OK … the first real post. I’m not sure what happened with the last one … gave up on the so-called inspiration and clicked “finish” and it posted it. And now I can’t see anything on my screen that says “edit” or “delete” so it looks like I’m stuck with it. An inauspicious start. Though is a good example of a bad experience as a customer.

So … why start a blog? Well I was encouraged to do so by Grainne Conole when I was chatting to her recently. I’ve had a blog for a while over at http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markchilds/ but never really kept it up. The reason Grainne was saying is that inspiration comes from being part of a community of bloggers; that if I got myself a spot on a more open community, where people could follow and vice versa, then I would be motivated to blog. Well we’ll give it a go.

I first checked out Steve Wheeler’s blog Learning with E’s http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/ but the blogspot interface is horrendous … pop-out sidebars!! Who can deal with them? (Well Steve evidently, not me). So I went back to a platform I first used for the connectivism MOOC back in 2008. Seems to be working for me better so far (apart from the initial post).

I’ve known Steve for about 10 years, and was first inspired to do a PhD by his work, we copresented a seminar on videoconferencing at ALT-C, and he was all theorised up with a transactional distance and I was just saying the equivalent of “well the kids liked it” and I realised I was missing a trick. So his example seemed a good place to start.

The next tricky bit was a name for the blog. I went for inspiration to that a conference presentation I did last year with another friend and colleague Aase Knudsen, on embodiment in the physical and virtual worlds, and how one reinforces the other (and is often overlooked in discussions on telepresence). It seemed like a snappy title (and references Ray Bradbury so can’t be bad) but also summarises the area of technology and education that I’m most interested in, which is how we experience it, and connect to it, and the impact that has on our learning.

So, Aase, Steve, Grainne. The reason I like the job I have (a sort of “freelance academic”) is that there’s a community of people in Technology Enhanced, Supported, E Learning (whatever is the in thing this year) who count as friends, colleagues, inspiration etc. all rolled into one. I guess ultimately the point of the post is to have a voice in that community.

Oh .. .managed to delete the actual first post .. “delete” is apparently called “move to trash” :&