Blogs can take over your life.

Well, obviously not this one. At a rate of one post every 2 weeks (is that being too generous?), and even if it takes 10 minutes to write a post (which is usually doesn't), keeping this blog up would take less than 4 hours a year. Mind you, that's quite a lot more when you divide it by the number of loyal readers I have (very few).

No, reading other people's blogs can take over you life if you let it. And some of them, I think, must take a lot more time to write, given that they have new posts every day - or several times a day.

I try not to do too much of it, but when a friend sends me a link to an interesting post, then I inevitably also read other posts, and follow links to other sites, and links to other blogs as well. Sometimes you get useful information that way, but mostly you get late for bed. (And tired the next morning.)

Ancient study

We have been going through some of the boxes stored in the roof space (and throwing most of the junk out!), and I came across a file box of notes from my high school and university (the first time!) days.

I've just been reading through some of them. Talk about ancient history! It's like an archeological dig.

There are maths and English papers from the 6th form, so I have put a couple aside to show Rowena and Katie. It's hard to believe the crappy cyclo-styled notes/handouts we were supposed to read.

And I also found some music papers from first year university, back in 1986. We wrote essays by hand (joined-up writing too!), in single spacing, with cut out bits of stave paper for the music examples inserted into the text. With selotape! I don't much like reading hand writing (except for personal letters, mum!) as it takes twice as long. So I'm jolly glad I wasn't a tutor who had to mark my essays.

(Rowena is doing 5th form music, and her compositions are written out in print quality using a basic music manuscript computer program - so you can actually read the music!)

Oh the joys of word processors and printers. It doesn't necessarily make your ideas any better. But at least you can read them without struggling over the hand writing.

Literature Review

My main work this year is writing my masters thesis. This is a piece of original research, and involves a written report of 40,000 words.

(Say it quickly and it won't seem so many!)

As we are coming up to the mid point of the year, you'd think that I might be coming up to word number 20,000 - but no. It doesn't work like that because I have to spend the first 3/4 of the year figuring out what to say, and the last 3 months saying it (at break neck speed, I suppose).

And, in fact, 'the year', only started in February, so I've technically only had 4 months (just over). That's 1/3 of a year. Still, it would be nice to have done 13,000 words at this stage. But still, no, I haven't.

What I have done in the last couple of weeks is start writing my literature review. This should be about 5000-7000 words, and it is basically a sifting and sorting of what everyone else has had to say about my field of enquiry, leading on to why I should be researching this area in the first place.

I've got about 5000 words, which I feel is a good effort so far, and it's not finished yet.

So, how do you write a lit review?

Well, what I have done is read-and-take-notes, read-and-take-notes, etc, for months.
Then read-my-notes, read-my-notes, and,
group-and-sort, group-and-sort.

Finally, take chunks of notes that have been grouped and sorted, and write them up into paragraphs which, hopefully, have some coherence for the (interested!) reader, and (maybe) also bring through some of my opinions on the relevance and quality of the literature.

The trouble is, it's very hard to start writing things. I'm much better at the middle sections than the introductions and so on. So when I go back to look at what I've done, the first bits are a bit discouraging... And I still have some of the hardest bits to write...

(It makes me feel better to know you care!)

Still, I've got a meeting with my supervisor on Wednesday, so at least I've got some proof that I've been busy.

Oh, well. Onwards and upwards.

Playcentre Conference

Well, it has been a busy weekend. We have had Playcentre Conference from Thursday afternoon to lunch on Sunday, in Hamilton.

It's always great fun going to these events, as it's so good to catch up with people who have become old friends. I arrived on a shuttle from the airport with several other delegates just before tea on Thursday, so everyone was grouping in the bar and lining up for the buffet meal, and there were old friends wherever I turned.

Quite a lot of significant work was done during the weekend.

