The OU student blog platform changes are largely an improvement but there has been one catestrophic change - 2200+ blog posts later and all my tags are now in a random jumble rather than alphabetic order. How, after three years of effort building this am I supposed to find and click on a particular theme or issue, name or anything else? An easily fixed error surely? Using an iPad other functionailty has been lost - going into HTML mode you cannot copy or paste anything - crucial if you have a lengthry/complex url to paste in as a link or image.
Personal Blogs
Walled Garden or Swimming Pool, how would you define this environment?
Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 16:49
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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 7 Nov 2011, 06:01
As an exercise I have for the first time since I started this blog in February 2010, gone through EVERY tag. The typos are going and there is some consolidation. Do I need the duplication of Agnes Kukulska-Hulme and Kukulska-Hulme? I don't need the duplication of h808 week 5, and h808 wk5. And are the tags e-learning and MAODE pointless if so many entries are so identified? My view is to get stuck in and alter stuff as I go along, exactly like gardening.
Blogging here in OU land is to do so within a 'walled garden' (a technical term for a safe haven, a nursery if you will, polytunnel or cold frame if you prefer, even the training pool in a Leisure Complex rather than the open sea.
Can I gather my thoughts this way? That's the idea. More than an aide memoir once you have 100 entries + (there are more like 500 here) with tags, they can be as personal as you decide, and you can search anyway.
What I have found over ten years blogging, and 18 months here, is that almost EVERYTHING you write and tag, title (and categorise if you cut, paste and duplicate into an external blog) sparks off a memory of when and why you made that note or had that thought: you can build on this.
So why go public?
This is where a blog differs from the private diary or journal (which are valuable in their own right). A blog, shared with a discrete tutor group, or just your tutor, with the cohort for that module or the entire course, let alone ALL current OU students and the www, is guided by comments. These are always supportive, constructive, considered and relevant. Only ONCE was I ever 'flamed' and that was nine years ago on an external blog. The thoughts of those on other courses are often the most insightful of all as they come unburdened, curious and willing to challenge.
Correcting Tags
Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 10:19
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It has taken 18 months to get the blog this far. As it approaches 100,000 page views correcting the numerous typos in the hundreds of tags has become long overdue. Some of the quirks I feel like retaining. The good news is that to correct I simply click on e miscreant spelling, edit the entry and correct; it is then all updated, rather as one would expect. Just some virtual DIY for the bank holiday weekend? It's this who several visits to the municipal dump and fixing the shed roof, dripping tap, downstairs privy window, two rings on the cooker, getting the piano sold on EBay, putting in a wardrobe, fixing a door on the bathroom cabinet, while still to remove a top-box and bag of body-boards from the roof of the car while forgetting temporarily that I only feel well-ish because I haven't left bed in 24 hours having only just started a round of antibiotics that typically take a few days to kick in.
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