I've often wondered too, Antiseptic, how many people access OLO from work and how they manage to do it.

I certainly couldn't and wouldn't combine my work and OLO. I'm definitely better off if I'm focusing on one thing at a time!

I do casual and contract work which means I have some busy work periods and some stretches where there's little in the way of paid work. My OLO participation tends to be a bit erratic as a result.

It's also the reason why I never start a discussion thread, as I mostly don't know in advance what I'll be doing in the days ahead, and whether or not I'd have the time to be checking in and commenting on a thread I'd started.

Romany

"Both Articles and posts have been used to illustrate good and bad writing; as excercises in comprehension, grammar and literacy; cultural studies; Western societal mores etc.in other classes as well."

Interesting! I'm curious, but I won't pressure you to reveal more than you have. It might get you into all sorts of trouble! :)

Bronwyn - "I'm curious, but I won't pressure you to reveal more than you have. It might get you into all sorts of trouble! "
I hope not: I guess all netizens are aware that when they put something out into the public forum it becomes public, so often get used for all sorts of reasons.

The reasons I refer to blogs and fora in my classes is because the average Chinese person knows very little about the West.

Unfortunately, because of the differences in how Education is handled here and in the West, most of their knowledge comes from text books.

And there are three problems with this approach, I find:
1. Is that text-books, even though reprinted, are often 15 or so years away from their original publication date. Yep. Even in Universities.
2. The majority of the text-books that originate from overseas come from America.
3. Contemporary books in English are not readily available - and certainly not in numbers large enough to use in my courses.

This is where I find the Web a boon.

Interestingly enough, right up until the reporting on the Lhasa "riots", people here believed implicitly that Western Media was based on a Free Press and were unaware and then disbelieving about the slants, agenda and politics which skewed and governed what the West read.

That was when I started referring them to on-line discussions.

But then, because most of my students are English Majors they became even more confused about the kind of English they were reading. They thought that all native English speakers wrote and spoke a superior and grammatically correct language and found the "real deal" so different to what they had been learning in their old-fashioned text books as to be almost another language.

They also had this Hollywood Dream kind of idea of The West and its people which, while touching, was at the same time ludicrous.

This, in turn, caused me to completely change the way I was teaching and its been an incredible learning process for them and for me.

Interesting responses, folks. Noone except Romany has acknowledged that they routinely post to or access the site from work and yet, as I said, the roster is full every weekday from about 9am and almost empty on the weekends. Someone's got to be doing it.

Romany, I'm impressed with your innovation and lateral thinking. The English language evolves rapidly and the "blogosphere" (dreadful word) is driving a great deal of that change today. Well done.

Like Bronwyn, I do casual and contract work. So I mostly access the internet from home. However, when the opportunity presents and I need a break, I do a bit of surfing from work. I don't have a problem with this as I am highly productive and efficient, and it seems that the tea-break has gone the way of the dinosaurs.

If the net-surfing impedes productivity, then this needs to be addressed by the team-leader or manager. However if targets are met, where is the problem? As a former team-leader myself, I took this attitude and never had to tell staff to pull their socks up.

BTW - Editor

This is the second time I have tried to post on this thread - I tried yesterday and got fed up with the constant error messages.

I'm lucky, I work a casual part-time job near home, and set my own hours, I can come and go as I wish, as long as the daily list is completed, it doesn't matter how or when I do them. It makes online simple, and add to that the fact I don't sleep a great deal, av' 5hrs p/d, I spend quite some time wandering the net, or just reading.

How interesting. I access OLO only from home. There is little opportunity and no call to access from work.

I've never really thought about it, assuming that most posting would be 'in own time' and that people are working shifts, are retired or at home for other reasons.

For me to do this during work hours would have all sort of ramifications. I can get rather passionate on some subjects, though you wouldn't guess of course from the calm reasoned arguments that I post.

Rather admirable really, to post on OLO, then calmly and coolly resume with whatever humdrum activity a boss has set. I simmer for at least 10 minutes after myself! I'd be worse than having a smoker who needs to go for a smoko break every hour or so.