• The Minister of Education opened the conference, and she was grilled on her governments support for parent-led education. Actually, she did a good job of 'speaking to her audience'.
• There were a number of really excellent speakers, including Professor Winiata, who is a well known academic and also the President of the Maori Party, Haydn Olsen, speaking on resolving conflict, and Dr Sally Peters, speaking on some research she is involved with in Canterbury Association.
• (I was pleased to meet Sally Peters, as I have been referencing her work in my writing over the past year and a half.)
• I launched my new book - Making Music Together.
• We had a good range of workshops. I presented one, on my research into transition to school.
• Election of officers for the Federation - oh yes, I became the Vice President.
• Really good Saturday night entertainment - a re-make of 'It's in the Bag', with lollies instead of money, and Kiwiana themed questions and prizes. ("I'll give you 3 lollies or the bag.... a handful of lollies or the bag.... ) (Actually, everyone got the bag, even if they scored a few lollies.)
• (I won a picnic carry bag and set.)
• A fantastic closing performance from a Maori dance/drama group.
  

Here's how it's advertised on the Playcentre website. (With the frou-frou.) I won't get to hold a copy until Friday or Saturday.....

New book update

My new book is called Making Music Together - and it should have been cut and stapled today.

It is due for launch at the weekend at the Playcentre Conference in Hamilton, with a concurrent launch at the Early Childhood Council conference in Rotorua.

I'll get a cover photo up when I have one.

Monet and the Impressionists Exhibition

We have just got back from the Monet and the Impressionists exhibition at Te Papa. It has been on for several months, and finishes in 10 days, so we just got in in time.

The painting above was in the exhibition, or one very like it. Monet did lots of series, and I can't always tell them apart.

(As a public service, the City Council had today as a no-fee day for locals. You had to bring your rates bill or library card or similar to prove eligibility. A bit of a queue this evening, about 25 minutes, but not as long as I thought it might be. We saw several people who had taken the same opportunity.)

It was lovely! Actually some of the paintings were just ok, but some were a joy to behold. Like listening to music, or watching dance!

Most of the paintings were between about 35cm square and 1m square. Apparently monet's later water lilies paintings were 5 or 6m long or more. (There was a large photo of him working with one in the background.) Bern saw one at MOMA in New York years ago.

Elanor came too. When she visited the Rita Angus exhibition with her class (I went as a helper) she complained afterwards that they got moved along too fast by the art teacher who was showing them around. So I said she could look at the paintings for as long as she wanted to this time. In the end she was finished before I was, but not by too much.

We went to buy postcards, but they didn't have any of my favourites, unfortunately. El chose one, and we got the promotional leaflet for our scrapbooks.

Book update

My new book is coming along. I've just had the draft back from the editor, and completed the changes recommended the first time. She didn't have too much to correct, apart from typos. (I don't worry about those too much, because that's her job :-)

My next mission is to line up the photos we have taken against the text - work out which images will enhance understanding of each part of the book. Alongside that is working out what other images we need to take, and also developing the graphics needed in places. (Eg, I'm going to illustrate some guitar and ukulele chords in one section.)

Oh - and get signed permission to use the photos! More of a mission this time than last year, as we have had photos submitted from other places round the country. Some really nice images, but you don't have the same control. Still, people are really helpful, and it's just a matter of time.

(I think it's all due at the designer on Monday - no pressure....!)

2009 Quilt Symposium

Easter weekend is the time for this year's national quilt symposium.

The symposium is held every 2 years, and is attended by over 1000 quilters from around New Zealand and the world. Classes are run by national and international tutors. There are several exhibitions of quilts and fibre art by general entrants and tutors. A huge merchants mall is stuffed with everyone selling everything to do with quilting and fibre art. There are lectures and dinners too I suppose. There was an awards ceremony.

There are several challenges by specific sponsors, where you have to make a quilt or artwork on a given theme or using particular general instructions. One example is the postage stamp quilts. This is sponsored by NZ Post, and the rules seem to be that you can choose any postage stamp you like and make a 50cm square quilt inspired by that stamp. A really interesting collection of quilts resulted - people had taken 'inspired by' in a number of different lights, which was all good.

