Jumping Through Hoops
Introduction
© George E. Duckett 2009

I have written this book with the hope it will be an inspiration to any one who is currently, or has been, the subject of abuse or neglect as a child and who is suffering, or has suffered, through a poor primary and secondary education to find if they can survive and turn the tide of defeat into a rewarding and fulfilling life by realizing that theirs really some one out there trying to get you and they are not a figment of your imagination.

I was born in the first half of the 20 th Century. As a young child I experienced the latter part of the Great Depression and World War II. As a boy, the Korean War. I served my country in the US Army during the Cold War, Cuban Crises, the Moon Landing the assassination of an American President and the war in Vietnam.

I saw an American President resign his Office in disgrace. The Berlin wall come down with the end of the Cold War. There have been so many other small wars since WW II, I have lost count of them and have no idea who won any of them, if there is ever a winner of any war.. Then we had the Golf Wars, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now in the first half of the 21 st Century the 9/11 bombing of the Twin Towers that officially opened the War Against Terrorism that is in reality, the Jihad, a Holy War in the eyes of radical Muslims. I see the War Against Terrorism as World War III.

I was born during World War II and it looks as if I will die during World War III. To the best of my knowledge there has been a war going on some where in the world for my whole life time.

My feelings are reflected in the words of the song, *Where Have All The Flowers Gone, “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”

*Words and music by Pete Seeger
http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/flowers-gone.shtml


I have finished the first draft and it is now being edited and proofread Its a matter of going back over things and adding to the information that's there. I'm trying to find photos that will help tie the story together that is difficult when most of the people I knew that had any have pasted away years ago. The ones that may still be living are nowhere to be found. I estimate I'm about 50% finished with my story

Up Date

Just A little note to let any one that is following this Blog that My book is coming along I'm now up to chapter 8 in the draft form. That covers a period from 1938 to 1977. That only covers my first 30 years there's still a 40 years to go yet.

Parts of it are hard to write about as they are painful and do require some deep thought as to weather I want to tell about it or not.

At This stage I'm not sure as to how I will publish it I'm thinking I'll do it as an E-Book. I'll just have to wait and see.

Any one that may be interested can find some old pictures of me and my wife Mary on my facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/george.e.duckett?ref=name

Reflections

Recently as I was going through my old files, I came upon an paper I wrote for an English class in 1970. I can't remember what the assignment was other then to write about how I felt about attending college.

I'm included it in the introduction of my book, Jumping Through Hoops, as it is important to me today as I write an account of my life, as it was when I originality wrote it. The Assignment, as best as I can remember, was to say on one page how I felt about starting college.

At the time, I was 32. I had just left the US Army in Auguast of 1969 after 13 years and was trying to come to terms with life as a free man.

The only thing I can compare my life as a soldier to, during the cold war, was being locked away in prison. The difference between us and criminals were, they had a better life style in prison then many of us had “protecting our country.”. For the most part convicts had only two to a cell with a TV if they could afford it, all we had was cramped living conditions, many times only two feet between bunks and no TV.

As a matter of fact I think the criminals got a better deal when they left prison then separated or returning service men and women did by the public we were fighting for. When they left prison Exconvicts had, if they wanted, support services not available to ex-servicemen and women.

In addition to the poor lifestyle I had lived for 13 years, I had experienced a very poor education and had left school when I was 17 years old, to join the army, as a means to escape the torment from teachers and school bullies. So here I was, a 32 year old man starting college with a poor educational background and scared to death I was going to fail.

The short peace that follows reflects how I felt at the time.
This is the assignment that I did for English Composition 101 class in September 1970.It was the first “A” ever, I got for an English class.

*****

The Cubbyholes Of My Mind

In my mind I find a long, dimly lighted hallway, with cubbyholes of varying size on both sides. By the doorway it is clean and well kept. As I venture in further, it gets dusty. The holes are barred with cobwebs and the lighting is poor.

I enter into the hallway with new information. What do I do with it? Where do I put it? How do I sort it?

First I have to clean out the dust, unbar the holes, change the lighting so I can begin.

Now every thing is cleaned, the cobwebs are gone and bright lights are installed. I'm ready to store the information where I can find it.

CONFUSION:

There is always confusion when I begin. I start sorting everything that is already there and take a thorough inventory:

What Do I do with all the junk I find? Throw it away?

NO!:

There is no junk! Everything I have learned has meaning. All the Information, all the experiences, good and bad, are important. I need them to learn more.

Do I just Keep them separated from the rest?

No, as I learn new things I'll put them in a different place,then go back to my old experiences, combine them, and store them with the new. I will be much wiser for it.
In the beginning I will spend a lot of time thinking and asking myself if it is worth it, do I really want to do this, do I want to go on?

THE ANSWER IS YES!

*****

The only difference today from what it was in 1970 is that the hallway is longer and now it has little rooms off to the sides with much more information storied away in them. Some of the rooms have been closed and locked for many years and the keys have been misplaced.

Recently the key for one of the rooms that has been locked away for the last 30 years Has been dropped into my lap. The opening of that door is the catalyst for the writing my auto biography. As strange as it may seem after all the years that have passed some one contacted me and we started doing what we should have done some 30 years ago, Communicate!

My Short Bio

My name is George E Duckett

I currently live in Tingalpa, Queensland, Australia.

I was born in Highland Park a suburb of Detroit Michigan USA in November of 1938.

My father was in the Army and served overseas in WWII and the Korean War.

We moved many times and I went to many schools until he settled us in Sonoma California in 1950 when he was on his way to to Korea.

I left school at 16 to take an Apprenticeship as a Loft Rigger at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in 1955.

I joined the Army and spent 13 years in the service from 1956-69. I served overseas during the cold war in Korea and Germany

In September of 1970 I enrolled in college. I received my BS (Hon.) Educational Media Production in August of 1973 and went on to complete my MS Educational Media Technology in June 1974 from the University of Northern Colorado (UNC). I had a Graduate Fellowship with Department of Educational Media at UNC during my Masters work.

From 1974-78 I was employed as an Instructor in Educational Media, U.N.C., Department of Educational Media. In 1977 I completed Professional Teacher's Education Certification in Secondary Communications with endorsement as a K-12 Media Specialist.

In 1977 I received an invitation from the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education, (TCAE) Department of Teacher Education to come to Australia as a Lecturer in Instructional Technology from 1978-80. My contract with TCAE ended and due to the cutback in funding for education at that time there were no positions open at the college. During this time, 1980-84 we bought a property and built a house. My wife worked and I built the house and picked up work when I could find it.

I decided to go back to TSIT and enrolled in Environment Design. At the end of the first year a position opened in the School of Architecture for Senior Technical Officer and part time Lecturer. I took the position and worked for the school until I was asked to apply for a position as Administrative Officer, Purchasing and Transport, Launceston Campus of the University of Tasmania (UT) From December 1991-January 1994. I started working on a Phd. at UT in 1992.

In January of 94 I took early retirement from UT and enrolled full time PhD by research at Deakin University from August 1993-August 1997. I completed my Research and was writing the dissertation but again severe cuts in in Education left me without a supervisor and I was forced to resign from the program. At the time the Faculty of Education at Deakin, from 1994-97 was cut from over 300 lecturers to about 30 and classes were being offered that had no one to teach them. At that point I felt I was wasting my time and opted out.

