This animation from Guy Collins made me smile. Do you ever have to hold your tongue as you watch people search the net? I know that I’ve spent time with students explaining how to use quotation marks around phrases and other tips and tricks related to search, and I see them ignore everything I’ve said and do it their way regardless! Doesn’t mean I won’t stop trying. It’s my job to persevere and repeat myself over and over. : ) I just have to keep a smile on my face and not get exasperated like the comic figure above.
I’ve just followed a link in the back of my blog to Jo McLeay‘s ‘The Open Classroom‘. Her post today called, ‘What makes an effective blog post, or how to write so readers want to read‘, describes my blog as”an oldie but a goodie”. It fills me with much joy to have my blog described this way. This week marked the three year anniversary of this blog. I started writing on January the 12th 2008. It actually slipped my notice until today, and Jo’s post prompted me to mention it here. So much has happened in that three year span, and the core of it all has been the sharing that takes place in this small corner of the Web. Writing is important to me; I think I’ve got better at it, and even when I write a post that I think is good, but gets no obvious feedback (take this week’s Our Ephemeral Web as a case in point!), there is satisfaction in knowing I’ve stuck my neck out and said what I thought needed saying. It may sound corny, but writing like this makes you feel stronger somehow, a little more armed to face the world and the critics out there. It does for me anyway.
But, there are bigger and more important things than this blog. Australia, and Queensland in particular, have seen some extreme weather conditions this week and there are people hurting in my country. My heart goes out to them. It goes out for the people in Brazil as well, who are also struggling with heartache due to floods and landslides. Our world certainly presents some of us with challenges that seem unfairly distributed. What has been encouraging today, in Australia at least, is the kindness of strangers. People who reach out to others in need, for no reward other than the satisfaction of helping others who are struggling. We have seen some examples of the best in people and it makes my heart glad.
Thanks Jo for making my day. Thanks readers for reading. : ) Enjoy what comes your way this weekend.
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 
As we dig out from more than a foot (about 33cm) of snow, with our neighbors about half an hour away with 38 inches (about a meter), what strikes me is that we are so much more connected and able to help those that may seem far away: Haiti and Chile’s earthquakes last year, the volcanos and sunamis in Indonesia in November, the floods in California (US), Costa Rica, Brazil, and Australia, the snow storms in Europe and in the Southern US (were even a little snow is rare), helps to bring us closer and appreciate that we all, at some time or another, will need the help of others as we go through natural disasters. It is ironic that last year at this time we were hearing about the horrible fires due to lack of rain in Australia, and this year the floods due to too much rain.
In terms of the search, I drive my kids crazy with my search habits, and they drive me crazy with theirs. It is tough to change once you have established a set heuristic!
Sometimes I think we help others further afield more readily than we do the people in our immediate vicinity – neighbours and the like. Huge events like this do bring us closer together I think. We seem to be able to relate to the human condition regardless of cultural or language barriers. Australia is a country of extremes, with weather being one of those. A famous poem, My Country by Dorathea McKellar, has a line that is very apt. “of drought and flooding rains”. Drought leads to fire conditions and floods are what we are experiencing now.
Thanks for visiting and commenting Virginia.
Cheers,
Jenny : )
HI!
Tracked you down from Jo’s posting. And, obviously I can learn some things if I follow you over here.- so I’ll do just that!
Loved the comic,but it did remind me that school goes back soon. 😦 Somehow I’m still not ready. That is the nature of kids, to ignore something you’ve told them 100 times. Maybe it’s like when you introduce a new food to children, apparently they need to taste it a dozen times before they might like it. Maybe our students need to be shown or told a 100 times. Or maybe it’s like the 100th monkey, and after the 100th student starts to use quotes, the others spontaneously do too?
I’m never ready to go back to school Josie. I fall so easily into holiday mode, but find it so difficult to move out of it. I’ll have to track your blog down too. : )