31 Days to Building a Better Blog: Day 24

Another big task for Day 24 of the 31 Day Blog Challenge: to do a search engine optimization (SEO) audit of my blog. In other words, look at how I can write my posts in such a way that I will get them recognized in search engines and get a high ranking so that people will find me quickly.

I certainly try to be careful about how I title my posts ensuring I write them in such a way that they will get noticed by search engines but I probably do not worry much beyond that. For example, look at my previous post. Initially, I titled it 'old health education films'. As you can see, it is now titled 'old sex education films', with the rationale that 'sex' is more likely to turn up in the search engines. That certainly has been true about the post I wrote about my experiences in Second Life which I titled '....naked flying men'. I also pay attention to how I label my posts, using terms I think will attract readers and queries in search engines.

Problogger, who devised this Blog Challenge, has written a detailed post about how to do SEO. The key things I have taken from this are:

• link with the people who are the key bloggers in your area
  
• try to get the key bloggers to link with you - this requires you to write politely to the key person and explain how your post may interest them and their readers
  
• pay attention to the key words you use in your post because these will be picked up by search engines
  
• use the key words in your label, title and frequently in the first few sentences of your post.

These are all things I try to do as much as I can but I do not have the time to be too obsessive about it. Not only that, but I write for a small niche market and will never get a huge audience. And I believe that if I spend all my time thinking about what will attract readers, I will miss the whole point of my blog, which is to write posts that will inform readers and encourage discussion and networking.

When Sue Waters did this challenge, she advised people to register with Technorati, which is a blog search engine. I have followed Sue's advice and now have an account and icon on my blog which allows people to add my blog to their Technorati account. The key is to remember to use as many of my Technorati key terms as possible in my posts, such as 'midwifery', 'eportfolio', 'blog' as possible. You'll be glad that I haven't made 'sex' as one of my key words!

Image: 'Key in Ignition'
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Old sex education films for teenagers

Today, I was cruising around Internet Archive, which is an online library, and found some old health education films. My interest in the historical perspective of menstruation, sparked by last night's talk by Professor Barbara Brookes, led me to a couple of wonderful old films.

The first film which comes from 1953, is for young girls and talks about menstruation. Note that it is very unwise to go square dancing when you have your period. It is also recommended that you "wear your prettiest dress and be your most attractive self".



http://www.archive.org/details/MollyGro1953

The health education film for boys (1957). Note how the boys are 'allowed' to masturbate but girls only get to wear a romantic dress!



http://www.archive.org/details/AsBoysGr1957

What differences in approach and information do you see between the two films? Would you use them for sex education today?

Skeletons in the cupboard, women and shame

Last night I attended a talk by Professor Barbara Brookes, who is the head of the History Department at Otago University in Dunedin. This event was hosted by the local Zonta group to celebrate International Women's Day.

Professor Brookes put a historical perspective on three aspects of women's life that have brought shame to women and their families and have consequently become skeletons in the cupboard: menstruation, illegitimacy and ....for the life of me, I cannot remember the third element - I think that third glass of free wine I had wiped my memory. Suffice to say, as a midwife, it was the two aforementioned aspects of women's lives that really resonated with me.

What I found particularly interesting to note was how attitudes to menstruation have changed. Now, menstruation is a shameful thing - women do not want people to know they have their 'period'. Commercial products have been developed over the years to conceal all signs of menstruation. But years ago, when fertility was valued, women were much more overt about their menstruation because it signaled to men their ability to breed. So my question would be: what do men value in women now and how do they seek that out? If a woman's fertility is not her' selling point' to men, what is? Her readiness to have a sexual relationship? Her financial state? Or does this only apply to a certain element of society - a woman's fertility is still highly valued in many developing countries.

What was the most fascinating part of the evening for me was talking to my daughter about this issue afterwards. She came with me because she is very interested in women's issues and is studying gender and ethics at university. I asked her what she would consider was shameful for young women these days. She agreed that menstruation definitely was. She added that rejection was another, be that in the context of a relationship, education, employment or whatever. She also felt that one's body could be shameful, especially you are overweight. Would you agree with this analysis or would you have other ideas about what is considered to be shameful in today's society?

But what was the most special thing about this evening was that I was able to spend it with a woman who has the same interests in women's issues as me, is intelligent, articulate and insightful - my daughter! How blessed can a mother be!?

Image: 'Floating'
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Designing flexible learning: an open access course available for you

I have just joined another open access course which follows on from the one I did last year. This course is 'Designing for flexible learning practice' which is being offered by Otago Polytechnic and run by Leigh Blackall and Bronwyn Hegarty. All the details about the course can be found on Wikieducator.

I think I'll be a 'proper' student this time and enroll from the beginning. But I am concerned that I will get distracted from my PhD, which I am in the throes of finishing off this year. So what I have decided to do is use this course to help me with my discussion/recommendations chapter.

To cut a long story short, I am running a RCT comparing e-mentoring with traditional support and professional development for health professionals. The e-mentoring system has not engaged the participants at all. So I am going to use this course to have another look at the system and come up with a plan for re-developing it. This will then go into my PhD thesis - killing two birds with one stone!

