I think this blog post from SEO presents some good points both for and against using the tags.  The author (Joshua Odmark) sums up: “In conclusion, even though I think twitter hash tags are a dying art, they are not dead yet.”

I checked with some folks in my own twitterverse and they confirmed that they still use hashtags.

Which makes sense.  I think the real benefit to using hashtags is to cut down on noise.  In the examples given by my friend (course comm & sharing, seminar backchatter, and public workshop notes), the hashtag allows you to search on a pre-defined tag.  If you have a term that is rather unique (like “moodle”) then maybe you don’t need it.

We have the keynote with Martin Dougiamas tomorrow, first thing.  I expect him to talk about Moodle 2.0 and some idea about the future roadmap.

I had a great time listening to Patrick talk about theming moodle this morning.  Tomorrow I will attend Helen’s workshop on Moodle 2.0.  It will be nice to get a tour from an expert rather than trying to figure it out on my own!

I believe there are around 130 people attending, which is a slightly larger group than last year.

Today, I worked on ISO troubles.  When my photos turned out terribly grainy, I guessed that I might have inadvertently changed a setting.  A quick google for “canon S3 grainy” turned up enough information to point to the ISO setting as the culprit.  I set mine on 80 and went out to reshoot.

They aren’t spectacular, but I was pleased enough with these two:

FIrst, there is a nice drop down box where you can select the essay question you want to grade.  Part of the description is how many attempts require grading, and this is updated each session.

Once you have selected your question, at the top of the screen you will see a summary including the name of the question and the number of attempts that have been graded.  The highlighting also appears on the summary list, so you can easily see which individual students’ attempts have been graded.  This is new!

You can use these links to grade the whole set of questions, a partial set of questions, or just the questions that you haven’t graded yet!  This is wonderful.  I remember spending a lot of time going through questions I had already marked in order to find those submitted later (in 1.8.x)

All in all, I find these to be changes that will definitely help MY productivity.  And now I will be more likely to grade a quiz prior to the closure date since I can easily focus on ungraded attempts instead of digging through the entire set of responses to locate those that have not been evaluated.  Quicker feedback for students without significantly more time required from the instructor!  A win-win situation.