The End

Finally I have come to The End. My first draft of my first manuscript is done.

It is just short of 50,000 words so probably well underwritten for a family saga told over a couple of generations. The story is all there but it will need more detail and description. And probably more dialogue as well. So whilst I know this, I feel like I have been writing it for so long that I need to take a break and focus on something else for a while.

There is a lot of it that I am not happy with. The end for one thing. I really need to get some advice from other writers and probably professional editors. But for the moment I am just happy that I have proven to myself that I could write a full 50,000 word manuscript. Whilst it is very rough, I think it is a good story worth telling.

The story is based on my family history and is set at Hanging Rock in the last half of the 19th Century. There are convicts and conflicts and many things in between. The main protaginist comes to Port Phillip as a Ticket of Leave convict and settles at the Rock and eventually the rest of his family immigrate to join him. It is the story of his struggles to be seen as a respectable citizen amongst a feuding family and a feuding community.

So now the manuscript will be consigned to the “bottom drawer” for a month or two so that I can get some distance from it and then start work on the second draft.

Whilst that happens I will work on some short stories, enter some competitions and work on my Author platform. It seems rather presumptious to think that I need an Author platform, when I don’t have any published work, except for my self published blogs. But all the best advice points to the importance of developing a platform sooner rather than later. So I am off to work on my new website and try to build my profile on social media.

I also need to do more research. I have found that even though I have been researching my family history and writing my ancestors stories, I still don’t know enough. I have read many history books from the region and time, accessed newspapers from the time and read other sources written at the time. But I still need more information to add the required detail. Good historical writing depends on deep and wide research.

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How Lucky

I have posted before about how much I love where I live. But now I really appreciate it even more. How lucky are we to live in Australia, to live in regional Victoria, where during this horrific pandemic we can go for a walk on our beautiful Lake Mulwala foreshore and not expect to encounter 10,000 other individuals just trying to do the same thing; which was the scene on a warm day at Bondi Beach in the early days of the pandemic.  

Sunrise over Lake Mulwala

This to me feels like the lowest point; when 3000 people have to endure lockdown in inner city public housing towers.  Imagine living in a small apartment on one of the upper floors with a young family and with no warning, being told you cannot leave your apartment for at least five days!  You’ve done nothing wrong but you are basically imprisoned.  And yet there is no other option.  We need this lockdown to protect so many other vulnerable people.

One ray of light was when I went to the fundraising page set up by the Victorian Trades Union Council to make a donation to help those in hard lockdown.  I was unable to make the donation  because the total had been reached within a matter of hours.  A wonderful display of what can be achieved when we work together.  And also a demonstration that we do care about each other.  

Personally, Covid-19 has had a minimal effect on my life.  I am a homebody so I am more than happy to be working from home and really not going anywhere.  We were due to go to Queensland for a holiday in 12 days time but of course we are no longer able to do that. But I just feel guilty about the fact that I am sad about that because there are so many other people worse off.  People without an income, wondering if they will ever be able to get back to the occupations that they love.  People locked up in inner suburban towers.  And that is just in our lucky country. The rest of the world is faring much worse.   There are still 10s of 1000’s of cases being confirmed daily.  Some countries are having to reinforce restrictions.  

I love where I live.  

What I am Learning about Writing

Recently I have started getting a bit more serious about writing. One day I will write a book.. Repeat after me….. One day I will write a book…

I have always been interested in writing my Family History but when I enrolled in the Diploma of Family History at UTAS it awakened in me a real interest in all types of writing. I wrote my first piece of creative writing based on an event from my families early life as selectors. I found that I could write fiction which was a strange revelation.

So today I have submitted my last assessment. I have finished the Diploma. I thought I would be a bit sad that it was over. It has been such a great adventure. But I am not. Now I have time to get onto the next project.

I have started seriously exploring other forms of writing apart from historical non-fiction. I am doing a course with the Australian Writer’s Centre (awesome by the way), listening to podcast interviews with writers, and reading “The Writing Book” by Kate Grenville.

So what have I learnt so far:

• That to be a writer you just need to write
• Reading a lot is really important
• The first draft is just that, so just write – get it done without rereading or editing
• My story is unique, so because of this I can start with ideas that I have taken from my reading. No two stories will ever be the same.

Learn Moodle – Part 2

Well, I have now completed weeks 2 and 3 of the Learn Moodle course. What a great course. It is very interactive with lots of engaging activities and an opportunity to explore the Learn Moodle Mobile app.

As part of the course we have to create our own practice course in Moodle. I have chosen the topic of Family History Basics because I would love to one day share my knowledge of this topic. I also write a Genealogy blog where I share some of the family stories I have written.

One of my favourite activities in the Learn Moodle course is the workshop activity. This was new to me – a function I haven’t used before. You make your own submission to the workshop and then peers assess each other. I had to assess 4 other students in the course. I actually found it a bit confronting as a couple of them hadn’t really followed the instructions and I had to assess accordingly. One of the students wrote in Spanish so I had to translate before I could assess!

As usual it is good to reflect on learning – it really helps to consolidate the learning and see new angles.

Learn Moodle

What Luck! I was recently engaged to do some Moodle training for some school teachers who are beginner Moodlers.  So how fortuitous it was that as I was doing some research I came across learn.moodle.net  just as a new four week course was commencing.

Now, I have been using Moodle for around 8 years so whilst I know there are so many features I have not used, I thought I had the basics. How wrong I was.  This course is for beginners and yet there are so many things I do not know.

In the first week the tasks included to Introduce ourselves and request a practice course. Pretty straight forward. I really liked the the immediate suggestion to do some reflecting – hence this blog post. However I did find watching so many videos a bit tedious. I guess that was because most of the content was known to me, even though there was a gem of new information in most of them. One other thing that I found a bit annoying was that many people who were more advanced moodlers added very involved questions in the forum posts. This was specifically discouraged in the first tutorial, in order that the course be welcoming and not daunting for those it was really meant for – real beginners.

