Tuesday, March 21, 2006

 

Summing up week 3

Dear Bawers

Now that you’ve survived the hardships of week 3, I’m sure you will make it safely to the end of the seminar. You might have been completely unaware, otherwise you’d never have ventured into so unsafe a ground, in the first place. Too spoilt and pampered up in weeks 1 and 2, I guess - so many (((((((((HUGS))))))))))) and sympathetic shoulders too lean upon!
You made it anyway, and here we are, trying to sum up facts, facts, and square facts, in the best Mr Grandgrind tradition. No fancy stuff this week!

Strange things started to happen as soon as week 3 started. The first SOS came from Susan Burg, from Florence, even before week 2 was over: her messages to the group bounced and Yahoo didn’t recognise her as a proper member, no matter how hard she tried. We didn’t pay much attention at first - even though she kept posting her complaints regularly, at least once a day - but soon the disease spread out and messages started bouncing madly all around. Some of us didn’t get any for days then we were flooded all of a sudden. Cristina from Portugal is still recovering from the last delivery: she got 200 in one go!

Computers crashed, Internet connections failed, unsaved messaged and saved sites disappeared, and people got lost in cyberspace. Some might still be there unaware, struggling their way through to week 3 live session at the Alado, scheduled for Tuesday 31. New members, though, appeared out of nowhere and started interacting as though they’d always been in the group. Recorded pages went blank when members tried to open them and Edublog refused editing and postings, point blank. In addition to technology glitches, our official moderators had to suffer and endure much more serious stuff.

When the group was on the verge of panic we glimpsed some dim light. Analia posted a quote featuring this fundamental postulate from Murphy’s Law, which would perfectly portray BAW06 scratch, and explain it at that. Gordon from Yahoo kindly informed us that juggling message were due to a virus called MY WIFE, or, as we learned from Paddy, KAMA SUTRA - can you believe that? They assured they were doing their best to sort things out, meanwhile they offered their sympathy and asked for our patience. All of a sudden computers started to work again, Internet connections were restored, members were recognised by Yahoo and messages started to arrive in due time. Fathers recovered, or at least got better, and moderators were there again to sort things out. Pity week 3 was over by then. Hopefully all the benefits will be felt in the next weeks.

This said, for truth sake, I have to warn you that the picture you will get from week 3 threads will be a completely different one - if you will ever get a chance to have a glimpse at week 3 threads. Judging from the amount and quality of messages, from the many topics tackled - some really interesting and deeply discussed ones - from the web pages, blogs and wiki pages created during the week it is as though we were operating under the best conditions.

This is really amazing when you come to think of it. We almost fully covered week 3 scheduled activities and managed to go through some additional stuff as well.

So, now we know where we stand when we talk about building a web presence.

We have fully grasped the difference between web pages and blogs. We are even starting to distinguish between blogs and wiki. We know what building web pages is like, having suffered the hurdles of free web hosts - some of which are apparently much better and user friendly than others - experienced the glitches of web editors and gone through the jargon of web dedicated software.

We tried our hand at blogging and created quite a few amazingly original ones. We found time to discuss correcting mistakes and evaluating performances while so doing. We even started to reflect upon the shift in paradigm Bee ad Graham talked about in their eye opening, thought provoking session. A few adventurous ones tried podcasting and shared samples, in the best BAW tradition, just before the week was over. I’m sure many more will follow their lead. We were even able to lure 3 bold people to volunteer for weeks 4, 5 and 6 threads. Isn’t that great? (Kudos to Moira, Cheryl and Kat, the sacrificial scapegoats of BAW06 group!)

Daf and Tere will put all this together for you in one page or another of our wonderful BAW site for those of us who were too busy to participate actively or those who wish to go over things at their leisure.

Cora and I are going to have some nice, relaxing weeks in the background, leaving the floor to our highly experienced and extremely nice friends, Chrissan from Sweden and Barb from Germany, who will lead you through virtual classrooms and voice mail. We know you are in very safe hands.

You will hear from us again, though. Cora is gathering together masterpieces for her Art Gallery and I will be adding stuff and reflections to the BAW06 blog I created for this week (your participation is highly appreciated!).

Thank you for your wonderful participation, eager interest and extremely professional attitude.

No hugs but a big cheer from a humble week 3 co-mod.


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