Edubeacon

Camilla Elliott is a real learning leader. Her blog, Edubeacon has been informing readers for six years now, which is an amazingly long time in the relatively new world of Web 2.0. Camilla explains more about Edubeacon:

Why do we blog?  I’ve been blogging at Edubeacon.com since January 2004.  The site has gone through a name change and a platform change (starting on Blogger, then migrating to WordPress) but the purpose remains the same.  It is a place for reflection; for storing resources with explanatory notes and for sharing with others. Most bloggers will give you the same answer.

Edubeacon

‘Edubeacon’ is an extension of my website ‘Linking for Learning’ (L4L), which began life in about 1997 as ‘Staying Connected’ – an accessible place to store study resources.  L4L needs some therapy but is a patient companion.  I use it to link to my conference presentations and professional writing, thereby saving the odd tree or two and the photocopying budget.  It is also an accessible site for beginners seeking resources of relevance to Australian educators.

Blogs, wikis, personal websites and collaborative spaces, reflect the open and sharing nature of the Internet and Web 2.0 resources in particular.  Edubeacon serves as one of the cogs in my Personal Learning Network.  It provides opportunities for the occasional conversation and has had various changes of pace over the years depending on life’s pressures.

Building a Personal Learning Network is an essential professional activity in this time of constant change.  It’s a journey on which we build knowledge, collegiality and understanding with a variety of companions.  Blogging on Edubeacon is part of my  meandering learning journey.

Thank you Camilla for sharing your learning journey with the readers of Bright Ideas. Edubeacon really is a beacon of blogs; a shining light on technology and education that is thoughtfully researched and written.

LiveBinders

Livebinders is a free site and bills itself as ‘The knowledge sharing place’.  It is a type of online binder where a number of websites can be ‘put inside’ the binder as a collection. Two great examples of use would be as an ePortfolio of websites that you have developed (blogs, wikis, netvibes, etc.) and as a repository for students’ school assignments, whether it be as a bibliography of sites uses or sites the students have developed themselves during their school career.

Livebinders

From the learn more section of the website comes the following information:

A better way to share multiple links quickly and simply

Take Control of Your Information

  • View links like pages in a book instead of URLs on a page
  • Combine PDFs and Word docs with the links you collect
  • Organize your links and documents into tabs and subtabs

Save Time

  • Conveniently update information without having to resend links
  • Avoid the hassle of finding links in old emails and long bookmark lists
  • Update LiveBinders from one place

Share with Pride

  • Build a library of livebinders
  • Allow others to view your public and private binders
  • Embed livebinders on blogs, web pages and desktops

LiveBinders is Free!

  • Sign Up to create an account so you can store your livebinders right away
  • Add the ‘LiveBinder It’ Bookmark Tool to your browser toolbar
  • Start browsing the web. Find a link you want to save then click on the ‘LiveBinder It’ to automatically add the link to a new livebinder

It is easy to add a LiveBinders button to your browser and each time you’d like to save a site, just click on ‘links’, then ‘add to LiveBinders.’ Here is a LiveBinder that I created earlier:

 

 (One LiveBinders is open, click on each tab to open each website.)

As you can see, LiveBinders can be embedded into blogs, wikis and the like.

Be aware that students need to be 13 years or older to sign up for a LiveBinders account.

Who am I? Rowville SC is a SLAV/Connect Web 2.0 winner!

Michele Berner, English teacher and e-learning coach and Katherin Grelis, Teacher Librarian at Rowville Secondary College have developed a winning way with Web 2.0.

As joint winners of this year’s SLAV/Connect Web 2.0 competition, Michele and Katherin have devised an exciting and engaging unit of work using a number of Web 2.0 tools. Michele explains: 

I teach a Year 7 class for English and Information Technology. I wanted a project that would incorporate both English language skills and competencies and would integrate ICT. With the help of Katherin Grelis, a teacher-librarian, we developed a unit that would answer the following questions:

 Who am I?

