Job Worksheet

What did you most like about your job here, and why did you apply for it in the first place?
I applied for the job there because it was a good opportunity to explore my skills with potential to get responsibility early on. I would be working with people I already trusted and knew I would get on well with other staff. I most liked the people and environment as it was a small firm with degrees of freedom that I probably wouldn’t find anywhere else and respect for the skills that I brought to the firm.

What did you most dislike about the your job here?
Attitudes among some individuals who didn’t understand what they were asking on short notice, and failed to take repeated advice regarding this issue. Some other menial tasks associated with the role became quite tedious after a short time.

Why did you choose to leave?
Financial aims fulfilled and life choices became pressing.

Of the skills you used here, which gave you the most satisfaction? Why?
When I was given the freedom to work on my own to produce something useful and make my job easier, rather than the normal (and well within my skill set) reactive process that technical support often uses. This gave me a feeling of progress as it needed more intelligence and allowed me to develop my skills and learning further.

Of the duties, which made you feel your best? Why?
Being appreciated by colleagues whenever I was charged with solving user problems made me feel like I was making a difference to peoples work environments. This gave me a lot of satisfaction, and made me feel less bored of some other menial tech tasks.

What skills and responsibilities would you like to use in your next job?
Design, implementation and support are key skills I want to use in my next job, along with improved communication skills. Applying this to technical support, by extension to be responsible for key equipment/support tasks, as well as being more involved in company tech decisions.

Of the skills you used here, which were the least fulfilling?
The nature of small business tech support seems to me as if there were urgent periods, where there are things needed to be fixed “yesterday”, and slow periods where the loose ends (maybe menial tasks) need to be tied up. These tasks might have been suitable for less skilled persons, but the nature means that there is time for it.

Which tasks did you dread the most? Why?
Cable tidying. It seems that the company redesigned it’s office every few months, this equated to shifting many computers with the requisite routing and tidying of cables. Often working around other people during office hours, it can be quite unpleasant when accidents occur with the power cables and the users are working to tight deadlines.

Sleepy

Here I am sitting in Mr Lee’s American Beef Noodles Restaurant, exhausted, and having discovered that I managed to leave my little EEEPC laptop on standby for the last 8Hrs since leaving Miaos Grandparent’s home. I had been relying on its battery to re-charge my ipod, and had been deliberately run the iPod battery down so that I could watch stuff on my external hard disk, while charging the ipod.

I’m a little dissapointed in myself for being so stupid, as 2hrs of entertainment ability and my ipod charge has been taken away from me. I do however still have my PSP which I’m watching now while writing this rather dumb sleepy post.I’m eeking out all the power i can from the EEEPC by turning the brightness right down.

Miao’s currently resting on her mother’s lap, and both have their eyes closed and semi-sleeping. Where as I’m drugged up on caffeine from the red-bulls Miao’s grandfather gave us.

The PSP, like the iPod, can only read MP4 encoded videos, and still has stuff on it that I converted for our trip back to England in August. And as such has been left unseen as the content is documentary in nature. Much as I appreciate BBC documentaries, they don’t serve well much in the entertainment value when you’ve been up for too many hours.

I’m desperately trying to concentrate on writing this entry, but exaustion is causing my eyes to droop and mind to be very dull.

Visiting More Relatives

Yesterday we went to Yahongqiao by bus to visit various other of Miao’s mother’s relatives. This included visiting: Miao’s Grandmother’s Sister’s Husband, Miao’s Grandmother’s two Brother’s Wives, a shop (selling farming chemicals and seeds) which was owned by Miao’s Grandmother’s 3rd Brother, and then to Miao’s Grandmother’s little sister’s home to eat lunch with their family. After all the family visitations, we went to a Buddhist temple before getting a lift home with one of Miao’s relatives.

After getting up at 6:30 AM and all the prerequisite morning cleaning and dressing, we waited around for a little minibus to arrive. I used this time to continue to read a book I’d bought in and brought from England. A few chug-chug-chugs and a puff of smoke announced the arrival of the vehicle that would ferry us about, so we set off. I had my big Novatech laptop packed for showing budding relatives pictures from the UK, and the small EEEPC for moving photos off the small camera onto my 120GB USB powered external hard disk drive.