Image: 'I am thy father’s spirit....'
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31 Days to Building a Better Blog: Day 23

I am plodding on with the 31 Day Blog Challenge and have got to Day 23. I must admit to being very bored with it now and have moved on to other projects: my ePortfolio, as well as developing a paper supporting my aim to make some midwifery courses into open access resources for the international midwifery community. I have also joined another open access course being offered by Otago Polytechnic:Designing for flexible learning practice. But, I am determined not to admit defeat and am plodding on.

Today's challenge involves checking my blog for dead end links. There is nothing more frustrating for the reader to follow a link and find it is no longer connected to anything. If this happens consistently, one's reputation as a blogger will be affected. I certainly do not have the time to check all the links on my blog so I used two free online programs to do it for me: W3C Link Checker (as suggested by Sue Waters) and Dead-Links.

W3C Link said I had 3 links missing whereas only 1 was missing in reality. Dead-Links said I had a lot more missing and the ones I checked appeared to be fine. I got bored with checking them all and did not find the report anything as user friendly as the W3C Link report. So I would stick with W3C Link.

Incidentally, I have a guest blogger appearing soon who will fulfill the requirements for Day 21 so keep an eye out for that.

Putting Web 2.0 into perspective

During the last eight months I have:

• bemoaned the fact that Second Life keeps crashing my computer;
• tried to join the in-crowd on Twitter;
  
• got frustrated because so few midwives met me at my online midwifery meeting;
• spent hours and hours trying to make a slidecast;
• complained that no one leaves comments on my blog;
• started to develop my ePortfolio to help me find a fancy, high-paying job;
• angsted about how people 'see' me;
• got excited when I found I had 7 subscribers to my blog;
• got depressed when Carolyn's blog hits reached 2000 more than mine.

But it is Carolyn's latest post that has just put Web 2.0 totally in perspective for me.

The sum of my worries are whether I have enough broadband width or if Second Life is going to revolutionize midwifery education. Meanwhile Carolyn has reminded me of the terrible reality of the lives of millions of women throughout the world. Thousands and thousands of women die from childbirth related causes. Makes my concerns about how fat my Second Life avatar looks, superficial to say the least.

I would echo Carolyn's questions about how we can use Web 2.0 to support the midwives who are working with these women in the most challenging of conditions. And whilst I acknowledge that many of these midwives will not have access to electricity let alone computers, I also think we should not completely discount the potential that Web 2.0 offers midwives in developing countries.

Open access to midwifery information, resources and education programs may be one way that we can aid these midwives. We can ensure that meetings, conferences, and education programs are made available using synchronous means such as the MIDIRS webinars or recorded in some way and openly stored on the Internet. This may present financial and political challenges to institutions and companies who underwrite the conferences, but I am convinced that this is one way that we can work toward global midwifery sustainability.

What do you think about this? What do you think we can do to support midwives in developing countries - does Web 2.0 have a role?

Image: 'Jammu (North India)'
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Learning tools 'drop in' session for students

Tomorrow I am running a computer 'drop in' session for students at lunch time. We do not really integrate Web 2.0 tools into our midwifery program other than what is offered on BlackBoard, although Carolyn has set up a class blog for her first year students as an additional support/learning mechanism. So I offering students some lunch time sessions which aim to provide opportunities to learn about online tools, primarily to help them to manage their information seeking and increase their digital literacy.

Essentially I plan to offer an open session and address the students' needs as they identify them. However, if the students come with no particular queries, I have decided to look at del.icio.us, RSS, Google Reader and email discussion groups.


I have never run a session like this before and I cannot wait to see how it goes - to see if students feel they need such a session and what they want to know about, compared to what I think they should know about.

If you are a student, what would you like to know about?

If you are a teacher, what have you found are new students' greatest needs as regards to searching for information and networking?

Image: 'Students working on class assignment in computer lab'
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What I Learned ...from the law

Robert Hruzek's writing challenge this month at New Middle Zone Musings is: what I have learned from the law.

I honestly don't know what to write about with regards to this challenge because I have had little cause to think much about the law, especially in a personal context. There was the time I had to rescue my son from the police station for being a mischievous teenager but apart from that, my family is very law abiding.

So I am going to be a little rebellious and change the title to: what I have learned from lawyers.

A few years ago I was privileged to become involved with an amateur dramatic production. The play was called "Jerusalem, Jerusalem" and was about a renown New Zealand poet called J.K.Baxter. It was written by Mike Riddell and directed by his wife, Rosemary who is now a family judge in the North Island. I played the part of a middle aged woman who had lived in the commune with Baxter as a young woman. I had never acted before.

I had always thought that lawyers were stern, cold people but Rosemary is the exact opposite. She is warm, funny, incredibly articulate and caring. More than anything she taught me that I had to follow my dream and that I was capable of doing what I had always dreamed of...acting. She gave me confidence and made me believe in myself. Whilst I haven't done any acting since, I will always be grateful to her because she gave me the chance to fulfill one of my life's ambitions.

Thank you, Rosemary.

The significance of the photo is that Baxter had his commune 'Jerusalem' by the side of the Whanganui River, New Zealand.