I returned to the US 1997 to see what was going on in education there and found they were no better off than we were in Australia. Returned to Australia in February 2000 and found nothing was available in my field.

Although I am now retired I have a background in education and am still interested in its outcome. I would love to do something to help bring education back to a 1st world level. This year 2009 an opportunity once again has presented itself and I'm helping with the development of online tutorials with an online learning program by the California School Library Association 2.0 Team.

To the best of my knowledge I have finished

9:13 Am 10 June 2009  Australian time.

To the best of my knowledge I have finished the School Library Learning 2.0 tutorial. I want to thank Jackie and Connie and all the others I know nothing about for your work on the project...

A big thanks to Jeanne for telling me about it.

It's the first real intellectual challenge I have had since the turn of the century. You are well on the way to developing a working model for online education. With a few tweaks here and there it would make a required course of study at college or university. In addition other units can be modeled after it. I think you have a real winner.

George

#23 Week 9:

Summarize your thoughts about this program.

At last just about finished! Just this and the end of unit survey to complete and I can get stuck into something else.

First I must say I'm not a librarian' however I did take a few classes when working on my degree in educational media, some 35 or so years ago. I concentrated on the media production and AV side of the library media specialist training. But over the years the little bit of library classes has helped in my research.

I found this program to be exciting and well worth the effort I put into it.

In addition I can see that a lot of time and effort, on the part of the people that put it all together was well worth the time I spent doing it.
I'm envious of those of you who put it together, you had the wonderful tools to do it with the blog, Wiki and all the other tools used to assemble this gem.

When I started on my studies in online education I was limited to working with Golfer, bulletin board's, and email to do all the things you can do now with such ease. When the web browser cane along I thought I had died and went to heaven.
Well I think I have said enough about how great you efforts have been an pass on some of the things need to be looked into.

When I started I ran into a number of glitches that may be due to the browser I'm using. It may be worth a note; if you are using version 8 of Internet Explorer you may have problems with cookies not being excepted from some of the sites and you may need to adjust the settings on your browser to allow for the acceptance of cookies. See Week 5 for what to do about it.

There are also a number of dead links in the week 9 things. Not sure if it is the code or if the sites have moved or been taken down.

Some of the things need just a little more how to do it. Perhaps a help file Or Q &A to help out the people that lack experience working with some of the tools.

I found the blog layout would get a bit boring. It works well for people that have not done any web development and there is nothing wrong with the WYSIWYG. It certainly makes it easer for people to get their ideas into print so to speak. I found some simple HTML tags that work well in the blog, perhaps a thing on using some HTML to dress up the blog would be worth addinga, “If you want to experiment with HTML”, to the things.

And to bring things to the end I must say CONGRATULATIONS to the teem that developed this package I know a lot of hard work went into it.

I looked over the questionnaire but didn't fill it out as I didn't fit into the target group. An old classmate from my college days suggested I try it on for size that I would like it. Well she was right I did like it and hope I can contribute to in in some way. To sum it up in one word FANTASTIC

Pick out your own description from below:


194 words for "fantastic": Barmecidal, Barmecide, Gothic, absurd, adroit, airy, alien, antic, appalling, apparent, apparitional, arbitrary, astonishing, autistic, balmy, baroque, beguiling, bewildering, beyond belief, bizarre, brain-born, capricious, chimeric, chimerical, clever, cockamamie, concocted, conspicuous, cooked-up, cracking, cranky, crazy, crotchety, deceptive, delusional, delusionary, delusive, delusory, dereistic, dream-built, dreamlike, dreamy, eccentric, egregious, enigmatic, erratic, erroneous, exceptional, exotic, extraordinary, extravagant, fabricated, fabulous, fallacious, false, fancied, fanciful, fancy-born, fancy-built, fancy-woven, fantasied, fantasque, fascinating, fictional, fictitious, fictive, figmental, flaky, florid, foolish, forged, formidable, freakish, great, grotesque, harebrained, hatched, high-flown, humorsome, illusional, illusionary, illusive, illusory, imaginary, imagined, implausible, impossible, incomprehensible, inconceivable, incredible, ingenious, insane, invented, irrational, kinky, laughable, legendary, loony, ludicrous, made-up, maggoty, manufactured, marked, marvelous, massive, miraculous, misleading, monstrous, monumental, moody, mortal, motiveless, mythical, nonsensical, notable, noteworthy, noticeable, notional, odd, of mark, ostensible, outlandish, outrageous, outre, outstanding, overwhelming, passing strange, peculiar, petulant, phantasmagoric, phantasmal, phantom, phenomenal, poppycockish, preposterous, prodigious, put-up, puzzling, quaint, queer, quirky, rare, remarkable, ridiculous, rococo, seeming, self-deceptive, self-deluding, sensational, signal, silly, singular, specious, spectacular, spectral, splendid, strange, striking, stupendous, superior, supposititious, temperamental, terrific, towering, tremendous, trumped-up, unaccountable, unactual, unbelievable, uncommon, unearthly, unexpected, unfounded, unheard-of, unimaginable, unique, unlikely, unprecedented, unreal, unrealistic, unreasonable, unrestrained, unsubstantial, vagarious, vagrant, visionary, wacky, wanton, wayward, weird, whimsical, wild, wonderful, wondrous

George

#20, 21 & 22 Week 9:

Podcasts, Video & Downloadable Audio

#20. Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and sharevideos.

I viewed the Videos:

Introducing the Book
Web 2.0
Library 2.0 Manifesto
March of the Librarians
Jack O'Connell Goes Back to School

Loved them! Great little send up on the help desk.

By chance a few days ago I came across the following video clip and It upset me to no end. How can the police manage to get away with this kind of thing. It shows me that there is still a long way to go before things like I viewed in this clip come to an end.

Once again its a person of color that is beaten and for what we may never know. The man made on hostel moves I could see from the tape and what could he have said to cause that kind of a reaction from a police officer.

What the strange thing is, why would a police officer care weather the man's jacked was zipped or not. Who knows perhaps its breaking the law for a black man to be on the street without zipping up his jacket.

What ever the the reason nothing can justify that attack and arrest of that man.I find that I'm torn on weather I like or dislike YouTube. On the plus side a number of very informative clips manage to find there way into the light of day that might never have made it due to government censorship or some other means of cover up.

On the down side the stupid thing some people do for there five minutes of fame only to encourage others to to the same only to be one up on the other.

Woooooohh!!! there lad Don't get carried away move on to the next 'thing”. Your nearing the end of the tutorial.

As for potential there are certainly a large number of items on YouTube that are worth having in a library blog.

Now for inserting the video into your Blog there is an adjustment you will need to make so that the window will fit into the column of your blog. The with of the column is 420 pixels wide.

The Windows from YouTube vary in width. The original size of the one I inserted into this column looked like this: [object width="560" height="340] To adjust it to fit into the column it was necessary to change the width and hight to; [object width="420" height="261].

NOTE: there two places in the code that need to be changed to work properly.

#21 Podcasts (You don’t need an iPod!)