Devices in the Classroom

Consider the question: “If I allow my students to have devices in the classroom, how can I stop them wasting time on social media?

Now consider the similar question: How do I stop my student (who I have told to put their device away) from staring into space and not taking in anything I say?”

Same answer to both questions, I reckon.  Engage them!

I was absolutely delighted to watch this weeks episode of Australian Story featuring young high school teacher Eddie Woo.  The best thing he said IMO was “take out your devices”.  But he also has his own “Woo Tube” channel where he posts recordings of all his sessions!  These are viewed by maths students from all around the world!

OK, so when you have taken that very brave step of saying “Take out your devices” how do you stop them going straight to Facebook.

The answer could be to immediately engage them in some activity which makes use of their beloved devices – “take out your devices and do………….”

There are any number of great apps which can be really engaging and useful.  Lets take some examples that relate to the courses we deliver at our RTO, Early Childhood Education and Care and Individual Support

1. Note-taking Apps e.g. Evernote – save all your notes in one place, add pictures, audio, drawings etc.
2. Bookmarking Apps e.g. Pocket – save a link to read later
3. Digital Children’s book Apps – e.g. Book Creator
4. Childcare Observation Apps – e.g. Keptme
5. Anatomy Apps e.g. Complete Anatomy
6. Medical Terminology and Abbreviation Apps
7. Heart-rate Apps

Other Activities to get your students to do on their devices:

1. Join a peak body and subscribe to newsletters
2. Look up the meaning of an unfamiliar word
3. Google search a particular topic
4.  Bookmark a YouTube video or TED talk to watch for homework
5. Engage with other students or educators on Facebook or LinkedIn
6. Create podcasts and videos
7. Reflective blogging

And so much more………..

My Workplace

It’s a funny thing, I decided not to start on my blog post for this week immediately I received the #Edublogsclub prompt email and that slight delay has given me an interesting perspective to start from.

Someone asked me yesterday, “Don’t you get lonely working in this building all by yourself?” I wish! Sometimes lonely or bored would be great! Yes, sometimes I am in the building completely on my own and with the door locked but they are certainly not “lonely” times.  They are fantastic productive times when there are no distractions and I can actually get some work done.  I absolutely love those precious solitary moments at work.

But mostly, my workplace is shared with my colleague and any number of students and their Tutors.  And then there is the other building where the rest of our wonderful staff carry out their duties so I spend time there as well.

I am the Executive Officer of a Neighbourhood House and a Registered Training Organisation. My day at the office is so diverse.  Every day is different.  But easily the best thing about my work is when I have a past student come up to me in the street and say “I got a job and I love it”.  Those are the rewarding moments.

But like every workplace, I suppose, there are times of barely organised chaos.  How do I stay organised through all the chaos and distractions?  I have a number of really useful digital tools to help keep me on track, including my journal, my google apps but the most important of all is my Toodledo task list.  This to-do list is synced to all my devices and works on the principles of “Getting Things Done” which I wrote about in a post here.  The work of David Allen has been inspirational to me and really helps me to stay organised.

I’ve Joined the #EdublogsClub

Wow, I just checked my first blog post and realised I started blogging in 2010 so I have been at it longer than I thought.  But I am not a frequent blogger, so that is the main reason why I took up the challenge to post a weekly blog as part of the #EdublogsClub with The Edublogger.

Why do I blog?  I wrote a post on that some time ago here.  I still struggle with that mentality that a post must be perfect before I release it to the world.  So if I could give blogging newcomers one piece of advice it would be to not expect to be perfect and write for yourself.  If someone else is in interested in reading then that is great but I don’t make that my priority.  For me, blogging is about having a place to reflect and store memories.

I also write a number of other blogs for particular projects that I work on from time to time.

I blog on a wide variety of topics including travel and holidays, lifelong learning, wellbeing and many others including whatever takes my fancy at the time.

Blogs I follow are also quite varied.  One of my colleagues writes Hospitalitytrainermum which is quite lighthearted.  And I also enjoy reading Rustic Learning Ramblings by Kate Pinner and Armbandits Weblog by Nerida Gill.

So let’s see how I go with my goal to post weekly!  A great challenge.

Do your Learners have a Growth Mindset

I have just read a great blog post at Mindset Works about teaching both over-achieving and under-achieving learners.  What is the difference?  One would probably think that the over achievers would by definition have a growth mindset.  But apparently that is not necessarily the case.  They might just want to work hard and do what is required to achieve their  goals.  But really they don’t have a Growth Mindset.

So what is a Growth Mindset?  To be truly effective as learners we need to believe we have the capacity to “get smarter”.  We need to believe that we can grow in intelligence.  Yet so many learners don’t.

(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Sylvia Duckworth

I am more interested in under achievers as they are more often our demographic in adult community education.  Many of our learners have not had good experiences at school and have often gone through school thinking  and being told they are stupid.  How do we convince them that they do have the capacity to learn and to grow their intelligence.

We need to be able to teach them how to learn.  We can begin by talking about how the brain works and some strategies like practice and getting enough sleep that really help our brain to learn more effectively.  Then we can talk about study skills.  We need to teach learning strategies as well as content.

 

Making the Most of Emerging Technologies

We are commencing research for our latest project “Making the Most of Emerging Technologies”  This project is funded by the VET Development Centre and we are very grateful for the opportunity to investigate ways to enhance our blended and online delivery using new technologies.

I have come across this fantastic resource which I think will become the bible for this project.  The Free Education Technology Resources e-book.