40 Minutes, a traffic jam, lots of from-car photos and a few kilometers later we arrived at our first stop. Presents of moon cakes (yue bing [you-eh be-ung]) and Dalian purchased fish produce were given to this in-law-relative (the grand-mothers sister having passed away). His home was similar to most others we’d seen, simply a place to sleep, eat and take shelter away from the elements. We stopped to chat for a short while (my queue to take some photos) and went on.

The next family we visited was a similar venture, and very close by to the first home. We gave presents, stopped to chat for a while and moved on. The third place we went was a farmer’s seeds and chemicals shop, the family there had a little daughter who was feeding the family chickens in the back yard. She didn’t seem terribly phased or pleased to see me, and I think she teased me in Chinese, correctly guessing that I couldn’t speak much mandarin. I took a video of the Chickens being fed, and having transferred it to the EEEPC, I let Miao’s relatives see it, and they were highly amused.

Onto the Grandmother’s little sister’s family’s house. This was by far the biggest and most rich house. Located near a newly developed wholesale market, the family’s wealth comes from marketing (read selling) lots and lots of blenders. The house covered two floors, with kitchens and internal plumbing on both floors. However an internal plumbed toilet wasn’t in evidence, so a visit outside to what looked like a mini-extension showed another literal hole-in-the ground affairs. The internal furnishings were nice, lots of couches and chairs, and the family even owned a computer with a huge monitor and, this being a city like environment, even had internet. I felt the ground floor provided a more utilitarian style environment, as it was less painted up, and this is where they cooked, ate, kept their motor-bikes etc.

The mother (and cook) of the family happens to be an English teacher, but we didn’t have a chance to speak as she spent most of her time cooking and keeping people happy. Lots of the family gathered here for lunch, and as Miao was getting asked a lot of questions about our trip to England, the big Novatech laptop came out for the presentation of photos. I entertained 2 of the family’s young children for a while, and took some photos of/from their house.

Lunch was a big affair with lots of people. Some of the food included: shrimps, chicken Legs, chicken feet, a chopped whole duck (not tasty as had lots of fat on it), whole crabs, chopped beef, chopped tomatoes with sugar on top, grated apple with sugar on top, peanut salad, whole fish, tomato and egg soup. Most men had a small can (330 ml) of beer, with others drinking baijiu (Chinese rice spirits pronounced buy-joe). Women and children drank either hot water or a can of (unidentified by me) Chinese fizzy drink.

After the meal I felt tired and had the chance to lie down on one of their bed. As we had been waking early with the light and had been drinking daily with the family, the afternoon nap had been a fairly regular activity for me. It seems that I’ve slept in most of Miao’s relatives houses, due to some mixture of alcohol and sleep deprivation by jet-lag or unusual/uncomfortable beds. After I waked Miao alerted me to the availability of internet for me to check my email, in which I saw lots of emails to delete and not much by way of new info.

The intention then was to go to visit a temple, so I returned to collect my bag (which I’d packed before sleeping) to find Miao’s mother trying to pack into it more things than which it was capable of carrying, and thusly squashing both my laptop displays and books.

Yesterday’s Activities

Yesterday we ate breakfast of Beijing Kao Ya (roast duck), which I and yeye washed down with baijiu. The three of us then had a rest, and slept for most of the day. After we woke up, while Miao showed her grandparents some photos of our UK trip I went around and took some photos of their rather big house and garden. They grow sweetcorn, cabbages, turnips, grapes, and other things.

They don’t have plumbing and draining in the house, which means 2 things: outside toilet (literally hole in the ground), and a well which they need to pump to get water. They do have a small coal burner powered central heating system as well electricity in their home and some mod cons such as a TV and telephone. Dish and clothes washing must be done outside. Hot water is heated by electricity in the morning and kept in big thermus flasks. Face washing and teeth brushing is done out of a bowl. If you need the facilities during the night, there’s bed pans available.

To me, it feels like going camping, which is fine for a short time but I couldn’t easily imagine living like this all year round. Many people are like this here, and they are by no means the worst off in China. I’m sure they’re living better than the migrant or unskilled workers in Dalian, but the area feels poor, I wonder what it’s like in poorer areas.

In the evening yesterday, we again ate the Beijing roast duck that we’d brought from Dalian, then went on a tour of Miao’s mother’s friends and relatives in the area. I felt a little like I was being paraded around myself. One of the farmers had done very well with himself and had a very nicely done up house, a big tv, indoor plumbing, and even had a computer, although probably no internet connection. Most of the houses we visited were quite simple and were basically places to sleep and keep out of the cold.

