Happy Blogtoberfest

Yes ... ladies and gentlemen, it is that time of the year again to celebrate your blogness-ness and join us in Blogtoberfest. A month of mind-numbing posts about the most trivial things, but it is fun!

Head on over to I saw you dancing to join up and participate. Curlypops even has her giveaway page operational, so if you have something to give away, go ahead and register on the list.


Get involved!

Julie and Julia

I stole a few moments away the other night to watch Julie and Julia. Most nights the TV viewing only lasts an hour at most, but on that particular night I felt like sitting down to a movie and I knew what I wanted to watch. I had wanted to see Julie and Julia at the cinema when it came out, but it came and went a little too quickly for me to catch it.

via AllMoviePhoto

For me the movie was significant in two ways. Firstly the story is about a blogger and I could relate to that. Secondly, it is also about women re-creating themselves. Finding direction, satisfaction and passion in what they are doing, and I could definitely relate to that.

I love the fact that the internet gives us the freedom to share and involve ourselves in our passion like never before and it amazes me that schools are not taking advantage of this technology more (putting on my other hat). Yes they do "research" on the internet, but I would love for kids to be active contributors of quality content to the internet. Rather they use myspace and facecrack, and what do they contribute .. not much.

I can imagine this movie being studied in Year 10 English and kids are encouraged to start their own blogs on topics that interest them. Taking delight from watching their readership build up and the connections that they make with others, sometimes those connections will last a lifetime. Using the technology in this way is not expensive, but the school does have to unblock their firewalls to blogger. This perhaps is the biggest battle.

I tend to live quite a full life, some say that I do too much, others ask me how I manage to do all that I do. And I tend to respond firstly by saying that it is all smoke and mirrors and secondly, that I tend not to spend that much time sitting in front of the idiot box day after day. I would much rather be in my sewing room creating something than watching something on the box. Most of what I do watch is either taped (so I don't have to sit through ad breaks) or something rented/bought on DVD. I do enjoy sitting down to a good movie or crime show, but in general there are much better things to do than watch TV.

How do you write your blog posts?

I wear a lot of hats ...mother to Tori, wife to Andreas, teacher to many, crafter, business woman and writer ... yes writer!

At the moment I am working on manuscripts for the new version of Year 12 Information Technology Applications and Year 11 Information Technology textbooks. Three chapters in total, some of it re-working of old stuff into new stuff, some of it from scratch (such as the chapter on data visualisation and cloud computing).

When I tell people this they generally look twice as they tend not to consider that I would have a conducive personality to writing. Yes I am impulsive, a bit distant at times, I tend to get tounge tied, and yes it takes a great deal of self discipline to sit down and write (especially when you are ten steps away from a sewing machine), but I can do it ... I know I can!

Why do I write?

When you are in the writing zone, it is addictive ... my brain starts ticking, my fingers start typing and it gets me thinking, creating and linking to what is happening out there in the world.

At the moment, Inforation Technology is the only thing I write about apart from my blog and I would love the opportunity to change this and do more writing.

I enjoy doing secondary text books, as I can take what I have done and then bring it into the classroom where I can see the impact it has on the students learning. I tend to be quite creative in coming up with case study scenario's and you can generally pick out which chapters are mine by the types of images I choose.

Blog writing

As for my blog, when I am on a roll I am on a roll. For example; this blog post was conceived about 6 weeks ago when the moment grabbed me. I wrote down a few thoughts, saved it as a draft and I have been back a few times since then to add a picture or a few additional thoughts. Once finished it is either scheduled (such as this week when I *know* I am going to have a busy week) or it just sits there for the right moment.

I currently have 20 draft posts in my blog sitting there, fermenting, waiting on the right time, image and thoughts. So what do you want me to write about in this blog?