my name now links back to that rather than to blethers. And what's more, I appear in my wordpress/flickr persona of goforchris. Talk about split personality!

As I now seem to be the only blogger still using the name blethers for my blog - the other one has apparently ceased publishing - I'm keen not to have this confusion. If anyone out there has a shortcut to being plain chris/mrs blethers without rendering myself congenitally unable to post on the wordpress blog, I'd be happy to hear from them.

Yule Tide maunderings

Well well. Seems we poor bloggers have been banned by Argyll and Bute because we use Blogger. Apparently the reason given is "sex". I have a sneaking feeling that perhaps iGear can't spell - it could be the "...gger" bit that gets the cyber-masters hot under the collar, or wherever else they feel the heat. Never mind. Presumably someone out there will continue to look in from time to time.

I do hope so, because I've just published a new poem over at frankenstina. It arose from that chilly visit to Edinburgh last week, and is dedicated to my pals Marilyn and Fraser. (Forgot to put that in the title - shall rectify some day!)

In the meantime, if you haven't received a card from The Blethers please blame my computer problems - my address list is in a label page file and the system flipped just before I printed them off. On this Yule Day (apparently it's today) I wish all non-Christians a Happy Yule , and the rest of you a happy and blessed Christmas.

Slapped wrists?

In a recent post I leapt into a storm (well - a slight depression, perhaps) about the apparent barring of Blogger by Argyll and Bute. It turns out it was a technical hitch, apparently, and all is now well. Today, wrist smarting slightly, I feel the need to justify the haste with which some of us believed the worst and didn't instead seek out the technical staff to find out what was what.

For a start, of course, I'm no longer in the system. But I was in it, and my experience as an employee left me more ready to trust the former colleague who alerted me to the outage than the people in charge of deciding what we could/could not do online in school. I'd like to give a picture of the possible scenario had I still been in B7, trying to use Web2.0 technology with, say, a boisterous class of S3 mixed-ability boys.

B7 is at the end of a corridor, tucked far from the heart of the school - the office, the Resource Centre, where lurk the people who know about gaining access to forbidden sites. Into the room come 27 assorted boys: "Miss! Are we bloggin' the day?" Expectancy is high - this is right up their street and access to the department computer trolley is rationed and carefully booked in advance. Let's say they have just set up the necessary site/sites for their work and are are eager to get blogging. The laptops are distributed and started up. It is only now, ten minutes into the period, that the problem becomes apparent. Your plans are scuppered and class morale plummets - these are not thoughtful academics we're dealing with, but very ordinary kids.

So what now? Leave the room to find out what's up? Find someone who can reach the necessary techies for you? (I never knew how to do this - it was A Secret.) Or quickly think up some other computer-based activity to keep the boys cheerfully occupied while mentally reshuffling your planned work for the next week, knowing that if you abandon them for the necessary length of time the consequences could be .... interesting? Rhetorical question, huh?

Seems to me there are a few pointers here. The first might be to realise that if web-based activities are on the increase in classrooms, then web-based hiccups have to be spotted instantly and teachers informed before the point of no return - in the same way as we used to be warned about fire drills, say. And perhaps it'd be a good thing if every teacher had a quick contact line to the techies - and it's no use firing off a specualtive email in the hope of hearing something before you go home that night. If you know your resource isn't working but will work again, at least you can plan and don't look quite such a fool in the eyes of the pupils.

In my admittedly limited experience of using computers in the classroom - not through choice but because it was so cumbersome to arrange - I found it frustrating and demeaning to be treated as if I too were a pupil who was not trusted to know how to unlock the sacred mysteries. Perhaps that explains the vehemence of the reactions which now seem to have been excessive and misdirected. I think there are lessons to be learned.