Problems here most of the links were dead or web pages missing. Can't seem to make any working connections to your recommended links.

Not having sucsess I goggled “podcast” and found a collection at podcast.com. Click on the buttons below to visit a collection of educational podcast and view a podcast on An Introduction to Project Learning

#22 eBooks and Audio eBooks

What can I say? Not being a Librarian I didn't have a clue that any collection of this extent existed, simply for the band width required to download it. What a wonderful collection. I can see that I will be reading and collecting a library I never dreamed I could have to treasure.

I have included links below to eBook sites so that any one reading this Blog will also have the opportunity to take advantage of the collections of clasic books.

#18 & 19 Week 8

#18 Online productivity (word processing, spreadsheet) tools.

All I can say is that its amazing the change that has come about in the last few years with regards to Online productivity tools.

As a matter of fact I ran a goggle on “web-based productivity applications” And a very long list of applications and information was generated. Many of them are free and for that reason you must but up with some inconvenience of having advertising distracting you from what your doing... But then it is free!

Secondly I look at the online versions and find them satisfactory for learning about the different office applications. However, I would be very reluctant to put any sensitive information on them. The major drawback to the online applications is that you must be able to go online to take advantage of all that is available.

That brings us back around to stand alone free and inexpensive software to do the same thing off line.

Goggle “ free and inexpensive” and and find curriculum materials as well as software and hardware.

When you Goggle “free and inexpensive software” again there is a very long list of goodies. Do take care some of the items are download for free and you may get the first year free but after that you will start receiving accounts for the annual subscription.

I have started a document on Goggle doc to collaborate with others working on a project . We have not got down to the nitty gritty as yet but I can see the defent advantage of using it to develope
I think that just about winds it up for this 'thing' so I can move on to the next.

#19 The Library Thing

I think this is a great tool! As my collection grows I'll add my new books it to my List. This could also be used as a reference list for publication of conference papers etc. Added my five bucks. Had to scrounge around to find what I have and managed to find five of them.

If you click the button below it will take you to my Library Thing.

Not much of a list at this point, only a few survived a large number of moves.

Been there and done that. Sadly I have but one book in my collection. With all the moving around I have done in my life I have but one book that I treasure and have managed to keep.

It looks like a good place to find books of interest for those wanting to add to their library. A excellent source for librarians wanting to find Books reviewed by their peers and not a publisher just selling books.

I have joined The Library Thing And registered “The Indian Tipi: It's History, Construction, and Use”.

I used this book to construct my tipi when living in Colorado before to coming to Australia. I wish I had been able to bring it with me but it would have been hard to get 18 lodge poles into my bags an on the plane.

I used the book once again when at The Tasmanian State Instate of Technology to supervise the School of Art Students project on American Indian Art.

On the left is the photo of the tipi I built when in Colorado.

#16 & 17 Week 7

Another new experience went to the Wikis and opened my account.

Not to sure as to how I feel about the Wikis just yet the one I set up seems to be a bit buggy had some problems setting up my profile. Going to see if I can find some tutorial on setting them up.

Found a help file on the Wiki but its not much help the help file said to create a new page go to the side bar but cant even find the side bar.

Tried to find a help file but the help file was no help at all. I gave up on that Wiki account and went back to Goggle and found another one called WetPaint. Just click on the button to take you my Wiki Home Page Reawara Research and Development.

On my Wiki you will also find a more detailed Profile about me and where I have been for the last 70 some years.

I recommend that when you set-up your Wiki you Goggle “educational wikis”.

There is one drawback to the Wiki that it has advertising in it but it's free! If you want to remove the adverts you have to buy a membership.

Here is another HTML tag you can use on your blog to link to another source.

If you would like to put a link button on your blog pages this is best done with a small form tag As follows:

<FORM ACTION="The URL" METHOD=GET>
<INPUT TYPE=submit VALUE="Text on button">
</FORM></plaintext>

Having looked at the Wikis listed in the tutorial I do believe that they can be a wonderful tool for interaction in an educational stetting. The WetPaint Wiki Has many good features and allows for a multimedia approach for the pretension of learning tutorials.

#17

I Visited the California Curriculum Connections wiki and posted the following comment.

My initial experience with the Wikis was not a good one. Some how I found a wiki that did not work well and had many problems with it. I wasted a lot of time trying to make it work and just had to give up on it. From there I did a goggle for educational wikis and found a suitable one. When starting out with little or no knowledge about a web tool its important that the participant has a satisfactory experience or they may just through in the towel, walk away from the tutorial and not finish it.

I would suggest that a list of some simple, easy to develop, wikis should be placed into the tutorials so that the first experience is a positive one. From there they can goggle for others that may better fit the subject they want to develop if none of the listed ones are satisfactory

When looking over the number of people starting the Tutorial and the ones finishing It would appear that there is some reason why they dropped out. There is a survey at the end of the tutorial for those that finish but what about the ones that don't get that far?

Perhaps if there was a link in each of the 'things' that linked to a, (Please tell us why you are not able to complete the tutorial) survey, as to why you did not complete the tutorial.

This would alert you to problems that may not be obvious but are a stumbling block for some. From my experience from doing the tutorial so far, (I'm a few years behind In the Technology) I was getting frustrated in some of the 'things' and had I been a little less determined to complete the tutorial I could have easy tossed it in.

George

#15 Week 6 The Horizons Report

To comment on The Horizon Report at this time would not be complete as Just to see what the past reports were about I goggled it and found a total of eight reports one of them an Australian New Zealand report. The report start in 2004 and at this writing there are two 2009 reports. It would appear I have some home work to do before I make any comments on the project at all. I will comment to making my observations on the Report at a latter date. I have added the links to the reports to this posting for those of you that have not been aware that there were more then the one report. With the links supplied you can read the reports on line or download the PDF documents to read at your leasure. About the graphics on the right of this text: I'm finding there are lots of things that can be added into the blog by using the HTML tags. This time I just went to the web page and opened the page to view the html version of the page. That can be done by going to the View menu and select Source. That will open a window and you will be able to see the html code. All I did was to find what I wanted and did a copy and paste into the CoffeeCup Free HTML editor And have a play with it until I got it the way I wanted it. The Window that opens is a read only document but it can be copied. You can't edit the document from there I have found it a great way to get the address of pictures etc. Always remember to give credit to the source of the item copied or linked. The thumbnails you see are linked from their server as well as the download links. I did make an attempt to change the format of the table but could not get it to work for me so I just went with the flow so to speak. Guess I have spent enough time on this for now!George

Horizon Reports Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 Edition web version 2009 Horizon Report web version Japanese version Spanish version Catalan version 2008 Horizon Report Australia-New Zealand Edition web version 2008 Horizon Report web version Spanish version Catalan version 2007 Horizon Report web version Spanish version Catalan version 2006 Horizon Report 2005 Horizon Report 2004 Horizon Report

File Hosting Servers

File Hosting Servers:

If you Goggle Free File Hosting Servers you will find a number of them listed. Don't just grab the first on that comes along have a look at all the pitfalls that may be hidden along the way. Many of them have tones of advertising pop-ups And as a free user you cant always be sure your files will be there. I you have a large number of files you send out to friends and family you might just want to pay for the service. There are advantages for using the files servers as you will not have to use up your monthly allotment of file up/down load Gb's.