Class blog: http://7eenglish.globalstudent.org.au  Student blogs are linked from here.

What is the essence of me? Where did I come from? What makes me who I am? Where will I be in the future?

 Rowville SC 1

What happened in history? 

What significant events occurred on the day and year I was born?

Class wiki:  http://starringme.wikispaces.com/

Rowville SC 2 

 During the year, 7E English was introduced to blogs and wikis as an integral part of their coursework. There is a class blog: http://7eenglish.globalstudent.org.au and each student has their own blog linked to the class blog. Students spent some time at the beginning of the year setting up their blogs and learning to post, tag, comment etc. Students have completed a number of writing tasks on their blogs. I found this to be an effective way of developing student prewriting, drafting, writing, editing and evaluation throughout the year.  

 Rowville SC 4

The Web 2.0 competition was a good opportunity to develop student skills in a variety of Web 2.0 tools, to gather photographs and other evidence and produce information that linked to their study of the autobiography genre.  This would therefore make the online history a more complete representation of the student. The class blog has a number of tasks designed to build up a personal picture of the student:  in effect, to  answer  the question of who am I?   Students set up pages on their blog and all their writing was posted there. The table below outlines the tasks students completed.  Each task also used ICT by requiring students to take images, edit them, use a web 2.0 tool, upload and embed, and demonstrate appropriate file management.  

 An instruction booklet was provided to students which outlined all the tasks and the websites they were required to access. A copy of this booklet,  the unit planner and other  relevant files can be downloaded from the class blog.  

 These are the tasks the students completed for the project. They created pages on their blogs where each task was posted.  

Who am I? 3 poems: About me, I am….. My bedroom Billboard. Bring in a headshot photo of you and create a billboard using http://bighugelabs.com/billboard.phpWordle –  Describe your personality – one word for each letter of the alphabet. Make it into a wordle. 
My Interests Explain in detail your favourite things in life and why you consider them to be your favourite. Photos of  interests Collage – bring  10-15 personal items (eg photos, medals, trophies and scan them on the photocopier to create a collage of you. Save it as .jpeg image and post on the page 
This is me Open ended sentences. Using the site, Glogster, create a glog – multimedia poster which incorporates different elements of your personality and character. It can include music, photos, text, video. When you look at the finished Glog,  what should emerge is “You”. 
My Memories Provide three memories for each of the following sections. Memories of long ago. Memories that make you laugh. Memories that make you cry. Memories that are warm. Memories that are precious.  
After filling in the blanks for Task 1, pick one from each category and write a 4-5 sentences describing each one.
Create a Memory wall using the program Wallwisher: http://www.wallwisher.com/ 
My Family 6 photographs – family /pets. For each photograph, write 5-10 lines explaining the importance of  your family member or pet to you.  Photocube 3d:  http://www.photocube3d.com/  
My Future Letter to YOURSELF and tell yourself things that will happen in the future to yourself. Here are the topics you are to write about…:•  Something to look forward to…•  Something to watch out about…•  Something/someone to avoid…•  Something to work hard at…•  Someone to be especially nice to…•  Someone to really listen to…•  Somewhere to be sure not to go… 
What happened on the day I was born What happened on the day I was born? What events occurred in the year of my birth? What happened on the day I was born? On the wiki site:  http://starringme.wikispaces.com/, each of you have a page where you will type your findings. Your page is: the date of your birthday (No two students have the same birthday in the class so you will be responsible for locating the appropriate information for this date in history). 

  1. Join the wiki using the username and password provided.
  2. Using any of the sites below, find 5 things that happened on the day you were born.   It might be something in history, in music, in film, in sport.
  3. When you find something interesting, follow the link and read the information. 
  4. Edit your page.
  5. Write a brief summary (5 -8 lines) on the event that happened and save your page
  Task: QuizUsing any of the events from the wiki, you are going to generate a quiz which includes 10 questions based on the information collected in the Wiki. Look at each of the dates on the Wiki, find something that interests you and create a question from the information. Also provide the answer to your question. 