Of the three children I met, all seemed shy to speak English to me, one was shaking with nerves to sit next to me and hold a conversation, another had been given incorrect medicine to deal with a bad bought of flu as a child, which had adversely affected one side of his body. Even so the feeling about the kids future were quite optimistic as the level of education in China has gone up a lot. Though I don’t know how they will pay for university education, or maybe the government will help them out with that. I just hope that they can do well for themselves. I feel the same is true in the UK as here, money begets money, education begets education.

Travelling To Tangshan And Onwards

Yesterday we left our house at 5PM. Got a taxi to the train station and passed through the requisite baggage X-ray machines. We got onto the train at 5-30, having walked down the side of the queue and pushed in quite magnificently and legitimately. As we only had were standing tickets, and had gotten onto the train quite early, we managed to get our luggage up onto the racks quickly and sad down in other peoples seats. They arrived and we got up again. One woman sitting near us put her bag down on her seat and spent most of the journey hanging off her seat into the aisle. Miao said she must be protecting something precious such as some eggs.

There was another man, who like us had standing tickets, who I felt was quite rude as he never moved when people walked up and down the aisles. which meant the people around him had to move to let people past. I felt he also invaded people’s personal space too much, and didn’t act like the other passengers.

I spent the first part of the journey sat on the floor of the aisle, reading Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion” and shifting myself whenever anyone needed past. Others had little folding stools and were playing cards together with other passengers. I purchased a can of beer pretty early on, to feel time passing more quickly. Miao and her mother quite vehemently persuaded me not to have another. The boring tiresome nature of travelling at night, especially an 8hr train journey without a seat can be quite exhausting.

At various times, people around us stood up and offered us seats. As the train went on, and stopped at various places, we got seats on a more permanent basis, which was a relief. Among the people around us there was a Fertilizer specialist who worked as a salesman in Beijing. There was also a young couple who perhaps got a little too close to each other in this quite restrained society. The most interesting person was an sculptor who was going to Beijing to publish a book. He had a booklet of photographs of various small and large pieces of work he’d done, some paper cuttings of his art being featured in local exhibitions and a few old photos of him looking young, handsome, and with a full head of hair.

We arrived TangShan at 3AM, and got off. The weather was very misty and quite cold. The first thing we did was to buy tickets home, which were twice as expensive as we were expecting, but thankfully it’s on the sleeper train, so we’ll have beds. Next task was to wait until 7:00AM which is when the bus service became available to the little village that Miao’s maternal grand-parents live in. We crashed in the Train ticket office for a little while, then toilets were searched for, and we found a California Beef Noodles restaurant. We got a large bowl of “you guessed it” beef noodles, and the other two visited the facilities. We all slept for an hour in the restaurant as it was warm, and we had seats at a table. We then went off in search of the Bus depot, bought tickets. At the depot there were a few shops, one of which sold use of a small bed, which while people were waiting, their children could have a sleep on. While we were waiting for our bus to be ready at 7:15 AM, a woman’s child, who was sitting behind me, kept poking me in the back of my head and ears for no reason whatsoever.

Finally we got on our very decrepit looking bus, which seemed to have many people on already, even though Miao’s mother had been walking around asking people to let her onto the bus. Our 2 cases were placed by the conductress where there was space, in front of other peoples knees and went to sit at the back, after having asked the two girls to move so that we could look after the cases ourselves. As the bus went along the passenger doors kept swinging open and closed, and I was worried that our cases would fall out.

Along the way there people kept getting on and off seemingly randomly, according to the conductresses whim. We encountered a lot of heavy-works traffic and were stopped for a long time. To me the only reason for the jam was the selfishness of Chinese drivers trying to get in front of others as the road got narrower. We saw lots of farmers vehicles go past, like big lorries of feces, others of thick metal cables, others of plant matter waste. We went past many fields of sweet corn (mandarin = yu [you] mi [me]), and factories and peoples homes being built.

When we were dropped off, we were met by Miao’s maternal grandfather (ye ye [yea yea]) who had used his rather old bike to cycle to the road. Miao greeted him and then said that he was fat (just a Chinese honesty and care for health). We walked a fair while from the main road to arrive at their house. Again there was lots of sweetcorn, which obviously had been recently harvested. There were lots of sheathes lying on the road and stacks and stacks of sweetcorn on roofs and hanging up. Just before we arrived at the house we were met on the road by Miao’s maternal grandmother.

