A new Youtube video to promote the benefits of Maang, the NSW DEC’s social networking facility for educators:
Maang – Where the NSW DEC connects
Tag Archives: Maang
Time to check out Maang?
A few of us have spent way too much of our vacation playing around on Maang, the NSW DEC’s new microblogging facility that replaces Yammer. It has been like two weeks of the really fun bits of a professional development day, mixed with watercooler talk. So much to learn, so much to discover, so much to share. I know that I’ve explored only the tip of the Maang iceberg and that it holds many more surprises as we learn more.
If you have never dabbled in Facebook or Twitter, but feel like you probably should know something about how social media works – and so many of our students spend a lot of their time (seemingly) perfecting their skills in same – Maang is an ideal opportunity for you to go beyond the possibilities of a professional listserv and to do so among curious colleagues who are also learning. What I’ve enjoyed so far is not just socialising and sharing with TLs in the dedicated Maang groups (there is a Teacher Librarian group with 142 members so far, a Bookweek group, a blogEd group, and many others), but conversing with principals, beginning teachers, IT specialists, teachers located in schools where I used to teach, etc. There have been several online reunions with colleagues from previous schools, and that has been stimulating, too.
Listservs have their own conveniences, plusses and minuses, but it’s important to investigate what else is out there in Web 2.0 Land, and to practise, practise, practise.
New South Wales Department of Education and Communities staff can find Maang by clicking on the hyperlink that now appears in the DEC Portal’s “Quick links”. Or go to:
https://maang.nsw.edu.au/st/signals
Some browsers will mention a “certificate” problem, but it is a glitch in Internet Explorer.
Hope to see you over at Maang!
30 Day Challenge
“Try something new for 30 days”, Matt Cutts
My NSW Department of Education and Communities colleagues on Maang have decided to embrace the advice of Matt Cutts in his TED talk, “Try something new for 30 days” (above).
First up is the Photo Challenge (click for the cumulative slideshow). For the next 30 days, we take a photo a day and post it under the dedicated thread for the day. Day threads will be numbered according to which day we are up to. Subject matter? “What’s happening in your life/work today?” (I’m already experienced in this type of challenge, have done the 365 Photos project in 2009-2010.
Here’s my pic:
DAY 1
These homemade stuffed cats date back to my teachers college days (1979), based on my cartoon characters, Fish’ook and Bluey, who featured in a comic strip in the college newspaper, “Dugil”. They turned up in a vacation cleanup this week; hadn’t seen them in years! (Ah, Hobbytex – remember those roll-on paint-in-a-tube things you bought on party plan like Tupperware?)
No more Yammering – welcome to Maang!
Yesterday, the NSW Department of Education and Communities’ professional “microblogging service”/social-networking web facility, Yammer, gave way to Maang *. Maang is a work networking tool, similar to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. It allows DEC staff to engage in conversations in a closed professional network.
What I’m really loving is the character counter. While Yammer didn’t have a character limit to posts, blogEd does. Too often I’ve been caught out by the mysterious limitation on the number of characters being used. The Maang character counter is most welcome:
Ooooh, and now I’ve learned a new trick:
Thanks Stu! (Also see “Comments”.)
Repeat to self: “To capture a portion of the desktop, press Command-Shift-4. A cross-hair cursor will appear and you can click and drag to select the area you wish to capture. When you release the mouse button, the screen shot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop.Upload that as an attached file.”
* Kamilaroi (also Gamilaraay, Gamilaroi) word for “message stick”.