Step 1:  Planning: Create a three column table in WORD.             

Question Answer Wiki page  information comes from

 

Step 2:  Create the quiz.  See class blog for further instructions

Step 3:  Put your name as the author of the quiz

Step 4:  Obtain the embed code for your quiz.

Step 5: Embed the quiz on your WIKI page

 

Link to the quiz generator

http://classtools.net/main_area/template_loader.php/?quiz

 

Instructions on how to use the Quiz generator

Skills Developed

Students should develop skills in the following:

  • Interpret, analyse and evaluate information on  a student’s life (past, present and future) with the assistance of technology
  • Read and follow multistep directions to  complete a complex task
  • improve technical skills by using web 2.0 tools to  publish elements of their life
  • evaluate their own work.
  • create appropriate graphic organizers to provide a structure for information
  • apply the writing process to write effectively in various forms and types of writing
  • Locate and use multiple resources to acquire relevant information
  • evaluate reliability of information
  • record relevant information using a variety of note-taking and organizational strategies

 Rowville SC 3

 Implementing the project

The project was completed in English and IT classes for a period of 4 weeks. Year 7 students are not the best at following instructions on handouts so it was often hectic and students were completing different activities in the booklet as they worked at their own pace. As students completed some of the ICT tasks, they assisted other students which worked well. 

 Continuing use of the unit

During Semester 1, Yr 7 English study Autobiography.  In 2010, English teachers will be able to use the Who am I / Starring Me unit to study this genre whilst the ICT and Web 2.0 skills that accompany each task can be taught during the class’ Information Technology classes.  

 The  project will also form part of  our ICT showcase; demonstrating to teachers  how to integrate ICT into a unit of work and how to use blogs as a daily part of the class activities.

What a fabulous unit of work Michele and Katherin have developed. There is plenty for all of us to take from the tools they have incorporated and the way in which ICT has been embedded into the unit of work. The beauty of blogs and wikis is that they can be tweaked and updated year to year without having to reinvent the wheel entirely. As new tools become available, they too can be incorporated into the unit.

Congratulations to Michele and Katherin for their SLAV/Connect Web 2.0 competition success. It is obvious that it is well deserved.

Feature blog – Round Reading @ Lowther Hall

 Glenys Lowden, Head of Lowther Hall AGS’s LRC has developed a well-used blog for her students. A previous post explained how Glenys used a wiki for this topic, but on reflection of practicalities, she decided to change over to a blog. Glenys explains:

Lowther hall blog

The program is called Round Reading.  It was originally on a wiki, however I found I actually preferred the discussion aspect of the blog and I had successfully used this method in a Year 7 blog.  Students are divided into groups depending on the novel they chose.  They had a couple of weeks to read the novel and then are to post responses to questions which are outlined on each page.

Lowther hall blog 22

As you can see by the number and extent of student responses, this is a widely used blog which gives students a forum to discuss their thoughts on books studied. Well done Glenys!

Persnickety Snark – YA book blog

Bright Ideas met YA blogger Adele Walsh at the Inkys virtual longlist announcement. Adele has been selected as a judge for the Inkys and she explains more about her blog: 

Homepage
Homepage

Can you tell our readers a little about how your blog came to be?

I am a teacher at a poorly resourced school, specifically in our book area, so I thought I might be able to blog in order to receive books for the students.  I have blogged here and there previously but in Persnickety Snark, I had a specific goal and I was determined.  During the summer break, I reviewed everything in my YA collection and then contacted Australian publishers and they happily helped me out by sending me review copies.  The school’s collection has grown and now I am reading a book a day.

 I am now nine months into the YA blogging biz and I have received so much more than books for my class.  I have been able to interview many YA authors, meet a range of fantastic readers from across the globe, attended Reading Matters, been invited to be part of the Inkys judging panel and written a blurb for a book.  More importantly, I have deepened my knowledge and appreciation for Australia YA and now I have the pleasure of highlighting it on Persnickety Snark.

 Do you market your site at all?

