Guesting on the National College of Ireland Blog @NCIRL @YouTube

Today I was a guest on the NCI Blog talking about my YouTube Channel in an post entitled Learn with Dr Eugene O'Loughlin. I very much enjoyed being interviewed by the NCI Marketing folks who have done a great job editing the video. In the video I talk about how and why the channel was set up, the types of videos in the channel, and where most of the views come from. The video was recorded last September and already the figures I quoted in it are out of date. Here it is:

Check out the many great posts including interviews with NCI students on the NCI Blog. You can also follow @NCIRL on Twitter and find NCI on Facebook.

Academic Freedom to Blog - via @ChrisParrTHE

Chris Parr comments in the Times Higher Education that many "university employees like to blog". He says that academics like to do this "to gather their thoughts in one place, pass comment on current affairs, or vent their frustration at the annoyances of everyday life". Though I am not a University employee, I do work as a Lecturer at third-level at the National College of Ireland (NCI). In his comment, Parr describes a situation where academics got into a bit of bother at the Chicago State University over using the College's brand and name in their blog.

Image source: Tenured Radical.

As a so-called academic myself I of course support academic freedom, and I'm glad to say that there is a healthy attitude to this at NCI. Very few of the academics at NCI blog (I'm only aware of one colleague that does), but it is common among academics of other colleges - three of my favourites are Stephen Kinsella (UL), Brian Lucey (TCD), and Karl Whelan (UCD). There is no restriction on my blogging by NCI - I have never been asked to modify or delete any of my 1,000+ posts. It is really cool to be able to take time during working hours and feel free to write a blog post on educational matters. For non-educational matters I tend to write posts at home (as I am now doing), or during a break.

I am of course careful in what I write so that I do not invite comment from College management. Even when I feel critical of College activities I self-censor myself and hold back, sometimes with great difficulty. In this way I have a self imposed control of my own Academic Freedom. But if others want to go further I support their freedom to do so. In the video below, students and faculty of Florida Atlantic University are protesting about academic freedom in a case where a professor stood on a piece of paper with the word "Jesus" written on it. As a Christian myself I think this action is a bit silly, but the professor involved should not be censured for expressing an opinion. Long Live Academic Freedom!

Willkommen in der Deutschen #anglo

I'd like to welcome the almost 20,000 Germans who have viewed this blog over the past few days. Since Wednesday, the normal number of daily views of around 400-500 has shot up. Wednesday is also the day the Anglo Irish Bank tapes scandal broke, so I'm sure it is not a coincidence in that suddenly Germans found my blog interesting? The graph shows the sudden peak, but Google Analytics does not yet show what individual posts the Germans are viewing.

 

Below are the top ten page views by country, Germany almost never features in this list, and normally the US and Ireland are at the top. I do not blog about the feckin' banks, but I have mentioned former Taoiseach Brian Cowan in a few posts when remembering our school days in Roscrea - the first of these posts was Who's that beside Eugene O'Loughlin?

No matter - whatever you are reading, all Germans are welcome here!

 

(Blog post title translated from "Welcome to the Germans" using Google Translate)

I miss blogging!

A break from blogging is probably good for everyone who blogs. It's nine days since I last posted and it is a few years now since I had such a long break. At the beginning of 2010 I started blogging on a much more regular basis going from an average of around 10 posts per month to closer to 20.

The past week is normally the busiest one of the year for me at NCI. Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday were taken up with project marking, while Thursday and Friday were taken up with teaching. Very full days that have left me very tired with little time for blogging. Project making is particularly hard as they are final year undergraduate projects worth a high proportion of marks - so much depends on the project for the students' final grade.

I've also got some feedback on my 100 Corners of Ireland book which now needs to be drastically reduced in size - or no one will publish it. So I've been trying to figure out what's best to do - hopefully I will be meeting a publisher in the few 2-3 weeks (finger's crossed!).

Image source: Illuminated Living.