I pre-registered Sophie so she would get all the information, but we did not end up doing any classes - too expensive for her really, and I daren't start anything new until I've finished her teenage quilt. Instead of a class I've promised her $50 worth of fabric or supplies and she can run her own 'class' out of a book during the holidays. I think she is gong to get some fabric dyes, or something like that.

We went along on Saturday as volunteers, packing the morning teas and lunches for the 1000 people at classes on the day. (Actually I don't know how many people, but when we'd sorted all the bread trays of filled rolls into the boxes for the classes we were 150 short on the number required - the caterer had left them behind at their premises!)

We also checked out the merchants mall, but haven't bought any souvineers yet.

On Monday we did the exhibitions. It's worth while making a day of this as there are several and your $5 ticket to one gets you into all of them, for that day. I partiularly enjoyed the challenge quilts, but there was no information about what the challenge was displayed alongside them - we worked it out, and then looked them up on the website.

We might do some shopping today so Sophie can start her 'class'. And, yes, I was inspired and sat down on Sunday afternoon and did a couple of hours work on Sophie's teenage quilt!

camera has bit the dust

I don't know what it's problem is, but my camera appears now to not be responding. Obviously this is making it quite tricky to take photos! Hmmm.

Photo shoots for new book

I've written a new book, on music in early childhood this time. Now it's time to collect photos to go in it. So I've been turning up to places with props (Katie's guitar in this case), getting music happening, and trying to get photos of it.

Not as easy as it sounds.

In fact, getting music happening is a piece of cake. However, it's pretty much impossible to lead a music session and photograph it at the same time.

The photo (above) was taken on my camera, but as the batteries were on their last legs, the camera needs 'nursing' along, so Heather gave up after this. (I was still able to use it later, but it's hard to explain to people how exactly to 'coax' it along. I got some lovely circle dance shots yesterday after that.)

But I've got the help of a photographer this morning, so, fingers crossed we'll do a bit better.

We need about 60 good photos for the book. You get one or two from an activity. I have maybe 5 right now. I would like to be pretty much finished by the end of next week. Busy days ahead!!!

Conference in Melbourne

Well, it's been a busy little term so far. The more you have to blog, the less time you have to blog it, don't you find??

Taking up a lot of the first part of the year for us was preparing to present our research on Playcentre at a conference in Melbourne. It was a poster presentation, so working out how to display information in a suitably interesting and graphic way was part of the job.

Above you can see Bern discussing our research on governance of parent-led education providers with a delegate during the dedicated poster viewing 'happy-hour' at the conference. On the right of him is the second poster presentation from Playcentre, which is on the practicalities of engaging parents as educators in a co-operative setting (with no professional teachers in charge).

Our presentations were very well received. They were intriguing, inspiring and sometimes challenging to the many delegates who we were able to discuss them with. (I had a couple of stand-up rows with people who thought we were going a bridge too far!)

In the end, I think this was more effective way to communicate our ideas than a 25 minutes power point show, with time for a few questions afterwards, which is what the workshop presenters got.

The three presenters from Playcentre also 'worked the room' tirelessly at the conference! We button-holed most of the keynote speakers, and made sure that the views of parents-as-providers (rather than parents as passive recipients of services) was aired. Otherwise many speakers seemed to assum that parents were pretty useless - something that we know if far from the case!

We had some particularly synergistic exchanges with one keynote speaker form Pen Green in England, Margy Whalley. She already knew a bit about Playcentre as Nikolien (our other presenter) had been to one of their conferences in the past. They also work colaboratively with parents much more than any of the Australian folk seem to.

As well as that, we promoted some of the Playcentre Publications to three suppliers in Australia, and to Margy from England. We are hoping that increased book sales will arise form this. (Actually, I managed to sell two of my books - for Aussie dollars - which gave me some extra spending money.)