In terms of marketing, I am not all that active.  Word of mouth with the authors and Reading Matter seemed to have raised my profile somewhat. My reviews (or quotes from them) occasionally turn up on websites and blogs with a lovely hyperlink. Twitter has been amazing in that it allows people to follow the link to my newest review.   I have noticed that I have become more frequented of late as authors have mentioned me on their blogs.  I am also getting some great feedback about my reviews so I think more people are returning as they like my review style and they trust that I will be honest in my regard for a book.

Where do you work/go to school?

I am a Year 8 English, Studies of Society and the Environment and Information Communication Technology teacher at Burc College.  It’s a small independent school in the North-East suburbs of Adelaide.  It’s lovely as I can switch the class from reading Hunger Games, to editing podcasts to making World War 1 trench models. My class is relatively small and largely ESL as they are from a whole host of countries – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Iraq, etc  I am also the curriculum and behaviour management coordinator so my days can be rather hectic!   

How did you get involved in the Inkys?

Lili Wilkinson asked if I would like to be a judge a few months prior to the announcement.  My answer was a emphatic YES.  I have been reviewing and interviewing a whole host of Australian YA authors since January and am one of the few Australian YA review bloggers.  I guess my work on the blog and with publishers/authors brought me to her attention as a possible candidate.  Meanwhile, I was just flabbergasted that I was asked and continue to be honoured that they thought of me. 

 Any other information you’d like to add?

One of my favourite aspects of YA reviewing is that I have come across authors I might otherwise been unaware of.  Julie Gittus is one that has made a particular impact.  Her novel, Saltwater Moons, was released last year and because of the blog I was able to review her book and email with her.  I think it’s a fabulous book that should have been recognised more.   I love stumbling over Australian YA authors accidentally and getting caught up in their stories – Mo Johnson’s Boofheads was a novel I bought as the title tickled my fancy and it ended up really striking a chord with me.  It’s the debut authors like Julie and Mo that make reviewing really exciting.  

 A big thanks to Adele for taking the time to inform us about her wonderful blog. It is an excellent model for any students or even teachers wishing to begin their own blog.

Hey! Teenager of the year

When attending the virtual release of the Inkys longlist, Bright Ideas met an excpetional teenager with a brillant blog. Focussing on books for teenagers, Steph Bowe’s blog Hey! Teenager of the Year is both informative and inspiring. Steph has agreed to let the readers of Bright Ideas know a little bit more about her blog.

About me: I’m a fifteen-year-old aspiring author who lives in Victoria, Australia. At the moment I’m finishing high school by correspondence, because it allows for a lot more freedom with my education and I have more time for reading and writing. 

Earlier this year, I interviewed YA author and the manager of insideadog Lili Wilkinson on my blog. She invited me to be an Inkys judge, along with blogger Adele Walsh, three other teenage judges and last year’s golden Inky winning author James Roy. It’s been a lot of fun to be a part of.

 About my blog: I started Hey, Teenager of the Year in April as a way to talk about books for teenagers. My aims for the blog were mainly to talk about the books I love and get to know other YA readers and writers. I emailed authors whose books I love and asked if they’d be interested in being interviewed, read and commented on the blogs of other teen bloggers and gradually I got more and more readers – something that when I had started, I didn’t expect at all. Now, I regularly receive books for review, and through commenting on blogs and writing guest posts more and more people discover my blog. Because of my blog, I was asked to be an Inkys 2009 judge and I was invited by author Susanne Gervay to the NSW Writer’s Centre Kids & YA Festival.

 Hey! Teenager of the year is a fabulous resource as well as an exceptional model for other inspiring bloggers and writers, both young and not so young alike. Thanks to Steph for taking the time to speak to Bright Ideas. You can find out more information and contact Steph here.

Feature blog – Karen Kearney

Whitefriars College teacher librarian Karen Kearney has kindly agreed to share the development of her blog – Childhood Memories. Karen explains:

 The SLAV “23 Things” course during 2008 saw the creation of my Childhood Memories blog.  Our very first “thing” to do was to set up a blog, where reflections on each week’s tasks could be recorded.  