What I have learned from 1,000 blog posts

Yesterday marked my 1,000th blog post, so I have decided that for my 1,001st post I would write about what I have learned from blogging over the past six years. So below, in no particular order, are some of my learnings from blogging:

• My blog is me: All thoughts on my blog are my own, and I find it liberating that I can express them in my own way. The word "blog" is short for "Web Log" which is essentially a diary on the web. I like to record what I have done and write about things that I see and do. I have only ever kept a paper diary once - this was for the year 2000 when I got a present of a Whoseday Book. I updated this every day and sometimes look back on it to see what I was doing on a specific day. I do the same with my blog.
  
  

Cartoon by Dave Walker.
Find more cartoons you can freely re-use
on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

• Careful What You Write, Eugene: Blogging by its nature forces people to be careful about what they write - it's the same with me. I check for spelling and grammar all the time to ensure that I don't look foolish and careless. But I also try to express myself in a way that readers will want to read. I try not to use bad language, and avoid any comments that could lead me to being sued. I am also careful to not be seen to be blogging at times when I should be doing something else (it's lunch time as I am writing this!)
  
  
• Reference, Reference, Reference: In the last couple of years I have been better at referencing. I have always used hyperlinks to other sources, but I also now use quotation marks and italics for direct quotes, attribute content to others where necessary, and give the source of items like graphics I use. This is simply the right thing to do, and I have learned to do it better

• Choosing topics: I blog about anything, and sometimes it is not easy to come up with a topic. Items like reviewing a movie or describing a family event are easy. But at other times I am stumped about something to write and I need inspiration from somewhere. I'll look up on-line news for ideas, or if there is something like an election on I generally have a go at writing about this as if I was a journalist. A good source of ideas is Twitter where I can get dozens of relevant ideas from the people I follow

Cartoon by Dave Walker.
Find more cartoons you can freely re-use
on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

• Engaging with Others: Blogging allows me to share and communicate ideas with others. I get many comments on posts I write - some of them are supportive while others often take me to task on what I  write. It's important to remember that not everybody is going to agree with me all the time, so I accept (and publish) other peoples comments even if I don't like them
  
  
• Not a Lot of People Read my Blog: Occasionally people will say to me "I read your blog...", and it's nice when this happens. The number of views are growing on a monthly basis - last December was the highest so far at 9,492 views. Most of these are as a result of Google searches. Since Analytics have become available in 2008, "eugenes blog" is the most searched term that drives traffic to the blog 

Cartoon by Dave Walker.
Find more cartoons you can freely re-use
on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

• Content is King: Management in SmartForce when I worked there (1989-2002) used to bore the pants off us by saying "Content is King". It's only now that I realise that this is at least partially true. Posts that attract the highest views are generally about things that people want to read about - no surprise there. Very few people care about what I think of the musical Oliver! (which I reviewed here), but one of my more recent posts about the Higher Education Landscape (see here) has been read by 380 people in 17 days. As I wrote yesterday, my blog is a personal treasure trove of content
• Blogging has Established me as an Authority and Expert: (Or at least has gone some way to doing this). The traditional route for an academic to prove their authority and expertise over subject matter was to get a PhD, publish papers, and teach. Of these three I only can say that I do two - I do not write research papers any more. Blogging is an alternative outlet for academics to publish and express their opinion. And it is faster too. A published paper in a peer-reviewed journal will take several months (even years) from start to finish. A blog post can be written in an hour, and shared with your peers instantly. I predict that in years to come, a more important question at academic interviews than "How many peer-reviewed papers have you published?" will be "What do you blog about?"

1,000 Blog Posts

It is just over six years since I set up this blog, and today marks my 1,000th post. On Monday November 13th 2006 I wrote My First Post. It was still to be a full year before I started to post on a regular basis as I only wrote 13 posts in the first year. When I set the blog up I had no intention of it becoming what it is today when I write about many different topics, and I had no idea that it would become such an important and valuable part of my life. I work on my blog almost every day and try to post at least 20 times a month. It's not quite every day that I post, but I do find myself writing almost all the time. 

