These is my log of professional, political and sometimes personal thoughts and observations. I am Bettina Walter, a Senior Information Architect (IA), Interaction Designer and Usability Professional.
I am co-owner of PunkLogic.
The Creative Alliance’s Catalyst Club is meeting regularly on every last Tuesday of the month. These evenings are hosted by selected (willing) people. For the 25th of August the Catalyst Committee have asked us, PunkLogic, to host the evening. This is how ‘Digg my tweet’ – a light hearted talk and exercise in social media – came about.
“Digg my tweet” is at ‘Red on Thomas’, Thomas Street, Noosaville
25th of August 2009 – at 5:30pm
$5 (SCCA members) / $10 regular contribution for nibbles
Open to anybody considering themselves working in of affiliated with creative industries (whatever that means) – See the invitation here. Join the conversation.
Jackson and Matt will give a brief overview about what social media is about and what it does. Also some simple instructions on where to start, what’s likely to work and what isn’t. Jackson will run a little experiment on the night. Find instructions on his post over there.
A nice and re-asuring reminder for GTD converts who fall as frequently off the wagon as I do.
via http://blog.validateyourlife.com/2008/06/27/productivity-heros/
We are finally in full-on production mode for the Biosphere online experience. It’s great to work with our committed and competent team.
We’ll shortly launch our ‘work in progress’ site – this is going to be the start of the community engagement plan. We hope we will be able to clarify, de-mystify and in some cases simply put things right, that have been mis-reported. We’ll also be able to get feedback, insights and suggestions form the community.
Let the conversations begin. Looking forward to it.
The poll is anonymous, please vote or add your comment on ‘other’.
This is about the letter that went out to parents grade 3,5,7 and 9. For more information see my previous post below ‘A Queensland Mum’s Rant’.
btw. Professor Masters preliminary recommendations in full here.
You are most welcome to leave comments below. Someone voiced the idea of boycotting testing the tests… let me know and we set up another poll…
This letter was handed out to parents at our primary school.
My daughter had taken these tests Anna Bligh refers to last year. She did very well and the teacher had skilfully protected the children as much as she could from the stress it could have potentially injected. This was the teacher’s achievement, and I was grateful for it. Generally me and other mums found the testing process itself still disruptive to learning and also hard wearing on my 8 year old.
Some comments from our Mum’s mailing list to the letter above were:
E. said
Was anyone else horrified by the Anna Bligh letter re our children’s education and the testing which went out to grade 3,5, 7???
A. said:
Wow – I hadn’t seen it before. What the?? … Is she saying that passing the test is paramount and requires rote-learning/practice…. as opposed to the more obvious strategy of lifting our standard of education overall through best practice teaching and appropriate funding??
Way too much emphasis on one bloody test… it obviously reflects poorly on the government and they are trying to cheat their way out of the bottom ranks through scare mongering.
H. said:
I don’t think there is much I can add to this except – I concur.
I was most put out with the letter E., was wondering if I was the only one. C’s teacher has pointed out that it is now in May where it used to be in August, putting even more pressure on the kids and teachers, as they have less time to cover the ’stuff’ to be tested.
my thoughts:
Improve test results with more testing – BRILLIANT IDEA! It gives the message that we don’t really want to improve standards in numeracy and literacy, we just want students to get better at being tested, so we use school time to run same tests more often.
It’s like trying to reduce teenage pregnancy by dishing out more pregnancy test kits.
Whatever happened to the idea of an education system aiding the forming of well-rounded, creative and truly educated citizens? Showing our children how to learn, how to investigate, how to be creative, how to find REAL SOLUTIONS to problems creatively instead of running more mind numbing test procedures.
The tone of voice of THE LETTER itself makes me feel like putting on a dunce hat and standing in a corner!
…’I was disappointed with the overall results’…
Well Mrs. Bligh, I am not happy with your attitude! I’d like to have you and Professor Masters take theses tests a few time in a row, just to see if it advances your growth in any way at all.
But you know what takes the biscuit for me as a Web usbility professional??
Follow Anne’s link and tell me where the booklet is. http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/
Mrs. Bligh couldn’t ‘arrange’ for an easy to find link, or a search field or even arrange to include a DIRECT LINK to the booklets in her letter … ok – poor usability on government websites regularly gets my goat… BUT STILL!!
( I followed ‘Assessment Bank’ on a hunch and found it – but considerate, helpful or polite this ain’t!!)
I’ve just donated a few bucks to get this advertisment shown on TV at the Boxing Day cricket match.
Get up!:
Even as he was announcing woefully inadequate climate targets on Monday, Prime Minister Rudd was setting aside over $130 million for an ‘information campaign’ to sell us his sparse climate package. Doesn’t it remind you of the kind of climate policy John Howard would have announced?
Thousands of GetUp members are donating to air this ad during the Boxing Day Cricket Test, to an audience of millions.
We are being taken for a ride. This has to change.
Our clients sometimes struggle with creating a name for their online business. Here is our collective name finding technique. A process that is fun and gets results.
Find a lot of words you like in context to your project.
I often use an online thesaurus for this: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/joy
Collect all your suggestions – you could use google docs for this. Here is an example.
Set up a doc. Invite your team members / stake holders to add words.
Set the type fairly large – I use the subheading (H2) style for this. It also gives you good line space.
When you’ve got enough: Print (3 copies)
Cut individual words into snippets
Meet as a group
Jumble words around on a table (Alcohol optional)
Note down your favourite combinations.
Set up a little survey and let friends rank your ideas.
This naming technique encourages lateral thinking and makes you look at word combinations in a fresh way.
The Creative Alliance’s Catalyst Club is meeting regularly on every last Tuesday of the month. These evenings are hosted by selected (willing) people. For the 25th of August the Catalyst Committee have asked us, PunkLogic, to host the evening. This is how ‘Digg my tweet’ – a light hearted talk and exercise in social media – came about.