60th CPCC Aniversary

Thursday 1st October saw the 60th Anniversary of the CPCC. Celebrated by a huge demonstration of military might. Soldiers from all 3 services (both men and women), Anti-aircraft missile launchers, Tanks, Truck mounted nukes, and all sorts of heavy military machines made their way into Tiananmen Square. Hu Jintao arrived in his Hu-Mobile with his special number plate, made his speech and adopted many posses ¨C smiling, looking stern, waving while watching the procession. After the military had passed through, the common people had their chance. People from all provinces and all 56 ethnic minorities were represented, parading along and waving various things. Different coloured Chinese style pompoms and hankies were used to great effect to create Chinese characters and pictures for those looking down from above.

What was particularly interesting to me was the live tweeting. I’m an avid fan of Twitter, and along with a few people I know in Dalian, and others in China the hastag #CPC60 took hold. From Twitter I heard from foreigners living in Beijing that people were not being allowed out of their houses because the streets were too busy. Various bits of cultural information came through that I hadn’t considered or didn’t know, and highlighted other aspects of the parade that were funny or insightful. Generally speaking I think Twitter is a good tool, and especially when a few good people are tweeting a live event, it can make it far more interesting.

Highlights of my tweets:

• Watching #CPC60 on CCTV1. Wonders if there’s English coverage abroad over Satellite or Cable. Think their march is quite funny. #
• #CPC60 3 Guys at front of parade seem to be shouting in very high voices…. why? #
• #CPC60 High pitch that is… not as in loud. #
• #CPC60 Chinese national anthem! Very patriotic. Seem to be only hearing Choir on TV, not the army singing it. #
• #CPC60 RT @MalcolmMoore: [Western journalists] only received their media passes to the event at midnight last night. Organisation fail.#
• @aimeenbarnes Might have coverage in UK… but its the middle of the night there, so doubt many are watching. Just seen the Mao/Hu-mobile in reply to aimeenbarnes #
• #CPC60 Driver of Hu-Mobile has got lines painted on the ground of tiananmen for him to follow. #
• @1rick #CPC60 Very good! in reply to 1rick #
• #CPC60 Why do the Woman Army get the Bright red uniforms? #
• @AlexBowman Do you think the anti-aircraft missile vehicles get special number plates too? in reply to AlexBowman #
• RT @pdenlinger Beijing Weather Bureau says there are low clouds west of BJ which will be intercepted. -> Aircraft with SEEDING Stuff. #
• @AlexBowman #CPC60 I’m sure a few of the British Red Uniforms were unnecessarily visible. in reply to AlexBowman #
• #CPC60 There was an odd White uniform at the end of one of the ranks. #
• RT @MalcolmMoore Anyone who wants to watch over the internet, try here http://bit.ly/A2xL5 #
• #CPC60 Now watching CCTV9. Is it live translation or is she reading a script that they’ve pre-arranged? #
• #CPC60 White Green and Blue = Navy Army and Airforce. #
• #CPC60 Dalian Naval forces featured on tv coverage. #
• RT @AlexBowman: Marching in squares is very effective against cavalry. #CPC60 #
• #CPC60 There goes the “Woman’s Militia Square Army”. Fly bys next it seems. #
• @AlexBowman Yea. Got that, having switched over from CCTV1 to 9. in reply to AlexBowman #
• #CPC60 CCTV9 Presenter highlighting the “computer aided” and advantages of different tanks. #
• RT @chijs The tanks are back on Tiananmen Square #
• @PerrineB @samflemming All the @DalianDalian ers are using #CPC60 #
• RT @shinetheremix from live blog: “That rainbow color pattern leads me to believe that this may actually be a gay pride parade…” #CPC60#
• RT @MalcolmMoore: RT @skycita: Live Blogging China’s National Day Parade – China Journal – WSJ http://bit.ly/4bM2EN #
• @edgemy Thank you for the Follow Recommendation. in reply to edgemy #
• Think the AA Vehicles, Cruise Missiles and Support Radar stuff is quite impressive. I guess thats the point. #CPC60 #
• #CPC60 They’ve got the Neucs out. S**t #
• People’s reactions to the #CPC60 NUKES were all the same. -> NUKES!!!! #
• Presenter Speaking up the Chinese Tech and Designed Airplanes. #CPC60 #
• @joop #CPC60 China showing off #Shenyang #Liaoning airplanes, almost as old as the #PRC #
• OOOH 18 Zeeee 9s #CPC60 American Accents Ahoy! #
• @siweiluozi #CPC60 @ednacz @AlisonMFriedman @quelquefoisseem to be exceptions to the 4 year old boy demographic you were speaking of. in reply to siweiluozi #
• #CPC60 Soldiers shouting in time to the Band. Sadly no translations on CCTV9. #
• #CPC60 Chinese Cheerleaders out in force walking ahead of float. #
• #CPC60 Which do you think they spent more money for? A. Opening Olympics/ B. Closing Olympics/ C.National Day Parade #
• #CPC60 Mao’s voice broadcast over crowd! #
• #CPC60 Migrant Labour workers parading along. #
• #CPC60 Farmers Dancing along. Looking quite fancy really. Shots of Lao Wais on the TV looking happy. #
• #CPC60 Deng XIiao Ping waxwork float going along. #
• #CPC60 what’s with the rainbow parade…. Wasn’t the shanghai gay parade take down a notch recently? #
• @lauter #CPC60 WSJ http://bit.ly/4bM2EN CCTV9 online http://bit.ly/A2xL5 #
• RT @aimeenbarnes Do you think anyone in the White House is watching this right now? #cpc60 #
• #CPC60 I have a short attention span. Feeling that TV coverage of Parade is getting a little tiresome. #
• #CPC60 Olympic float floating by and theme song “you and me” playing. #
• RT @illuminantceo My apartment complex is still not allowing foreigners to leave the grounds. #

