Getting a Little More Adventurous

My age and my conservatism still go against me and my use of web 2.0. I wish I was more adventurous especially as I want to put some widgets on the side bar of my blogs. However, I dont want to make a mistake as the whole world can see my mistakes and there is no undo button in wordpress!!! I think I will wait for school on Monday and get Jess to help me.

I tried to embed my voki in the backyards blog but despite copying the code for wordpress, it would not upload - just came up with a get voki now comment. Urghh!! Will try again when I have more patience. I also would like to put in a clustr map and see where people from around the place might be reading.

Anyway, I was successful in uploading an mp3 file of a very basic and amateurish version of our national anthem. Some of my IT students went to the year 9/10 elective music class and recorded them singing. After take 6 which was also nearly the end of their tether, we were pleased enough with the recordeing and we used iTunes for listening and podomatic for hosting. So that has given me some confidence. It was great to go to my site at podomatic and be able to listen to it, except I had opened up two files and there was a shocking echo until I closed one down. This will be used on the shared wikis that I have with other international schools. Voicethread is also giving some headaches at the moment but I will perservere again with that next week.

Our school has changed service providers for the internet and the new one seems to block most sites. On Thursday, to my great dismay I found that wikispaces had been blocked due to a chat room element. Will have to get the technicians to unblock that one this week as I have shared wikis with quite a few people.

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Comment by Marielle Lange on October 27, 2007 at 8:59am: Congrats on your explorations. On this "no undo button in wordpress". You should see an "edit" link when you display the post in full view. You can then correct your mistakes.

A way to approach this, however, is to consider that you are learning another language. I am a French speaker. The only way I got to learn English to good enough level was to jump right in the discomfort zone. Accept to make an utter fool of yourself (and that's really not easy when you are supposed to be an educated person to accept to appear stupid and incompetent).

With time, your feeling of discomfort will diminish.

It doesn't happen overnight. when learning a new language, it takes you 6 months to become able to be fluent enough to cope with a good range of situations. It takes you about a year to become able to cope with complex situations. Then, after a year or two, you start having dreams in that non-native language.... That means that it has become second nature to you.

Once you are there, a new world opens to you. You can't even understand why you ever had any difficulty at all.

You have been through the most difficult stage. Leaving your comfort zone. Now, it will take a bit of perserverance for a month or two, keep trying despite the early frustrations. After that, it will be a steady ramp up.

Comment by Peggy Sheehy on March 3, 2009 at 7:34am: Please join the "Global Lean"

blog at http://globallean.edublogs.org
AND NING http://globallean.ning.com

Give the world a voice in a joyful celebration of diversity!

Thanks! Peggy Sheehy