There are times when I have nothing to say, and there are times when I have a lot to say. There are days when I have to search around my brain, or on-line to find ideas to write about, and there are other days when I have several options to write about. I usually have several working unpublished posts on the go and sometimes it takes more than one session to complete a post (I started this one yesterday). Just over a year ago I started tagging my posts and the screen shot of my Tag Cloud to the left gives an indication of the types of things I write about. Education and YouTube matters are dominant, but I also write about family and holidays, as well as other topics such as reviews of films/books/restaurants. It does take up quite a bit of time, but it is something I like to do in the evenings and weekends. I do most of my writing outside of work hours, but on educational matters I do use working time to write as I regard this as part of the role of a modern academic to have an outlet for their thoughts. This is becoming more popular among academics and I look forward to the day when most (if not all) academics do this.

Google only started providing detailed analytics on blogs in July 2008, and since then the blog has received 175,025 views. The United States and Ireland account for about 49% of total views. While I'm guessing that the USA views (48,768) are as the result of searches, I'm hoping that many of the 37,505 to date from Ireland are people actually reading something that I have written. Below are some more stats taken today:

I find blogging tremendously liberating and I only wish that I could have started doing this back in the 1960s when I first learned to read and write. What a personal treasure trove that would be. I'd like to think that I can keep doing this for the rest of my life! Tomorrow I will write about what I have learned from blogging.

Keep on Blogging!

Careful With That Axe, Eugene (with apologies to Pink Floyd)

Courtesy of @pj_wall I have found a new title for my blog that I like. It is "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" which is the title of a 1968 song by one of my favourite bands, Pink Floyd. According to Songfacts.com, this song was released as the B-side of the single, "Point Me At The Sky." The title is a reference to the first line of that song: "Hey, Eugene, this is Henry McClean". There are very few lyrics in this song, but it features a scream by Roger Waters which is also used at the beginning of Floyd's biggest hit "Another Brick in the Wall". Here's a version taken from Superstars In Concert at Earl's Court on 18th May, 1973:

Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album was played constantly in the Common Room while I was at boarding school in Roscrea, iconic songs like "Time" and "Money" are very familiar to me. But I must confess to not being aware of the Axe song.

I hope that Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Syd Barrett don't mind me stealing their song title. It's a cool line and gives me a much cooler title to my blog than "Eugene's Blog".

Blog Awards Ireland 2012

Eugene's Blog did not make it to the final of the Irish Blog Awards - the short-list of 60 was whittled down to seven yesterday and your's truly is not one of the seven. Nevertheless I was delighted to make the short-list and am not too disappointed.

The Finalists in the Best Personal Blog category are excellent blogs (I took a quick look this morning to check out what I lost out to!). For me one sticks out by a mile - Head Rambles by the self-confessed "Ireland's most cantankerous auld fella" Irish Grandad. His posts are very funny, topical, and like myself he feels free to comment on anything - check out his "God's Waiting Room" post from a couple of days ago. The other six are all by women and are a bit more serious commenting on stuff like disabilities, photographs, and arts & crafts. Worth checking out.

One thing I notice about many of the finalists in all categories is that they have cool names - "Eugene's Blog" looks a bit boring beside the likes of "Simply Zesty", "The Magpie Girl", "Like Mam Used to Bake", "Gutter Candy", "Swear I'm Not Paul", and "Cigar Loving Doorman". Many have also gone to great lengths to have really great designs and layout. Good luck to all at the Final on October 13th next.

I must put my thinking cap on!

Short-listed for Irish Blog Awards #bloggm

A nice surprise this morning to find that "Eugene's Blog" has been short-listed for the Blog Awards Ireland 2012! Though my blog has been nominated for the Blog Awards before, it has never made the short-list. There are 28 categories of blogs, and mine is nominated in the Best Personal Blog section. There were 196 blogs nominated originally and this has now been short-listed down to 61. 