Image: 'Whanganui River'
www.flickr.com/photos/27726934@N00/398536900

Midwifery meeting in Second Life

This evening I attended my first ever midwifery meeting in Second Life which was organized by Carolyn McIntosh.

It was great fun and I was very pleased to meet midwives from the UK and USA. We all agreed that we were interested in continuing with regular meetings. But the technology continues to be a challenge. Here is a short video about my experience and impressions.

Making a video about my ePortfolio using Jing

I think Jing is a great program to use to make short videos and capture screen photos. So if you want to show someone how to do something on their computer or show them a slide show of photos, Jing allows you to do that very easily. Here is a very basic video I made introducing people to my ePortfolio.

What I haven't worked out, and would really appreciate help with is how to embed the video into this blog. I've read the written instructions and even watched the 'how to' video, but still cannot get my head around what I'm supposed to do. I have used the html code from screencast.com where the video is stored but when I embed the code into this blog, the video is far too big for the page. I have played with the code but that has not worked. Any suggestions?

My ePortfolio: all sorted on Wikispaces

I have started to develop my ePortfolio on Wikispaces, which is a wiki platform. I was struggling for a short while, trying to work out how I should format the ePortfolio and getting it to work in Wikispaces.

Dominick and Damian very kindly responded with written instructions but it was Michele Martin's screencast that showed me what to do. In it, Michele goes through all the steps to set up pages within pages in Wikispaces - a great resource if you are just getting your head around setting up a wiki in Wikispaces.

This incident has shown me the power of video and audio as teaching tools. I did not respond at all well to the written word, although I have always thought of myself as a 'reader/writer' learner. But I got 'it' straight away when Michele showed me what to do using the video. A salutatory lesson for me, as I consider how I can engage students and midwives more with online learning and professional development.

My question is...?

As I said yesterday, my reader stats have shot up in the last 48 hours, which is very exciting. Looking closer at my stats it appears that there are two reasons for this.

The first is the problem Telecom was having with its virtual rugby website - rugby fans have been finding my rugby posts by default. The second reason is my blog has just been featured in the MIDIRS Essence electronic newsletter. MIDIRS is an international information resource for midwives, and I am very proud to say that that they have awarded this blog 5 stars.

Looking at my 'popular pages' in my stats, it is my post entitled "Me and the naked flying men" that is currently getting most of the attention.

So my question is: who is interested in naked men...rugby fans or midwives!? Answers on a postcard...

Postscript: The post about the naked men is about my experiences in Second Life, a virtual world that has great potential for midwifery education.

Do I make my ePortfolio public?

The issue of privacy and security has arisen with regards to my ePortfolio. In the comments to my previous post, there were some concerns raised about making this ePortfolio public. So I have had to go back to the reasons why I have decided to have an ePortfolio.

Most of the reasons for having an ePortfolio are tied up with giving it a public profile ie role modeling to my students and midwives, and using it as a teaching tool. My friends know I am quite shameless in wanting to build a public profile as a midwife and educator who uses Web 2.0 and social networking effectively in her professional practice. And ultimately, I may want to change my job one day which will require my ePortfolio to be made available for potential employers to view. So if I wish to achieve these aims, my portfolio will have to be public.

But...my portfolio is also an extremely important part of my ongoing professional midwifery recertification and has the potential to contain some very sensitive material and personal reflections about women, students, and colleagues. It is highly unlikely that I am going to write anything sensitive about what I learned from attending a conference, but it is much more likely if I am talking about my clinical midwifery practice. I have a professional and legal requirement to maintain my clients' anonymity. My position as educator could also be seriously compromised if I published inappropriate material, be it in my portfolio or on this blog. And as Merrolee pointed out, being 'too' open may affect employment opportunities in the future, although others such as Michele Martin would disagree and say that it is vital to maintain a transparent online identity.

So, how am I going to manage this.

For the time being I am going to continue with keeping my portfolio open but refrain from publishing sensitive material about women and the people I work with. It may be that I eventually end up with two portfolios - one with public information and the other containing very sensitive reflections will be kept private.

I think it is important for me to make aspects of my midwifery practice open to the public: surely potential midwifery clients should have access to my practice statistics? That will help them make an informed choice about whether they choose me as their midwife or not. However, I must admit I am very likely to keep information about any cataclysmic mistakes I make private. I believe that if health professionals were a lot more open about their practice, weaknesses and errors as well as strengths, there would be a lot less litigation than there is now. Women and families are less likely to sue if health professionals are open with them and acknowledge their mistakes. Maybe if we were more open about our cataclysmic mistakes, others would learn from our experiences and be a lot more supportive of us- but that is another post altogether. And I should also add at this point that I have not made any cataclysmic mistakes, so I am speaking hypothetically!

I am really keen to continue this discussion so please feel free to drop by with a comment. If you have an ePortfolio, what do you make public and what do you keep private? What do you think I should keep private and why?

As a midwife, what information about your practice would you make public in a space like a blog or ePortfolio? If you are a non-midwife, what information abut a midwife would you want to have access to?

Image: 'pay heed'
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