Homepage

Homepage

It was very difficult to decide just what the main focus of my blog should be.  There were so many possibilities!  I wanted something that was going to be of continued interest for me to write about, and that was interesting for anyone who wished to drop by and read it.  After chatting away about some favourite childhood books in the first post, I decided to incorporate all of my interests into the blog, and write down some memories of my childhood. 

As I explored each of the subsequent tasks, many times I was able to tie in the task with something from my childhood.  Theatres have always been a large part of my life and the image generation tasks allowed me to explore some of the different ways I could present photos of our Melbourne theatres.  The week we explored YouTube.I looked at different book trailers.  Later I had fun exploring some old doll television commercials and some clips from classic television shows I watched as a child.  These commercials are absolute gems if your classroom is comparing values important for girls growing up, as I did, in the 1960s, with that of today’s young girls.  Exploring podcasts led me to many different podcasts related to both my professional and personal interests, so much so that I am now a devotee of podcasts as a source of information!

 The blog has also been a place for me to record different ideas which have been useful both in classes and the school library, and as a reminder of useful sites and applications.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching the black and white videos at Connect Safely  for example, yet would probably have forgotten all about them unless I had recorded the site in a blog post. 

 Book Week ideas also made it into the blog.  Last year our school library created lots of posters, using Glogster to advertise our book week activities.  Some examples of ones I made can be seen on my blog.  We also designed some Book Week activities using Web 2.0 technology, and again, posts were made on my blog to remind me of these ideas. 

Karen's glogs

Karen's glogs

Wordlewas used to create word clouds.  Examples of Wordles have been made, and can be seen on my blog.  Short, written reviews of both Kill the Possum (James Moloney) and Miss McAllisters Ghost (Elizabeth Fensham) were found and then copied and pasted into the Wordle box.  A click of the mouse then randomly arranged the words and created a word cloud, where words appearing more frequently were larger, and less frequent words were smaller.  This was explained to the students and it was their mission to then work out which Wordle went with which book.  Very popular books were chosen and students had to analyse each Wordle carefully and gather clues to help them correctly identify each book.  Blurbs could also be used for this activity, or students could create their own Wordle by writing their own book reviews.  

Miss McAllister's Ghost

Miss McAllister's Ghost

Kill the Possum

Kill the Possum

Mosaic Maker, part of Flickr’s Big Huge Labs was used to create another competition.  Around 10 well-known books were chosen and a mosaic was made for each.  Using scans from the front and back cover, as well as finding other pictures which identified objects found within the book, twelve pictures in all, were used to create each mosaic.  Examples can be seen on the blog.  Students were able to try to guess which book each mosaic represented.  If they found any too hard they were able to collect a sheet which had all of the titles listed, but each title was jumbled.  Titles needed to be unjumbled before the mosaics could be matched to the books.  

Black Dog Gang

Black Dog Gang

Both of these activities were very successful.  They were easy to prepare, and create, and were enjoyed by many of our students.  They could easily be incorporated into Library classes at both primary and secondary levels, as either activities or displays.  Better yet, have students create them.

 I enjoy sharing my thoughts through writing my blog, and reflecting on the different Web 2.0 tools I have explored.  Writing and commenting on blogs are a wonderful way to get to know people from all over the world.  Whilst there may be few people in your circle of friends who share some of your interests, there will be many worldwide who do, and connecting with them is extremely satisfying. 

Well done Karen and thank you for sharing your blogging journey with us.

Best Australian library blogs, wikis, etc.

We are on the hunt for Australia’s favourite school library blogs, wikis, netvibes, webquests and pageflakes (and so on). We’d also like to seek out blogs by library staff that are reflective of of our profession.

Please consider nominating your colleagues, people from your networks and virtual networks or even yourself. Once we have a shortlist representing different platforms, voting will be open to anyone interested.