According to the Blog Awards Ireland website, there were over 1,400 blogs nominated in total this year in all categories. This is an incredible figure - so many people are blogging. I have been blogging since November 13th 2006, and other bloggers have been at it for a long time too. Some bloggers post on a daily basis, while others post now and again. 

I post nearly every day - usually about 20 posts per month. Sometimes it's hard to think of something to write, while other times I have more than one topic to blog about - if so I usually hold one topic over for another day. I love doing it, even though I know that my readership is quite small - on average there are between 200 to 300 page views per day. The chart to the right shows daily viewing figures for the last month. During the last month the most popular post was How To... Calculate Mean and Standard Deviation in Excel 2010 with 468 views, while my most popular post of all time is How To... Create a Basic KPI Dashboard in Excel 2010 with 4,468 views. This blog is therefore important for driving traffic to my YouTube Channel.

The next important date in Blog Awards Ireland 2012 calendar is 29th September next when the finalist list will be published. In the mean time I will be checking out some of the other 60 excellent blogs in the Best Personal Blog category.

Keep on blogging!

Education Research by "through the looking glass"

I have just completed a survey as part of a research project into "education bloggers" being conducted by the Open University - click here to access the research page at the "through the looking glass" site. It got me thinking about the reasons why I blog, so I've reproduced the surbvey questions and my responses here:

What do you blog about?
Almost anything (family, politics, sport, reviews, technology, travel, and motorcycles) I can think of, but my main focus is on Education Technology – especially the use of YouTube for education.

Are you paid to blog?
No – who would pay for my rantings?

What do you do professionally (other than blog)?
I am a Lecturer in Computing.

How long have you been blogging at this site?
Since November 2006.

Do you write in other platforms? (e.g. in a print magazine?)
Not very often – just the odd newspaper item.

Can you remember why you started blogging?
It was part of a Learning Technology class I was teaching – we were discussing the role of blogs in education and I decided to practice what I preach.

What keeps you blogging?
The freedom to say what I want. I post almost every day, and while I often have to really think hard about writing something new – I usually find something in the education blogosphere that I can comment on.

Do you have any idea of the size or character if your audience? How?
About 250 page views per day (via Blogger Analytics).

What’s your attitude to/ relationship with people who comment on your blog?
I do know that a lot of my page views are from family. But I also note that many of my students read my blog. Outside of these two groups I have almost no relationship with viewers.

Do you feel as if you fit into any particular community, network or genre of blogging? (e.g. schools, science, education, museums, technology)
While my blog is a personal one, I do feel part of the education community.

If so, what does that community give you?
I get a lot of ideas for class and on-line teaching from the many education bloggers that share their ideas. I don’t always agree with what they say – but it is a great way to share ideas. Sometimes the Community even comment on my blog!

What do you think are the advantages of blogging? What are its disadvantages/ limitations?
I think a blog like my own where I post about anything does not have any specific advantage. I can see great advantages for the use of blogging for a class (greater communication, collaboration, sharing). A limitation is that it is not for everybody – while students can participate by reading other’s posts, they may be unwilling to post themselves.

Do you tell people you know offline that you’re a blogger? (e.g. your grandmother, your boss)
All the time!

Is there anything else you want to tell me about I haven’t asked?
Nope – good luck with the research.

I will also post my answers on my own blog.

This Blog is Five Years Old Today!

On 13th November 2006 I created this blog with a short My First Post. I posted my second post the day after with a note about my Harley-Davidson motorcycle, but did not post again until four months later on 11th March 2007. In fact during the first year of this blog's existence I only posted FIVE times in total. It was really only in early 2008 that I started to post regularly, with seven posts in February and 124 for the year. These days I can't imagine such a low level of activity. Nowadays I average over 20 posts a month - not quite every day, but fairly regularly nonetheless. I rarely post more than once a day, though I sometimes write more than one post in a day and hold some back to publish on another day.