I have uploaded a number of conference papers as am example and for those that are interested in computers in education.

List of Publications Authored and Co-Authored

By George Duckett

From January of 1994 to March of 1997, George Duckett was enrolled in a PhD program at Deakin University in Melbourne Australia. He was working on expanding his PhD. studies started at the University of Tasmania in Launceston, Tasmania Australia. His studies were in a Pre-service Teacher Education Program for Educational Computing. On moving to Deakin, Duckett shifted the emphases of his study from Pre-service education to Teacher Professional Development in Information Technologies. During his studies He attended conferences, presented and submitted papers to Journals. The following are copies of his published work.

The files below are in PDF format and are housed on file hosting server. To view them you can download then by clicking on the link. When the web page appears click on the free user button to download the file

Published Papers:

1995

• Duckett, G. et.al. 1995, Athena University -VOU and GENII: A Model of Conceptual Change and Collaboration, in CSCL '95 Computer Support for Collaborative Learning '95 Conference at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, Oct. 17-20, 1995.

• Wallet, K., Duckett, G. & White, L. 1995, Do K-12 Teachers Need a Gateway to the World and Beyond?, at Research and Teaching in Cyberspace II: The Second in the Series of Conferencing Workshops for Teachers On Using the Internet May 11-16, 1995, hosted by Athena University - Virtual Online University.

• Duckett, G. 1995, Using Technology For P-12 Teacher Professional Development Programs in Communication Technology (CT), submitted as part of a research Report to the National Board of Employment, Education and Training and Skills Formation Council Project,A Survey of Technological Infrastructure in Education and the Professional Development and Support of Educators and Trainers in Information and Communication Technologies.

• Duckett, G. 1995, A Plan For K-12 Teacher Professional Development in Communication Technology: Using the Carrot and not the Stick, at Research and Teaching in Cyberspace II: The Second in the Series of Online Conferencing Workshops for Teachers On Using the Internet May 11-16, 1995, hosted by Athena University - Virtual Online University in the USA.

• Duckett, G., Wallet, K. & White, L. 1995, Gateway To The World For American Rural Education, a position paper for the GENII Lab School (a branch of Athena University).

• Duckett, G., et.al. 1995, GENII Welcomes K-12 Teachers to an Online Lab School, in News@VOU, an online publication from Athena University, v1, n1, March 12, 1995.

• Duckett, G., Mitchell, T., Paprzycki, M., & Wallet, K. (1995, Nov. 12-15 1995). Defining Computer Literacy As It Relates To Teacher Education. Paper presented at the Computers on Campus National Conference, Huston, Texas.

  1994

• Mitchell, T., Paprzycki, M. & Duckett, G. 1994, "Computer Literacy: A Global Perspective", 1994 International Symposium on Mathematics/Science Education and Technology, San Diego, California, July 22, 1994, and in: Mathematics/Science Educationa and Technology, Marks, G.H. (ed.), AACE, Chalottesville, VA., pp. 114-117.

• M., Mitchel, T. & Duckett, G. 1994,
  "Computer Literacy and Competencies: Preparing Teachers for the Information Superhighway", Eighth Annual Southeastern Small College Computing Conference, Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, November 11 - 12, 1994

• Duckett, G. 1994, Defining Computer Literacy/Competencies: For P-12 Teacher In-service Programmes in Information Technology, in The Information Superhighway: Implications for Education, McDougall, A. & Thiessen, D. (eds), Computing In Education Group of Victoria, Melbourne, pp.54-67.

• Setzer, V. W., & Duckett, G. (1994, 28 June - 2 July 1994). The Risks to Children Using Electronic Games - Abstract. Paper presented at the Asia Pacific Information Technology in Training and Education Conference and Exhibition, Brisbane, Australia, and in: Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture: The Virtual Square, 2(4).

• Setzer, V.W. & Duckett, G. 1994, Electronic Games: Are they hazardous to your health?, in Pandora's Box, Burwood Association of Students Inc., Burwood Vic., Augast 1994.

• Duckett, G., Gay, M., Moore, T.L. & Wallet, K. 1994, The GENII Project: Giving Classroom Teachers "A Ticket To Ride" On The Information Superhighway, in The Information Superhighway: Implications for Education, McDougall, A. & Thiessen, D. (eds), Computing In Education Group of Victoria, Melbourne,pp.68-79.

• Duckett, G., Gay, M., Moore, T. L., & Wallet, K. (1994a, ). GENII: An Internet Welcoming Committee for K-12 Teachers. Paper presented at the Research and Pedagogy in Cyberspace: A Conferencing Workshop for Teachers On Using the Internet, Virtual Online University, and in: Computerchat, Australian Reading Association Newsletter of the Special Interest Group 1: Technology in Literacy, 72), pp. 40-50.

• Duckett, G. & Wallet, K. 1994, A Model Definition For Technological Literacy/Competencies For Teacher/Educators As Developed For The Spotsylvania School District, Virginia, USA, Abstract found in Procedings Vol. 2 apitite '94 p. 484. This paper was presented as a Poster paper at the Asia Pacific Information Technology in Training and Education Conference and Exhibition, 28 June - 2 July 1994, Brisbane, Australia.

• Duckett, G. 1994, An Overview of Proposed Instructional Units for the Teaching Profession in Information and Instructional Technology, Abstract found in Procedings Vol. 2 apitite '92 p. 467. This paper was presented as a Poster paper at the Asia Pacific Information Technology in Training and Education Conference and Exhibition, 28 June - 2 July 1994, Brisbane, Australia.

• Mitchell, T., Paprzycki, M. & Duckett, G. 1994, Research Methods Using Computer Networks, Electronic Journal of Virtual Culture, v2 n4 August, 1994.

• Paprzycki, M., Mitchell, T & Duckett, G. 1994, Using Computer Networks to Study Computer Literacy, in Technology and Teacher Education Annual, 1994. and in: The Proceedings of STAT 94- Fifth Annual Conference of the Society for Technology and Teacher Education, Washington DC; March 16-19, 1994.pp. 91-93.

• Mitchell, T., Paprzycki , M. & Duckett, G. 1994, Research Methods Using Computer Networks, in The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture: The CYBERSPACE MONITOR, ISSN 1068-5723, September 27, 1994 Volume 2 Number 4.

• Setzer,. V.W.. & Duckett, G. 1994, The Risks To Children Using Electronic Games, in The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture: The Virtual Square, Shimabukuro, J. (ed), ISSN 1068-5723, September 27, 1994 Volume 2 Number 4.

  1993

• Kelly, I. & Duckett, G. 1993, Current Pre-service Teacher Education: Handicapping the Computer, The Teacher and The Student, in Australian Educational Computing, Vol. 8 ACEC '93 Edition, pp. 133-138.
  

• Duckett, G. 1993, So Now We Have A National K-12 Curriculum: Where do we go from here?,
  in Australian Educational Computing, Vol. 8 ACEC '93 Edition, pp. 67-71.

• Duckett, G. 1993, A National K-12 Curriculum for Australia: Is it the thin edge of the wedge?, in Connections: The Journal For Technology Coordinators, v9 n4 pp. 17-21.

