The things people do

This is "me"

Is the weather going to improve at last! All this wet is so boring – spring showers I can put up with but the last week has just been ridiculous! Never mind, today the sun keeps popping out and things look a little more promising

I’ve been analysing the results from the Digital Literacy Survey and I find it quite strange how few people blog. Students, lecturers and other staff it’s all the same, regardless of gender, very few people blog. I quite enjoy blogging, it’s fairly creative and sometimes it even helps to wake me up a bit Martin Weller also likes blogging, he has written a post on the Virtues of Blogging as a Scholarly Activity – he’s been blogging for six years now and reckons it’s the best academic decision he’s ever made. I don’t know if I would go that far but blogging has certainly widened my academic network. It’s a good thing to practice getting out there and putting some thoughts on your subject, your studies or your hobby out into the big wide world. It helps you to become more confident in about presenting your own ideas, it develops your writing skills and helps you to find your “voice”, the identity you want to portray online. Blogging isn’t just for lecturers, it’s for everyone – a uniquely simple way of engaging with the rest of the world.

I found this post from Rose Wintergreen really interesting and moving. We all get miserable and doubt ourselves and our abilities at times and Rose has caught this perfectly in this post on Creativity and Misery. Do read it and the following comments, if you are feeling a bit low it will make you feel better

So you see you can write about anything. Remember to link your blog to Twitter, Facebook and any other social media you use – you will attract more viewers and followers that way.

I wrote a little about bullying and bad behaviour online a few posts ago. I thing the work that journalism students at Michigan State University are doing on their anti-bullying site is great. The New Bullying is about cyberbullying and is produced as both a web site and a book which you can download. Although the videos are about school children, bullying occurs everywhere and to anyone – even people who think they are quite strong. May be the information these journalism students provide might be able to help you or a friend.

I have written before about networks for academics and researchers but I thought you might all be interested in this post about just how popular these all are. Read the post, Social Networks for Academics and go and join some of the networks it links to.

For those of you in history or archaeology, you might find this new, free, online book interesting. Archaeology 2.0: New Tools For Communication and Collaboration, is all about using new technologies in archaeology.

Keep your fingers crossed that it stays dry tomorrow – some sun would be nice too

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