Plan of Action

When considering what my carrer aims were, I decided that as part of any plan I wanted my website to be a test bed for my "Web Skills". But what skills do I currently have that I can show?

1. Setup and maintain a secure, reliable and useful (linux) webserver.
   1. Apache (with support for PHP, perl and other common requirements).
   2. MySQL
   3. (S)FTP
   4. SSH
   5. VPN (either Ipsec or PPTP) to ease the internet issues of living in China.
   6. Proxy server to reduce my own bandwidth usage.
      
2. Run more than one website off the server.
   1. Running Email on Google Apps for Business.
   2. Showing knowledge of current CMS platforms.
   3. Comprehensively backed up.
      
3. Run a backup SVN server for projects that I'm currently working on.
4. Get the project (Catan) that I'm developing with a Chinese friend finished.
5. Publish a polished online CV.
6. Continue blogging in a meaningful way including teaching materials as well as day to day stuff.

What things do I want to learn and develop in?

1. Really understand a couple CMS
   1. Drupal and Wordpress being the main ones I'm considering.
2. Write Plugins
   1. Better Flickr interface for Facebook
      
3. API Programming
   1. Offload some functionalities within the Catan onto Api's -> blog, image hosting, stats tracking.
      
4. Get involved in an opensource project and make some contributions.

Dreams of achieving:

1. A better Flickr uploader that works well for me!
2. Interface stuff I produce with social media websites with my blog in a more meaningful way than the "lifestream"
3. A "complete Flickr interface" for Drupal.
4. Larger readership for my blog.

To be continued....

Spam Email

THE MICROSOFT CORPORATIONS.

Dear Sir/ Madam,

The prestigious Microsoft and AOL has set out and successfully organized a Sweepstakes marking the year 2009 anniversary, which rolled out over £291,285,801.60 for this year Anniversary Draws. Participants for the draws were randomly selected and drawn from a wide range of web hosts which we enjoy their patronage.

The selection was made through a computer draw system attaching personalized email addresses to ticket numbers. If you ignore this message, you will definitely regret it later. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies & in effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remain the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test.

Your email address as indicated was drawn and attached to reference and ticket number 008795727498 with serial numbers MIC-AOL/8303/09 and drew the lucky numbers 04-18-35-38-53-46 (12) which subsequently won you £1,000,000 ( One Million Great Britain Pounds) as one of the jackpot winner in this draw. You have therefore won the entire winning sum of £ 1,000,000 (One Million Great Britain Pounds) the draws registered as Draw number one was conducted in Liverpool, UK on the 12th of September, 2009.

These Draws are commemorative and as such special.Please be informed by this winning notification to file your claims immediately. You are advised to make contact to your referred agent who shall by duty guide you through the process to facilitate the release of your winning prize.

To file for this claims, Please Contact your referred agent with your verification information as required on the form below,beginning the claims of your winnings funds as conducted by the lottery company. We dedicate our special thanks & gratitude to Bill Gates {Now Retired from Microsoft Corporations} .We wish you the best of luck as you spend your good fortune in this season.