Please send information such as:

  • Your name and school
  • Who you are nominating (if known)
  • The name of the website/s
  • The URL/s
  • Any other information

You can nominate as many different websites as you like. Nominations will close on 11 August. Voting will commence shortly afterwards. Please send nominations to brightideas@slav.schools.net.au

Feature blog St Martin of Tours – Rosanna

Kim Yeomans of St Martin of Tours Primary School in Rosanna has allowed Bright Ideas to gain insights in to the development of her library blog.

Kim says:

I did the SLAV Web 2.0 course last year and decided this year to set up a blog for our LRC. The LRC already has an active presence on our school intranet but I felt the blog and Web 2.0 tools might let me do a little more. The Library already has a MyClasses page (intranet), but I was looking for other engaging ways to share what we do in the LRC and promote reading.  The Web 2.0 online course offered by SLAV last year introduced me to many new and exciting tools.  Attending the SLAV conference with Will Richardson earlier this year provided the impetus to actually begin our LRC Blog in mid February.

Homepage
Homepage

The main aims of our LRC Blog are to

  • Share the activities and learning we do in the LRC
  • Promote books and reading
  • Encourage students to participate in an online community
  • Introduce students to appropriate Web 2.0 tools
  • Develop student understanding of a global classroom

 It has been really encouraging seeing the students embrace the blog and add their comments.  Even our Principal who is on Enrichment Leave is contributing her learning on our blog and adding dots to our ClustrMap!  I have found Slideshare and Animoto are great Web 2.0 tools that enable us to share our work. This term I’ve added to our blog with the New LRC and Websites pages.  I am currently trialing SimplyBox for our website collections (even though it is blocked at school) because it is simple for me to set up and visually easy for the students to use at home. 

Ripper reads - student comments
Ripper reads – student comments

Our LRC Blog is evolving along with my own skills and knowledge and will continue to do so to meet the needs and interests of both the students and our Library program.  It is trial and error seeing what works on our blog, but I’m really enjoying the process!

Congratulations to Kim on inspiring both students and staff to become a part of the Web 2.0 world! Well done Kim.  (Don’t forget that Kim had previously shared some excellent photos of previous Book Week displays that might prove inspirational.)

ANZ LitLovers: Lisa Hill’s personal book blog

As readers of Bright Ideas, you are probably already familiar with Lisa Hill. Lisa Hill is the Director of Curriculum and teacher librarian at Mossgiel Park Primary School in Endeavour Hills and has been the feature of two previous Bright Ideas posts: the first about her school library blog and the second focussing on her professional learning blog. Lisa is now kindly sharing her personal reading blog.

Having set up my professional LisaHillSchoolStuff blog in March last year, I found it wasn’t long before I wanted the same sort of space to write online about what really matters to me: reading books.  I am a voracious reader, and have been since childhood. My family travelled a lot but wherever we lived in the world, my father’s first task was to join us up at the nearest library so that we could resume our Saturday routine: a weekly walk to the library where we borrowed as many books as we were allowed, followed by loafing on our beds with a book until late in the afternoon when we were shooed out to play by my mother.

 In 1997 I began journaling my thoughts about the books I read, and I wish I’d started long before that.  When you read about a hundred books a year as I do, the details fade as the years go by.  Although it can be a pleasure to re-read a book, it’s chastening to have to do this when you don’t really want to, in order to join in a conversation about it.  My journal entries range from cursory dismissals of books I didn’t like to long reflections on more complex books such as The Masterby Colm Toibin.  Sometimes my response is deeply personal because the book relates to something in my own life; at other times it’s like an impersonal review.  I wrote pages and pages about my journey through Proust and almost as much again about Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memorybecause it helped me to clarify my thoughts about them.  I still do this journaling, often late at night in bed, even though most of what I read now ends up as a blog post on my ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

ANZ LitLovers home

ANZ LitLovers home

Back in 2002 I had set up ANZ LitLovers as an online reading group and developed a website as a resource for members – but it was always a pain to update it.  When I bought a new computer that didn’t have the necessary software, it seemed to me that a LitBlog was a much easier and more flexible alternative, and I would be part of a growing international LitBlog movement, celebrating Australian Literature in my own little niche.