• Mitchell, T., Paprzycki, M., & Duckett, G. 1993, Using Computer Networks to Study Computer Literacy. Paper presented at the Computers on Campus National Conference, Myrtle Beach, SC.

  1992

• Duckett, G. 1992, Basic Problems in the Development of a Computer Literacy Curriculum, in ACEC '92 Computing the Clever Country?, Computer Education Group of Victoria, Richmond North, Vic. 3121, 283-318.

  Un-Published Paper:

• A Definition of Technological Literacy/Competency For Teacher/Educators

  Proposal Paper:

• Wallet, K. & Duckett, G. 1993, A Proposal of Technological Literacy/Competency for Educators in Spotsylvania County Schools, submitted to the Spotsylvania County School District as part of the five year Technology Plan.

  Update to THE RISKS TO CHILDREN USING ELECTRONIC GAMES Click here to see updated paper.
  

#13, 14 (Week 6)

#13 Tagging

This has great potential for finding information and being found by others as soon as the glitch in Technorati's server is fixed I will clam the blog and code my postings accordingly. This site makes tagging clear and should be used in the beginning of the tutorial

Del.icio.us

Had a look at Del.icio.us and found it was not something I would use. I did not find the tutorials that useful. The movie clip was out of focus and was very hard to follow. Not enough there to motivate me to use Del.icio.us. However I can see it would be useful in a library for reconditioning books and articles to patrons

#14 Technorati

Registering with Technorati

Description of my blog with a max of 250

Re-inspired to contribute to Educational Research and Development of online educational material using the Blog. Working in collaboration With educators and industry to develop online or classroom learning/training units of study.

Tags for my blog
education
computer
school+library+lairing+2.0
research
pyramid
George+E+Duckett
in-service
pre service
online+computer+education
Delivering+Professional+Development
Online+Instruction
instructional+model
online+tutorial
professional+development
Instructional+design
Photo+Essay

A choice of the following buttons for my blog

Add to Technorati Favorites

My Bio. and Interests for my blog with a max of 250 characters

Bored with retirement I have been re-inspired by an old classmate to contribute, to Educational Research and Development of online educational material, in collaboration With educators and industry to develop online learning/training units of study.

George

#11 & 12 (WEEK 5) Play around

Explore any site from the Web 2.0 awards list

Looking at the Seomoz.org Web 2.0 Awards shows an amazing number of online tools for just about anything you want to do.

At the moment I'm very interested into Collaborative Writing and Word Processing as a priority. Taking a look at Google Docs and White board. They look like the best bet for some of the activities I'm hoping to become involved in. All I need now is to find some one to try it out with. If any of you out there are users of the fore mentioned applications drop me a line and we can give it a try.

There's not a lot to say about any of the applications other then to say I am using Flickr and Picnik to store and edit photos for downloading to The blog etc.

The Rollyo

The Rollyo looks like a great tool that enables you to home in on specific sites to search their data bases. The application allows a link to your personal search engine to be placed onto your browser tool bar for easy access.

The interface is a little confusing after you have installed it into your browser. Clicking on the icon takes you to a starter page ,then you need to scroll down to find the links to your Rollyo home page.

It take a bit of playing around to get it set-up but then things seem to work well after you have chosen the sites you want to search.

I have managed to find about 20 sites that store information on my subject matter, computing in education,in-service and pre-service teaching. The nice thing about it is that you can create as many search engines as you like . As you discover new sites to search you can modify your existing engines.

As I work through this tutorial I keep experimenting with different ways to present my work into the Blog. This time I'm writing up this blog entry with my FREE word processing application called OpenOffice. Its compatible with Microsoft Office and other WP applications.

This time I'm trying the export to HTML to paste into My Blog to see how it works.

PS

It works but takes some editing. Once you edit out the unwanted text, the blog editer will help weed out tags that the are not allowed. I will test a few more conversions that may come in handy and save time when you want to post list et.al.

George

#10 (WEEK 5) Play around

Play around with online Image Generators

My first try at this didn't work very well, problems with “fd Klickr Toys”, bad connection again. I had to reset the cookie acceptance again to get it to work properly. It might be a good idea to add the trouble shooting hint to that section of the Week 5 Play week as below:

If you have any problems with the “fd Klickr Toys” working properly try this;

Go to Tools Menu /Internet Options/Security tab

Move the slide all the way down and click on Apply.

Go next to the Privacy tab:

Move the slide all the way down and click on Apply.

When you have finished working with Klickr Toys return to the tools menu and click on the default level button.

The applications should work properly after your browser has received the cookie. If not repeat the above trouble shooting fix. Be sure to reset the settings you changed in the Internet Options back to default!

Exercise #10

Play around with with an online Image Generator.

Sample 1 Palette Generator

Creates a harmonious color palette from a photograph. I think its great for picking colours to go with Pictures; a great aid for designing graphics. The only drawback to it is that the swatches are in Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) format for PhotoShop or compatible applications. To get around this I used HyperSnap to edit it to a JPG file. See My first post, HERE for a link to fhe HyperSnap website.

Sample 2 CD/DVD Cover

Make a personalised cover for a CD or DVD's This toy places a photo on a pattern for a soft cover or cutout the picture and slip in into a jewel case cover. Very handy to have when should you need a temporary cover to protect the disk from scratches. A quick and easy was to present a gift of a home made CD etc.

Sample 3 cube

I liked the cube. Makes a nice little “thingie” to have around the house to display your photos. Or it could be used to play a game of some sort by using pictures of subjects, throw the dice and make up a story about the picture that comes up.

Captioner and Trading Card

Captioner

Trading Card

Love the captioner. That will be so much fun to play with and create some funny photos. The trading card is great as well . Students can use them to make trading cards of themselves to give to their friends.

Other than that there are toys for making ID badges that can come in handy for conferences and meetings to add a touch of class to what often is a BLAH meeting. It's so easy to make the badges etc. on the spot now that we have digital cameras.

Did you Know???

One last thing I have been working on during play time is trying out some different things in the body of the blog. It seems that you can use HTML tags to do a few different things:

Tables
Justify Text
Bring in graphics from other sources than Flickr

Just to mention a few. I'll keep working on it and see what else I cam add to the list.

The source for the HTML code that I'm using is the CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor.

That seems to be one of the latest editors out. Click Here Click Hereto go to the post for the link to CoffeeCup software.

To Justify text use the following Tags

<div align="justify">Put he body of the text here</div>

#8 & #9 Week 4 Learn about RSS feeds etc.

Found some interesting news feeds that will fit in very well with the theme of my blog. A number of the feeds have to do with free and inexpensive software and and other technical information that I think may be of value to Libraians and Teachers.

The RSS Feeds are far better than the old news groups as they include graphics that you don't need to download and patch together to see.

Goggle Reader selections:

3d
Blogging
Facebook
Freeware
Open Source
Software
Web-Authoring

Bloglines selections:

BBC News News Front Page World Edition
Bloglines News
Design*Sponge
Dictionary.com
Word of the Day
Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog
GigaOM
librarian.net
Library Stuff
ReadWriteWeb
ResourceShelf
The Shifted Librarian
Silicon Alley Insider
Slashdot
TechCrunch

They are areas I have found to be important in the development of online educational units of study; Important in the sense, due to the cutting of education budgets world wide, to accomplish the development of any educational material, online or hard copy classroom aids. By saving money in this way it will give more to areas that need more funds.

