26/09/11

So today I have looked at the online learning tools section and I can still make neither heads nor tails of it.

I am guessing that I am supposed to be looking at new online tools....

Does this blog count? If it does then I suppose I should probably give a review.

Being new to the world of blogging I have only ever made one blog which had three or four posts in it. (it was a new years resolution, it lasted about 3 days!) I got very confused with the whole thing. Even now as I write this, I know for a fact that when I publish it will not look even remotely the same as it does now. The formatting of it will be all over the place and when I put a return in, I can pretty much guarantee that it won't come up.

Like this see!

There is a button on the top for some advanced persons who like to spend their life looking at HTML code. Whilst I have nothing against this in principle ( I have played with html when I was younger) It still seems to me that that is just too much like hard work.

my second complaint would be - why when I press publish does it not just publish! first it asks me if I am sure, and then it asks me to select the posts that I wish to publish............ didn't I just do that when I said publish?!?

There must be far better ways to blog than this. otherwise blogging wouldn't be so popular as all the people who do would have topped themselves.

I seem to be digressing into grumpy old man mode.

Although I can see lots of negatives to the user interface. I can see that if I was only bothered about getting the message across in text form this would do the job quite well. (I myself like to find a happy medium of informativeness and prettiness)

I found something that could possibly make my life easier. I can link my phone to blogger. It seems to be a much simpler interface and when you press publish, it does just that. The only downside to the phone interface is that you end up wif lots ov speling mistaks.

Something I read in the IWS discussion board from my tutor Shirley made me think a little bit.

<1st sidenote spent ages looking for it on G+, IWS and all other possible places of communication to find it in the posterous section. grrrrr>

<2nd sidenote on blogger WHY CANT YOU CUT AND PASTE ?!?!?!!? grrrr>

so below:- hand copied like some kind of cave man without the use of the time saving ctrl+v

"The wider your audience, the more thought should be given to ethical issues - how much info should be published, protecting your own privacy, respecting the privacy of others"

These sound like wise words so I did a little bit of digging.

If this blog is public (which it is) Then I have a potential 2,095,006,005 people online (internetworldstats.com/stats) who could be offended by the things that I write.......

This really scares me if I am honest.

Now while I am sure that not all of these 2,095,006,005 people are homicidal maniacs. The possibility of there being at least some definitely exists.

Even one percent of that is still 20,950,060.1 people.

That's 20,950,060.1 homicidal maniacs that I don't want to offend!

Now putting the homicidal maniacs aside for a moment (please don't hunt me down and kill me!)

Lets assume that every other person on the Internet is OK. a decent person, a stand up dude or dudette.

I don't want to offend any of them with my ramblings either. So at what point do we draw that line? I am quite hard to offend. but I do get offended. Is it fair that some 28 year old man hiding in his man cave behind his keyboard should be given the opportunity to offend people? A question worth thinking about. What is there to stop me really?

I feel like I have left the realms of learning log, but I want people to understand what I have thought about today, and more importantly what I have learned. So I think it still has some form of relevancy

I wanted to look at the bit about privacy. Is there such a thing anymore?

I watched a programme on tv the other day (thats a lie it was Iplayer, haven't watched tv in months) and it was about super injunctions. During the course of the program various hints were made to which people had them and which ones couldn't be mentioned because of it. Yet a quick search on twitter brings up an absolute gold mine of gossip.

Yes there were talks about prosecuting every person who mentioned anything to do with them, but is that actually a physical and logistical possibility?

A quick search on youtube brought up this http://youtu.be/LE9GfqoKws0

and I have to be honest I agree with this dude. "Sometimes people have to bow to practicalities" but at the same time that doesn't make it right!

Wrapping this learning log up now as its tired and I'm late so in summary:-

Blogger - Cool little online app, I'm sure that somebody has a use for it. For me however it just seems overly complicated or I'm overly incompetent.

Things I have thought about and researched- The internet massife, privacy, ethics, homicidal maniacs and how much is too much to share.

I think tomorrow I will put together a better log for the online learning tools module as I think this one went a bit awry if I'm honest.

I'm off to publish post - are you sure? - select posts - publish

and I'm sorry if I offended anyone.