New Beginnings

Well, I haven’t posted here in 6 months.  I know a number of blogs that don’t post anything for a while and come back with “Sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while” and then go back to dormancy.  Repeat.  I’m determined not to do that.

There are lots of reasons I haven’t posted much (usually because I feel disconnected from the edublogosphere due to teaching under a totally different system) but now I’m using Sam J Shah’s New Blogger Initiation to motivate myself and see if this thing clicks with me.

I want to use this blog to help critically reflect on my teaching, to inspire new methods and resources and to share advice on teachings techniques.  It’s only useful if it’s updated regularly, so lets try again.

It starts simply.  Many of the options to make my first post about were based around people starting a new school year.  Being an Australian, we’re in the middle of the toughest part of the year.  Lots of tests coming up, about to have a two-week break, don’t even have time to scratch myself.  So I picked the easy and relavent option to start with:

lim joe→∞

First goal: Explain the title of your blog.

When I was starting my blog (nearly 3 years ago) I asked friends for suggestions.  I got two great ones from @straaken http://brnz.org/hbr/  “Blogorithm” (or “Blogorhythm”) and “Lim Joe Approaches Infinity”.

I liked the first one for the punniness, but it would be more appropriate for a music/maths blog.  It didn’t seem too appropriate for me.  But the second one stuck.  It was Mathsy, it was nerdy and it was appropriate for me.  It signified growth, it showed that I’m getting older, do I get wiser at the same time?  As my age approaches infinity, does my wisdom?  I loved the sort of questions this title signified.  I tweaked it a bit to have a different url that still made sense, and there we have it.

I’m not proud of how much I’ve updated the blog over the years.  I’m not proud of how much I strayed from the core concept of teaching.  But I am proud of quite a few posts here, and most of all I’m proud of the title.  Thanks Straaks!  I’ll buy you a beer next time you’re in Hobart.