Just for fun the other day I Googled myself to see what was left of my presence on the net. To my surprise I found an old paper that I co-authored with Professor Valdemar W. Setzer in 1994. He has republished it with additions.

I have been told that there are many of you interested in gaming so I have put a link to “THE RISKS TO CHILDREN USING ELECTRONIC GAMES” below.

Click here to view the paper

Click here to view his web site

I think that brings this part of the SLL 2.0 to an end.

George

#6 & #7 Week 3: Photos & Images

The photo has been made using Mosaic Maker and has lots of potential for bloggers' presentations.

On to the assignment of looking around at the things in that long list of Flickr mashups and 3rd party sights.

To my surprise I found many items that I could use for the little things I do on the web.

For the most part there are lots of things kids can use to do presentations for their school reports and creative endeavours.

Used properly and sparingly they can add to the presentation quality on blogs.

I'm quite impressed with the Montager, Mat and Mosaic Maker that offers a variety of means for presenting photos. I found it a great starting point for developing graphic aids.

The Montager is an interesting little gem. The one problem I found was that I've not been able to save the image. I'm writing the author to see if I can find out how to save a working image.

Before starting on the assignment I followed some advice I was given and looked up a number of blogs from the Blog Roll. I was a little disappointed to find many of them have not had entries for over a year.

However as I moved down the list I found some with current entries during this month in the Congratulations - 2.0 Team List.

I selected 7 of them and asked them to have a look at my blog and comment on it if they would.

I would suggest that a blog be set up for current registered SLL 2.0 participants to post the name and a link to their blog and a short introduction to themselves and their interests.

When I thought about this, the time of the year, with summer break about to start there may not be many people around unless they are be starting the School Library Learning 2.0

(SLL 2.0) to do some professional development. I'm looking forward to chatting with anyone that's doing the SLL 2.0 unit or not.

#7 Week 3: Photos & Images

Create a blog post about anything technology related:

I think I'll play the devils advocate here and throw the cat amongst the pigeons.

It's nearly 40 years since I started university and the educational technology has changed drastically. My Bachelors Degree was in Educational Media Production (1973) and Masters in Educational Media Technology (1974).

At that time all student teachers were required to take classes in Educational Media. The structure of the units of study encompassed Operation of AV equipment, development and preparation of graphic teaching materials, finding and using free and inexpensive materials, basic introduction to using the library and stratagems in using educational media to teach.

On a trip back to the US in 1997 I visited the university I graduated from to find that the Department of Educational Media was no more. I have no idea when the Media Department was axed as all the people I knew were no longer around. All of the units stated in the above paragraph were discontinued and personal computing had taken its place.

At the university I taught at, here in Australia, that change came about in 1985.

What that meant here was that student teachers were no longer taught the basics of development, preparation and stratagem of using media in the classroom. Did the same thing happen in the US?

Perhaps I'm on the wrong track here as I have lost contact with education since my retirement and the subsequent end of my Phd. Studies.

What I'm concerned with is that technology is pushing the basics of teaching to the side and leaves the new teacher without the necessary skills to be a productive teacher.

Don't get me wrong I'm a strong believer in using technology but without a firm foundation of basic concepts in the development and use of teachings aids, technology can be a poor substitute for good teachers.

In addition is the focus of extensive use of computer technology to teach at all levels of education to the detriment of the basics of reading writing and mathematics. Computers and calculators are wonderful aids to learning BUT! what happens when the power is cut off and the batteries go flat? I'll leave you with that question to ponder as I move on to another issue.

Word processing software:

This has to do with the use of free and inexpensive material. In this case free software.

I was introduced to the OpenOffice suite of tools which includes software that is compatible with Microsoft Office 2007. The price here when I bought it last year was AU$170.00

OpenOffice suite has Word Processing with a large number of dictionaries in many languages, Data Base, Spread Sheet, Presentation (computable with Power Point) and drawing applications.

DropDown Menu showing the computable applications for the Word Processor. This is just a small example of the compatibility Of OpenOffice.

Comparing the user interface of OpenOffice with that of Microsoft Office is the simplicity. I have both and find there are even a few good things in Microsoft Office.

One very strong aspect of the OpenOffice is that you can convert PDF files back into Power point or text files to edit, change or recover graphics. I'm still discovering things I can do with OpenOffice. The best part of the whole thing is OpenOffice is FREE!!!

For More information about OpenOffice Click on the link below.

OpenOffice

I'm Looking forward to seeing more folks learning to blog.

George

#5 Week Three Photo Essay Part Three

03

The House that George and Mary Built

Building site viewed from the South. In the background you can see the Hill that is called Mount Direction. It's the Highest point between George town and Launceston.

During the early days of colonisation Mount Direction was where a semaphore station relayed messages to the port of Launceston the arrival of ships coming up the Tarmar River.

The buildings from left to right in are Workshop, caravan and storage shed. We lived in the caravan for the time we were constructing the house.

The road that borders the west of the property, (see Satellite photo from part two) when Tasmania was still a colony, (currently the Old Bangor Tram Road )was a narrow gauge tram track that was used to transport slate from the mine that was about 10 Km north of our building site. The line ran down to a jetty on the Tamar River where it was loaded on ships or barges to be split into shingles for roofs in Launceston Town.

The mine was abandoned around 1938 or so as most of the larger chunks of slate were depleted. There was one fella working the smaller bits and spitting for floor tiles etc. We did take advantage of the good price of the slate tiles and used them to tile out the bathroom floor and walls.

Having worked at the wood-chip mill left me with connections and I was able to have about 150 tones of spoiled wood-chips brought to the property to use as ground cover where the excavation work had been done on the site to keep the dust down.

The timber for construction of the house was harvested from a local forest and milled nearby. The mill was a little 2 man operation and I was able to get all the timber I needed from them. At the time the price of green cut timber was $22 per 100 super feet. A super foot is measured as a board 12 in. long 12 in. wide and 1 in. thick. 100 board feet equals 150 ft. of 4x2, 100 ft. of 6x2 etc. etc.

The framework for the house was made up of 4x2, 6x2 and 10x2 The floors were of 1x3 in. kiln dried hardwood seconds. The whole house was hardwood floors for under $700. I was able to get blackwood wall panels that were remodelling from a remoulding of a kitchen manufacturer sales room. That was used to panel out the bedroom and to make kitchen cabinets and benches. The remainder of the house was panelled in ½ x 8 in. planed air dried fence palings ½ x 6 or 8 in. used here to build fences.

In the process of building the house we did all we could to recycle whatever we could. I consider that as as a very green house.

The windows were all double glazed and the walls were insulated.

The temperature inside was 10 degrees C different than outside: cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

The links below will take you to a few more photos of the house and then it will end my little Photo Essay.

Mary and a friend of ours washing up after the meal. Behind Mary is the walk-in pantry. The sink Ray is wiping down I made from an old copper hot water cylinder.

