He’s set up some parameters to get a music education blogger ‘in the club’ (like 2 posts per month and contribute to conversations elsewhere) but I don’t think he’ll be sending the boys round if you miss your targets. This got me reflecting on my own online activity of late; I crashed and burned a few months back when my laptop died. I had no backup of rss and podcast feeds and I’ve been playing catchup ever since. But also my ‘portfolio’ of online activity is now much more disparate than just a single blog.  My string arranging blog, a few wikis, a few more nings (including 2 I manage for student activity) and my institution’s Moodle areas.  (Not to mention Facebook and Myspace)  And then I’m dabbling with Twitter.  So, in my defence your honour, that’s why posts in this blog have been thin on the ground!  But I love being part of the global conversations, ‘cos talking is good!

Here are Joe’s parameters:

1. You must have (or have started) a blog site and not a simple website. 
2. You must agree to post 2 or more posts per month about a topic that is interesting to you, your students, the music audience as a whole, etc. that related to music education and/or music technology in the classroom environment. Literally, you can almost blog about anything related… the “world is your oyster!”
3. You must agree to not “covet” your materials and share them with the world under a creative commons license (your pick!).
4. You must actively participate in our “global conversation” about our field by joining in the conversation with others:
   1. Agreeing to comment on two others ME Bloggers posts per month
   2. Share your blog with others by linking to the other ME Bloggers in either your blogroll or a page of ME Bloggers
   3. Agreeing to answer legitimate quesions by ME Bloggers and others that post questions on your site in a timely manner.
5. Let me know you exist!  Comment after this post, or visit our contact page!
6. When you become an ME blogger, post about our campaign as much as you want, tell your friends…we know this is going to be a long haul…let’s take the first step together!

I reckon I’m doing OK with most of those (as long I can include blog posts beyond this blog) – just need to blog roll and rss my disparate online activity in one place, and subscribe to the other group bloggers and get talking!

MacBook audio

macbookaudio.mp3

Micromemo audio

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Blogged with Flock

I joined a few weeks ago and have found the discussions fascinating and the interface tres cool.  Yet in my quest to find web 2.0 music educators I’m still drawing a blank.
The ning  interface is my ideal; it’s easy to set up and smoothly integrates the key features of blogging, images, video and audio – a great personal space!  That’s apart from the networking / collaboration / discussion features.
But it’s the attitude in their that makes it such a great ’staff room’ or social space or whatever it is.  There’s no whinging (though there is honesty about challenges) and talking about learning technoloqies is de rigeur, whereas in one’s own institution it might be seen as a bit of a sideline and something that ‘old nerdy features’ (that’s me at my place!) bangs on about!
A ning space would make a great VLE – indeed I saw a comment that one teacher was going to run a course from a ning page.  Perhaps blog facilities will move this way, as the integration of media becomes more important.  Looking at ning compared with moodle I realise how many features I miss for my learners – the personal page in particular, with upload features of all media for all users.
The community was set up by Steve Hargadon and I sure hope it’s a business model that is paying off for him as he’s put an enormous effort into it!
This has made me think more carefully about some sort of business model for the musicbridge project I’m hoping to get involved with.  User generated content is a key feature – potentially useful resources are no longer enough.