Changing faces!

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Decided that it was about time to have a (minor!) change of appearance here; so have gone with one of the default themes (Twenty Eleven). I ran into a minor problem with header; I’d uploaded a couple (incidentally, if anyone knows of a tool, like Wordle & Tagexdo, that allows you to specify the size of canvas to fit the text to, I’d be interested to know) – but didn’t like one of them. Removing them wasn’t that easy  - though I eventually found a solution.

I may yet make some more changes, as it is pretty similar to the old one – the main change really is being able to have links to (selected) pages at the top (or, indeed, anything else I’d like to link to)

Raspberry Pi vs ZX 81

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My first computer was a ZX 81 – cost £69.95 (assuming Wikipedia’s correct; I can’t remember!) That’s c £236 (This is Money) or 0.3% annual of an average house (House Price Crash). Came with 1kb of memory (expandable to 16kb) – Operating System & Keyboard inc; monitor required (monochrome output).
The Raspberry Pi goes on sale today … for £21.60 (0.01% of average house [does that say more about cost of houses or electrical components, one wonders!]) – you get 256mb memory, though you do have to add a keyboard and Operating System, as well as the monitor!

Me: I’d have one on order, were it possible to get through to a website!

Deciphering student search behaviour – SEARCH – Research Information

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Some interesting questions arise here …

Deciphering student search behaviour – SEARCH – Research Information.

… firstly – does it matter?
On the assumption that it does; why?
I certainly don’t see any problems with students discussing what they’re learning with each other; whether it’s via Facebook, MSN, over a cuppa, or whatever.
The second is something that I’d like to know more about; so, when students say they’re using Wikipedia, but citing from the items it references; are they doing something that I see as fine – using Wikipedia as a starting point, to then go and *read* the refs; or are they using Wikipedia & claiming they’ve read others?
To me, a lot of this returns to the question of assessment design; is the assessment ultimately to test whether or not facts are known, or is it how facts are used? If truly the latter; then, finding (and *verifying*) facts is only a starting point. And why not find them wherever is easy.
Oh, and have a look at ref. 1; in a bit more depth & some useful Presentations (inc. lots of refs)

Silence!

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Yet again, a period of silence on my part. I have been using twitter, where I’m @emmadw, and have started using Google+ – but trying to decide how to best manage things! I know that some people like the fact you can have circles in G+, in order to target posts; I know others like to send the same update to multiple locations (twitter/facebook/G+); I’m trying to decide what works for me.
Blogging I know I’ve been lax, but when I get back into it, I think it does work; for me. I’m thinking, though, that I’ll primarily see this blog as ‘me’ stuff, if others want to read & share they can. But, I’m my primary audience.
Twitter Good for sharing – especially work related; and easy to use. Definitely part of the toolkit! (For now, till I change my mind!)
Google+ Has its uses, though I think they’re limited. However, with the fact that now students have it via their myport accounts, I think I might use it more – with a dedicated account there. I’ll probably keep two accounts, one for work related, external use (as I’m currently using it) and another for more internal, student focussed uses.
Facebook Though I originally set up Facebook for work related purposes, it’s now very much social. I’m trying to gradually remove people who are purely work related, who I’ve never met etc., from Facebook & redirect them, should they want to remain in contact with me, to G+ and/or Twitter. Maybe, I’ll end up moving away from Facebook, to say a G+ a/c associated with my personal gmail addy, but not at the moment. My friends are there, I’m not going to get them to move, but if they move, then I’ll follow. For that particular case, I don’t think being a trendsetter will work!

N.B. Just had a few problems writing this post! In Firefox, all worked as I wanted. In Chrome, the buttons to edit the code were missing. (I could type them myself, but if they were missing, wasn’t quite sure if anything else was! In IE, while the buttons were there, it was utterly determind to put all links right at the start – no matter where the cursor was, what was highlighted etc. Firefox behaved beautifully! The edit buttons are all present & correct, any links I pasted in went where I wanted them to go …