That's me preparing a meal. The gas stove top was on casters under the work bench and was pulled out to cook On the right of the bench you can see the smokestack from the combustion stove. That stove had a hot water manifold in it and the feed to the electric hot water cylinder ran through it. That was a booster for preheating water when it was cold and used less power to heat.

Our dinning table built in and constructed from Tas oak. Note the post on the left was a wattle tree growing on the property. On the right is the stairwell to the bedroom.

Mary in the bedroom. The blackwood panels were recycled from a remodelling job to a kitchen manufacturing showroom.

Landscaping at the back (east side) of the house Using the woodchips.

Mary's oven out the back of the caravan. She baked in it for 3 years until she had the idea to use an electric fry pan as an oven. It worked very well.

Here we are sitting at the table hamming it up for the camera. Behind us you can see part of the Blackwood cupboards.

Mary with Baccus the cat sitting in a blackwood chair I built for the house furnishings. You can see the gas top put away under the work bench behind her.

Front entryway with the roof covering it.

entry way a view from the west. Used recycled fertiliser bags to cover cladding to keep out the rain until the shingles could be put on.

The Shingles are in place. They have been cut from Asbestos sheeting to cover about 400 sq m. ( didn't know then what we know about asbestos now). The flashing was made from 6 mm thick perspex from salvaged illuminated sign faces.

Construction of outer forms were designed to angle of the slope of the pyramid.

Tasmanian Oak cut for Fence Paling's was to construct forms. It was inexpensive and strong enough to hold the concrete with out bucking.

Outer corner forms set into place and used to check to see that the base was square.

Outer forms set in place West side. The outer footings were to support the roof beams.

Inner footings that were to carry the baring load of the house. They were put into -place after the outer footings were pored.

Viewing the forms from the north west corner. When laying out the level for the footings I did not have a theodolite, (a builders level)so I used the same method the Egyptians used. No quite in the exact way they did. Instead of flooding the site and draining the water away until they were at the desired hight and able to mark the level at the surface of the pond. I used a hose Wired to a stake at he highest level and filled it with water and adjusted hight of the lower point until I had the correct level for the surface of the footings.

There was approximately 25 Cu M of concrete in the footings. At the time we were building concrete was at around $100 a Cu M. That would have put the cost of concrete alone at about $2,500. Well, I bought a Cement mixer for $350 and the cement and aggregate for about $850 and did the job for about $1,100.

The north west corner ready to pore. Each corner was completely pored in one go. it took 2 of us about 7 hours to mix and pore so that we did not get a dry join of the concrete.

Look closely and you can see that the outer footings were designed with a notch built into them so when the inner footings were pored there was firm support to carry the bearing load of the house equally.

The footings completed and ready to start setting up the framework of the house.

Frame work in place, ready to rise into an upright position. The timber used in construction of the house was green cut Tasman Oak. By green I mean un-cured timber. Tasman Oak is the local species of hardwood from eucalyptus trees and only found in old growth forest in Tasmania. When this timber is cured you can not drive nails into it with out drilling a hole just under the size of the nail Or to use a nail gun. As I remember at the time there was no nail guns around so I did it the hard way.

A view of the south east conner of the house with frame work in place. Green timber is very heavy as it contains about 30% water so to raise the framework into place I used what's called a Jack pole. That was P pole about 4 m long with one end in a shallow hole so it cant move out from under the lode and fall over. A rope was tied to the top end of the pole and what's called a come along attached from the top of the pole to the frame work and pulled upright with a mechanical advantage.

When the ground level framework was up and the floor and celling joist in place The roof joist were added and the structure was locked into place and nothing could shake the framework.

With the framework up the stairwell to the next level went in.

As the ground level was open plan where I needed support for the celling/floor beams I used three logs cut from the property

Viewed from the south side shows the framing for the sun room.

From the west showing the front entry way.

View from inside to the sun room.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38786513@N02/3567302305

Distant view of south west conner showing the second level frame work and roof cladding going up. The cladding was 20 mm thick hardwood.

Closer view of cladding from the north west corner.

All up the Land, house and all the tools needed to build it came in under $30,000.

I have babbled on long enough about the house. I hope you enjoyed my story and if you have any questions please feel free to send me an e-mail at:

reawaraent@yahoo.com

George

#5 Week Three Photo Essay Part two

The House that George and Mary Built

Satellite View of Home site 2009.

The House sits On a triangular block of land 4.5 Hectares in Size. The Location is Mount Direction, Tasmania, Australia.

Shortly after I left the college I got a part-time job at a wood chip plant as a Weighbridge Attendant. Included in my job description I was First Aide, Storeman, Lab assistant, Printer and Courier driver. It turned out to be more like full-time as I was relief for the full time people who worked the jobs listed above.

I got to hate the job as it was shift work. In Australia they have what they call a rotating shift. The majority of business use the rotating shift and it is rare to find any that have a permanent shift system for their employees. You work 2 weeks day shaft then 2 weeks evening and then night shift. Just as you're getting used to the shift you have to change. I personally believe that is the cause for most injuries on the job. It didn't take me long to get feed up with that job.

One advantage of working there was when on the nightshift there was no traffic through the weighbridge and I had lots of time to work on the plans and model of the house while doing Fire watch and stand by incase of an accident in the plant.

It was Mary that came up with the idea to build a pyramid house. After giving it some thought it seemed like a good idea to me. I started researching pyramids to find out what the dimensions were and the layout of the base which was deemed to be critical to the “power of the pyramid.”

Mary took time off from work and went to Germany October- November 1980 with her mom. I stayed home and worked on the house plans as I had no real interest in going as I had been posted there for 3 years from 1966-1969 during the time I was in the army.

During the time Mary was gone our cat Snoopy came into the bedroom one night and had her kittens on the bed and I became the midwife for her litter.

By the time Mary returned from Germany I had the House plans finished and made the application to the George Town Council for a building permit. At the same time I submitted the house plans. I also had to include all the other buildings I had put up on moving onto the property. To my surprise approval came back in a fortnight. However it was only for the outbuildings and not for the house.

When I inquired why the approval for the house did not come with it I was told it was due to the fact that it was an an Frame and an Engineers report, was required before it could be approved.

Back to the drawing board... and I wrote up an engineers report explaining that number one it was not an A Frame house, but it was built like a wedding cake with the major weight of the structure resting on the inner footings.

See the following photos:

Wedding cake

Footings

Mary went back to work and I quit the job at the wood chip mill to work full time on the house.

My dream had finally come true and I had finally become a kept man.

I worked on the house from 1980-83 taking a few short-term jobs in the meantime to help with the cost of building materials.

We were living in the house by mid '82.

The following are two newspaper articles about the house:

Article One

Article Two

Read the articles by clicking on the links above they will take you to the photo.

Above the photo left top there is a link 'Download the large size'.
That will allow you to download the photo to your computer so that you can read it at 100% of the scanned image in your Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

Sorry about the poor quality of the clipping they are 27 years old and I just scanned them. Also the number of photos of the house are limited in number as we have moved about five times since then and things some how manage to get lost in the shuffle. I will look for more of them to add to the flickr group.