Image link to Rosy ~ Posy Blog.

This is the 717th published post on this blog, and the 234th this year. Simply put - I love blogging! I may even be addicted to blogging - according to this site, I am 80% addicted!

80%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Over the past five years I have posted about many things - family, sport, education, politics, travel, holidays, books, films, motorbikes, YouTube, and many more subjects. I don't have a particular theme, and I don't blog as part of my job. In fact I rarely blog during working hours since I was once wrongly accused by a student of writing a blog post instead of answering that student's email during the day. Nowadays during work hours I usually either publish a post that I have previously written, or write about education matters (which is part of my job).

Below are some statistics from Blogger's Stats Overview of my blog which only goes back to going back to May 2009. Currently there is an average of about 100-120 hits per day according to Statcounter.com (as you can see Blogger has a higher count). I am very curious as to why the most popular post of all is my How To... Draw a Polar Diagram in Excel - nearly three times more than the next post. I cannot explain this - perhaps it is search engines that are responsible. I regularly post about videos I have uploaded to YouTube, but this one is low down in YouTube View Counts (4,753 views since December 2008). In fact it is only the 28th most popular video on my Learn with YouTube channel. I have seen it linked to on other sites, but can't explain its popularity.

Many of my blog posts, especially from 2008 and 2009, have not been read at all (0 views), or have just a few views. Most traffic sources are from Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Most searches that lead to the blog are searches for variations on my name. Ireland, the United States, and the UK dominate page views by countries. It will be interesting to see in another five years if anything changes!

Seven Reasons Why Educators Should Blog

Steve Wheeler is a blogger who I sometimes check out - he is Associate Professor of Learning Technology at Plymouth University. Recently I checked out his post - Learning with 'e's: Seven reasons teachers should blog. He writes that from his "personal experience blogging is one of the most beneficial professional development activities I have ever engaged with. I learn more from blogging than I do from almost any other activity I participate in". I too learn a lot from blogging - here are Professor Wheeler's seven reasons why teachers should blog:

Blogging causes you to reflect Blogging can crystalise your thinking Blogging can open up new audiences Blogging can create personal momentum Blogging can give you valuable feedback       Blogging can be creative Blogging can raise your game A comment from Doug Woods on the blog in reaction to above also adds:     8.  Blogging is fun

Image link to                      Open Gardens Blog.

Each of the above points is developed further, but point #3 is my favourite. Prof Wheeler writes "You can become a teacher within an infinitely larger classroom, and as you blog on subjects you think are interesting, you will discover that there are plenty of other education professionals 'out there' who are also interested. I don't know how many educators read this blog - there are an average of 80-100 unique visits per day, I hope that some are involved in education. As Prof Wheeler puts it, they can perhaps "learn something new from you".

There are also reasons for educators not to blog. Peter Corliss in a comment on Prof Wheeler's blog points out concerns about issues such as "privacy", IT "policies", "bad-mouthing", "exposing flaws", and "embarrassment". I agree that these are serious issues that are putting up barriers to more widespread blogging.

Two of my academic colleagues at NCI are bloggers - check out Dr Leo Casey and Prof Jimmy Hill. It would be great if others did so too :-).

What Richard Byrne has Learned from 5,000 Blog Posts

Richard Byrne, a "guy with a computer in western Maine" (@rmbyrne on Twitter) has a fantastic on-line resource for anybody involved in education - Free Technology for Teachers. Lots of goodies and free stuff - his video creation resources are especially good. He is also a serious blogger (he is not my uncle Richard Byrne though!).

Image link to
Free Technology for Teachers.