In the beginning I had ambitious ideas about other members of the group joining in and posting, but this hasn’t happened.  My group members write fluently and with great perception in the privacy of our online group, but they don’t seem to want to publish.  The one exception is a journalist, as comfortable with public writing as I am, but after posting her BBRLMs (Best Books Read Last Month) three times, she hasn’t done so since.  So it has become, by default, my personal LitBlog, a place for me to post my book reviews, and ramble on about book-related topics. 

At the time of writing, it has nearly 9000 hits, and is linked to other LitBlogs around Australia, the UK and the US.  ClusterMaps tells me that I have readers all over the world, but I think the ones in Slovenia, Myanmar and the Maldives must have stumbled on the blog by accident LOL.  However, there have been nearly 2000 viewers in Australia and over 1500 from the US – and these would translate into healthy sales if my writing were a book and not a blog! A growing number of people are commenting on my posts – which now number around 145 and that’s an average of thirteen posts each month since July last year.  I think it’s popular because I’m not a professional reviewer and my style sits somewhere between academic and general reader.  I take care to add the titles and authors as tags, and I categorise my posts to make them easy to find.  And I write often – usually every weekend – so there’s always something new to read if they’ve subscribed using RSS.

My all time top post (not counting the page about our reading schedule and our About page) is the one about Google Books, followed by my review of The Slap   which is on the Miles Franklin shortlist and has been featured prominently in the media.  A post about Modernism  got 17 hits in less than 24 hours, which surprised me, but the one I’m about to write about Patrick White’s Voss won’t be nearly so well-received, I bet!  Another very popular page is our ANZLL Books You Must Read list and a Reading Challengespage, but mostly people find my blog when they Google a particular title: although Perry Middlemiss’s Matilda is theAustralian LitBlog, he has more diverse interests than I do, and there’s not a lot of people writing online about Australian literary fiction or classics like me.  (I write about international contemporary fiction and classics, and non-fiction,  too, but that’s not my focus.)

2009 schedule

2009 schedule

Many people blog solely for their own pleasure and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think that the key to having a blog that others want to read is to find a niche, and to develop a personal style.  I’m a serious reader, and my reviews reflect that, but they’re informal rather than pompous (I hope!) and they’re always my honest opinion.  (The only books I’ve received as review copies are the children’s books I review for Allen and Unwin, and even so I was a bit brutal on one occasion where I really didn’t like the book.) But I don’t just review books, I blog about all kinds of book related things…

 I’ve written about philanthropy for booklovers, about meeting my favourite author Kate Grenville, about rearranging the bookshelves in my library ( that’s the one at home) and about reading by candlelight for Earth Hour. I’ve ticked off a columnist in The Age and suggested Christmas gifts for booklovers.  I succumb to Book Memes (twice), post about festivals that I go to, have a go at predicting who the winners of awards might be, and am not afraid to express my opinion about ‘sacred writers’ who in my opinion are victims of their own overblown status. I jazz up the blog with pictures, maps, videos that tie in with books, book-covers and even an Animoto and I hyperlink almost obsessively so that people can click straight through to anything on another site that I refer to.  These strategies all come courtesy of what I’ve learned from Sue Waters at EduBlogs which is an excellent place to start any learning journey about blogging.

Books you must read

Books you must read

However, the most important point about having a personal blog is that it ought to be something you enjoy.  For me, blogging at ANZ LitLovers is an adjunct to what I already do in my reading journals.  I write for pleasure, at home and online!

Lisa has certainly given so much to others through her blogs and by reflecting on what she has been reading and then writing this for an audience is a terrific skill to have and constantly refine. Once again, well done Lisa and thank you for sharing your passion for books and your amazing amount of work with others. As well as reading Lisa’s blog for personal pleasure, students of English Literature could find some useful and interesting information.