We are coming to the end of the summer break and what a rather warm summer break it has been. As a result of that I am a bit behind with ETMOOC – well a bit behind where I would like to be in the days before I have actual commitments during the day.

While on my little trip to Sydney (on the hottest day in Sydney since records began) I went up to the Blue Mountains. Hidden up in the hills is the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum. It was a lovely and relaxing way to spend some time, looking at the paintings and sculptures which were all over the house and gardens. One of the things which our lovely guide talked about was how much work he managed to get done during his lifetime. From statues (one of which is pictured below) to the paintings, etchings, writings, house buildings, sculptured columns and even model boats, Norman Lindsay was absolutely prolific with his life’s work. So I resolved to try and do a little more.

So. Since returning from the sojourn I have been trying to catch up a little and I have surprised myself a bit. I have managed to watch the ETMOOC Introduction to Blogging with Sue Waters. One of the things which was raised in the session was around the notion of voice within the blog – whose voice is it that you are using and why finding your own voice is so important. It was said that if you are worrying about what your readers want from you, then you may not be finding your “authentic” voice. This comment made me think about a tweet (I think it was a tweet, could have been a Facebook status), which said basically that “Individual teachers are not valued within their own schools as much as they are in other schools”. At the time this (to me) meant that while you may be considered someone who knows about x/y/z at another school, you are not recognised for that in your own workplace. Something which I think that most of us have come to experience from time to time.

Blogging gives us the change to speak about what we know, or what we don’t know. I know that as I am going down the path of introducing SOLO into my classes, I have been seeking information from blogs from all over the world and one of the things that I like about them is that they are written authentically. I can hear the blogger talking to me about it (well my imaginative approximation of what they sound like), it helps. While I can – and have – seen much of the information also in books and journals, “hearing” the way things can (or don’t) work in another and more personal voice is something which I value. I look forward to more of it.

I have kind of started watching the Social Bookmarking and Content Curation session… I will come back to it when I need it. One of the things which I am going to have to let go of with this particular process, is that I can’t do everything. I have to pick and choose what it is that I am going to engage with just at this point, I can see how it is going to be of value in the overall scheme of things, but for today it is just that little bit too far… so I shall just keep swimming.