Yesterday, Richard posted about What I've Learned from 5,000 Blog Posts. First - this is a fantastic publishing rate, all done in under four years. It takes a serious amount of dedication to do this. While some bloggers (like me) rely on personal experiences, family events, elections, etc, for ideas to post about, Richard has a track record of posting about everything educational. His blog is worth checking out - recently he made his 5,000th post and gives us bloggers a few lessons. Here are the headings for what he writes about:

• Just ship it
• About growing your audience
• Dealing with criticism, backlash, and mistakes
• Monetization
• Balance
• Technical skills

I particularly like the "Balance" item - Richard strives to "find balance with the other aspects" of his life finds that if he doesn't "step away from the keyboard" he will "get stagnant and everything suffers". Good advice. This past weekend was very wet in Dublin and I hardly stepped outside the door on Saturday -  I spent a lot of time on my computer.

Inspiring new blog - "But I wanna live forever"

The Irish Independent today reports on the inspiring story of Cáit O'Loughlin (no relation to me) "Dying mum to leave her kids an online legacy of love". Cáit has terminal cancer and is showing a brave face in sharing her story with the world - she derives comfort from writing about her treatment, fears, and attempts at a normal live with her young children. She is also expecting her third child!

I'm sure that when the people behind Web 2.0 and blogging were creating these free tools for us all to use that they never expected blogging to take off in the way that it has done, and that there would be inspirational stories recorded by seriously ill people. It is easy to write blog posts, but it takes courage to bare your soul and share your deepest fears with everybody in the world. Check out Cáit's Blog - But I Want to Live Forever, it's written from the heart, is very new, and well worth a read. Let's hope that Cáit continues to inspire for a long time to come.

Blogger links to Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Buzz

I have been experimenting with linking up some of my Social Networking and on-line presence tools with one another. In addition to Blogger, I also use Twitter, Linkedin, Gmail, YouTube, Buzz, and more recently, Facebook. First - it's hard to keep track of everything (and my presence on-line is modest compared to most people I know). Post something on Blogger, and later check out what someone else is doing on Twitter, followed by checking out who is active on Linkedin - it gets awkward. Sometimes I will have Twitter, Linkedin, Blogger, Buzz, YouTube, Gmail, all open at the same time - but mostly I just have one-or-two open at a time. It is also quite diverting to have so much going on when you are trying to get some work done.

Lately, many tools are offering to link with other tools. Already - if I post something on Linkedin, it also shows up on Twitter (and vice versa). Much of what I do on-line is also updated on my Gmail, and any comments I get on my blog and on YouTube also show up in my Gmail Inbox (thanks to all for your comments). This is a convenient way of checking what's happening on-line.

Today I have linked this blog with Twitter (through Twitterfeed). This is a service which allows you to automatically "feed" your blog to Twitter, Facebook, and several other services. So, when I post here on Blogger - there should be an automatic post on Facebook and Twitter (through Twitterfeed). I think Google Buzz is an attempt to do all of this at once - it even posts when you add an image to Picasa.

Very soon many of us will have an increased on-line presence - many friends, colleagues, and my students use Bebo, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Gmail, Linkedin, Twitter, Blogger, WordPress, Buzz, Flickr, Picasa, and lots of other tools. There will be an increasing demand to provide tools to manage people's on-line presence through a single interface. Our lives will get more complicated as we sign up for the Next-Big-Thing - if you are like me you will have multiple accounts with on-line services, sometimes with different username and passwords. Just stop and think for a moment how many Internet services you are registered for - how do you manage them all?

Graphic created with free version of Shape Collage using logos plundered from Google Image Search.

Finally - today is the 31st of March (which is my Dad's birthday - hope you had a great day Dad. Love you lots). I note that this post is the 22nd post I have made this month which is the most for any month since I started using Blogger. My previous highest was 20 for February of this year. (Too much time on my hands I hear you say!). With the odd exception, almost all of my posts are written in the evening or at the weekend  (it is almost mid-night as I write this). Sometimes I write several posts for publication later, and finish them off during the day at work during a break. So if you think I'm skiving off work (and some of you do!) - think again.