It was now time for me to get back to work. Teaching jobs were few and far between about then so I decided it was time for a career change. After the experience of building the house I thought a career in Architecture would be exciting. I started a BA in Environmental Design In the School of Architecture at The Tasmanian State Institute of Technology (TSIT).

A little side note here: they were going to call it Tasmanian Institute of Technology but Someone saw the problem in the abbreviation of the name being (TIT).

End part two.

#5 Week 3 Photo Essay

Originally uploaded by reawaraent

House Viewed from the South West. It is to scale of the Great pyramid of Giza. The house has a Base of 11.5 M square and aliened to true North.

South West View of House

Photo Essay

The House that George and Mary Built

South West View of House

In 1979 we purchased a property and built this house to the scale of the Great pyramid of Giza. The house has a Base of 11.5 M square and aligned to true North.

I'm taking a step back here, to a time shortly before we were married. We met a retired Dutch couple that lived on some crown land North of Launceston in a village called Lefroy. It was an old gold mining settlement but had run dry and very few people lived there.

We were looking for some land to build on so the Schumacher's invited us to move onto the crown land with them rent free. We took them up on the idea and bought a second hand 16 foot caravan for $2,000. We lived in the caravan until we could find a place of our own.

During the time we were there I built a shed that could be easily taken apart when we moved and then reassembled on the new site. We stored what furniture we had in the shed in the meantime.

We were there for about six months until at last, the day came when we found our land and started to settle in.

We had to chuckle at people that came to visit us during this time. It was a bit primitive and many asked us how we could live like this.

It was being used as a paddock 4.5 hectares in size. It was a triangular shape block with a slope down to the road and a nice rich soil. We paid $16,000 Cash for the place.

We moved in and started by setting up the shed and getting things together.

Well it wasn't as bad as one might think. It didn't take me long to build a small building and set up a shower, laundry and toilet. I set up a platform that was about 8 foot tall and put a water tank on it. That gave us a nice head of water for showers.

And before you ask, we did not have to take cold showers I cobbled together a hot water heater out of a copper tank from an old burnt out hot water heater and an ancient combustion stove. Add to all that one of the small portable chemical toilets and we were in business.

Called up the power company to see about getting power on and they said I would have to pay $2,000 for a transformer to put on the power pole that ran through the property. I told them that they could keep their transformer and I would buy a generator. Interestingly they suddenly changed their minds and said I would have to pay a set amount for a year to justify them putting on the power even if we did not use it. In no time we had the power on and a builders box next to the caravan.

The caravan had a gas stove and a fridge but no oven to bake in. I went about gathering some stones that was around the property and managed to build a small wood fired oven. It worked out just fine Mary was able to bake bread and cakes in it. As a matter of fact the whole time we lived there we never had an oven. Mary came up with the idea of using a electric fry pan as an oven to bake in and it worked just fine.

Mary had been working as a clerk for a Shipping company but was laid off. We never did find out why but we think it was because she would not go out with her boss.

Anyway she managed to get a job with a company that sold Irrigation equipment and Concrete water tanks. That was to come in handy as she got an employees discount on anything they sold.

January 1980 rolled around and my contract with the college ended and we were established on the land so we did not have any rent to pay. The only “rent” we paid was $0.50 a week to the Council have the caravan on the property.

End Part one

#5 Week Three

Hello All.

It looks as if I have worked out most of the bugs and glitches I have had with my browser.

Things are starting to fall into place at last. I have the photos up loaded and I have decided to do a photo essay about the house my wife and I built in Tasmania.

I'll do it in small chunks and post them as I write them.

I have been experimenting with the blog publishing generator and found it very limited as you can't put additional html tags into the editor other then what it has been programed for. Thats to bad as ther are some nice html tags the can make the blog look very neat.

I'll move on now to start writing the essay. But before I do, here is some information on some FREE!! educational software:

Click here for Educational Software

And Here for FreeStuff

I have been using some of their software for over 10 years. Give it a try after all it is free and you cant beat that price!

George

More of Week 3: Photos & Images

Yesterday I was finely able to register my Blog with School library learning 2.0 after sorting out the problems with my browser. I'm using the new Internet Explorer version 8. As always Microsoft has made changes that takes time to come to terms with and the new security they have put into place has become so tight it block cookies you don't want blocked.

It seems that so far the major problem I have been having are with Yahoo and the sights related to them.

Makes me wonder if Microsoft is playing games to make it hard to get to Yahoo??? after all they do own Hotmail I think... its hard to keep up with who's buying whom out.

Well I'm slowly getting it sorted out.

Today I managed to get 23 photos uploaded to Flickr and wrote captions for them.

Started a group called Called Reawara Research For Research into Educational Internet Technology

Its goal is to promote the use of technology by educators to enhance their classroom activities.

When I got that all worked out I posted my Photostream to the group.

Click here to see group

The photos and captions are there. Its a Photo essay about the house my wife and I built in Tasmania.

Now I need to write the text of the story and link the photos to the story on the Blog. Will work on that tomorrow.

George

Week 3: Photos & Images

I went to Flickr And set up account and have started uploading photos and organising them for the assignment.

I find the setting up the account and uploading of graphics somewhat confusing to follow there are no clear step by step instructions that aide the novice in a smooth transition into becoming involved in using the media.

I have been working with the computerised media for over 25 years and find I have trouble following the instructions set out on most of the sites.

The instructions and steps have been written by people that know the procedures and don't think as a person new to the media thinks. The more I see the type of instruction for using this media I can see why librarians / teachers tend to shy away from using it.

The FAQ's are of some help but they don't really cover the subject in depth. When I run into a problem I spend a lot of time searching to find an answer to my problem. Many times I just have to go away for a day or two and think about it before I come back to solve it. Am I the only one that feels this way?

Answer this question do/did you find Instructions to setting up Flickr and Yahoo confusing?

Or is it just me or that I'm getting too old?

George

My First Post: Week 2: Blogging

Well I managed to get the Blog set up with out much of a problem. However when it came to getting the Avatar, that was a different story. Some glitch in the connection, so it said, ment I tried about 15 times to get a Yahoo account. Well I gave up on trying to use the PC to get the account so I went to the trusty old Mac and with in two tries I had it. Don't you just hate the new words or codes you have to strain your eyes to guess what the are to get you account to Yahoo etc?

Trying to follow the instructions on the 2.0 Web site by putting the background as a classroom or library. The thing was I went through all the backgrounds but found neither classroom or library. But my sharp mind said to me, “Hey there was a picture of the Sidney Opera House there, use that instead.” Well since I do live in Australia, I said to myself, “Self go ahead and use the Opera House background.”

Well as I always listen to my self I did just that. That done I tried to transfer the file to the Blog but Blog would not let me, kept sending me a error message saying , "I won't let you do it." "Aaa Haa, "said I, " I'll fix you!”, so I opened the file with my web browser and using a neat application Called HyperSnap DX Pro to capture the image, saved it as a jpg file. Did the thing with Blog again, and then this time Blog said, “That's ok you can do that.”

I have been using Hyper Snap since 1997 and found it very useful when Writing user manuals and other things that needed to capture images that you cant normally get from drop down menus.

The price is $35.00 US Check it out at:

HyperSnap

Hopefully this meets my first requirement for the 2.0 course.

George