Note: You have Two (2) weeks from the date of this publication to claim your prize or you may forfeit your winnings. Thank you for being part of our commemorative New year Anniversary Draws.

Find below your referred agent and the verification form:

Address: 18 SOUTH DRIVE, HEPWORTH,DISS,NORFOLK, IP22 2HF, UK.

Contact Agent: Mr. David Oliver

Tel: +44-702 409 4558

Fax: +44-702-897-9987

Email: david.oliverdesk01@yahoo.com.hk

Name: …………………………….

Country of Origin…………………..

Place of Residence………………….

Occupation…………………………

Sex/Age……………………………

Telephone/Fax………………………

Winning Email ID……………………

NOTE: DUE TO FRAUDSTERS, WE HAVE DECIDED TO EFFECT TRANSFER TO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT ONLY AND WHEN CONTACTING YOUR REFERRED AGENT, DO QUOTE YOUR TICKET NUMBER AND SERIAL NUMBER FOR SECURITY REASONS.

Mr.Kevin Turner

Public Relations Officer

©2009 Microsoft Corporation

My Comment

I got this spam email recently, apart from obviously being fraudulent, the header of the email reads as follows:

Message-Id: <20090912201351.M51351@acd.ufrj.br>


X-Mailer: OpenWebMail 2.53
X-OriginatingIP: 62.56.171.58 (abreu@acd.ufrj.br)
This is certainly not Microsoft or any legitimate organisation that I’ve ever heard of, and they certainly wouldn’t be emailing using “OpenWebMail”.

Also the reply-to field is david_oliverdesk01@yahoo.com.hk and is signed Mr.Kevin Turner at the end. A quick google search shows that the yahoo.com.hk domain seems to be the home of quite a few dodgy spammers as can be seen at the 419 Spam website. I’m just happy that Google’s spam system is working properly that normal folks don’t usually see this sort of email and won’t get taken in by it.

Course Blogs/Websites

I wrote this in an email to a friend who’s teaching with me who asked me about setting up a course website:

I’m gonna give you some background about this, as I’ve considered this myself, and to make it clear that it isn’t as easy as it first might appear (and I’m happy to write it as I’ll make it into a blog entry later). I’m already doing this for my elective course, but don’t know how successful it will be. An Insight Into Britainand weekly blog.

The easiest thing would be a blog, which is really easy to publish stuff, and let the students write comments for feedback and discussion. The problem is finding an English version of a site that isn’t going to get blocked in China. Most of the English, free, blogging platforms are blocked, or have been recently blocked and unblocked (Wordpress, Google Blogspot, LiveJournal, Microsoft LiveSpaces). There are a few Chinese blogging sites, but maybe a bit difficult for you to use, and I haven’t had any experience with those directly.

I host my blog www.alastairclark.com using free opensource software (Wordpress – the software that the one above uses) on my own server in America. I’m paying for the server every month, so it won’t get blocked in China, and I get more experience with administering websites. Unless the uni’s prepared to pay some money, paid self hosting isn’t really possible.

There’s potential for me to set something up for you on a free host (0fees, Awardspace, and co.cc for a free domain) for you to host a blog at, but the functions would be reduced, and if there isn’t much activity on the site, it might get deleted. Maybe not the best solution, and there’s nothing stopping the government from blocking these either.

Moving away from blogs another alternative is something like a wiki(as in wikipedia) such as Google Sites, Microsoft OfficeLive, or Weebly. These are website design and hosting tools for beginners, and have a similar feel to editing word documents at home. It’s harder to get a community feel from this sort of website as they have little or no facility for comments in the traditional sense. I’ll send you an invite to try out a blank Google Sites, and you can see if thats for you or not.

However, after all that, I personally feel that the best way to communicate and discuss things with my students is over the Chinese version of Facebook (wikipedia article on facebook): XiaoNei or RenRenas it’s now called. If I was doing this myself, I’d set up a Google Sitespage and write the important stuff on there. In class I’d tell them my Chinese Name on XiaoNei and then to “add me as a friend”. When I’d updated the website I’d then post a comment on my Xiaonei account with a link to the updated content. If there were any problems or feedback from the students they could write little notes on the posted link, and everyone else could see that too. I’ve already used this to great effect with last semesters first year classes, giving them advice and information about the final exam. I’ll probably do it this way again with my elective course.

Is that enough to mull over for now? I’ll think anon, but there won’t be much more to say.