4th Glasgow Scout Group Web Site

It's been awhile since I wrote on the topic of ScoutBlogs.  I recently came across a blog cluster setup by the 4th Glasgow Scout Group.  The reason I'd like to bring your attention to it is that the 4th has put together a first class scout web site using what largely looks like free social networking tools and free hosting.

• The blogs are hosted by Google (Blogger) and are likely classified as not-for-profit
• Each section has it's own blog on blogger (Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, and Leaders)
• There is a single look and feel to the site - all sections are tied together in a common header and transition is seamless.
• They take advantage of other free tools like Google Calendars to showcase events and gmail for communication

Using the same concept of a blog cluster a group could even have some private sections.

Well done 4th!

Check them out at The 4th Glasgow Scout Group.
And check out my other ScoutBlogs and ScoutReach articles.


I just have one question for the 4th, what character in the Jungle Book is known as SPUD?   :)

Space badge resource for Girls and Boys

Ken Murphy over at Out of the Cradle wrote a piece on Girl Scout space badges in Scouting the Moon.  The article also has some references to US Boy Scout Space Exploration merit badge and the interesting online resource meritbadge.org.

(See what you can find when you read Carnival of Space, h/t to Issue #101)

One year of Bat Blogging!

The Bat Page is now one!

I don't have an astounding article to share, or a web site face lift, or anything else 'major'. I thought I'd just reflect on what has been an interesting year. Along the way I learned a lot about blogging, made connections, found new some great resources, made new friends, and wrote a few good articles.

I started this blog along with a blog for the 443rd Scouts so I could write about Scouting related and side interests that might not be of interest to all of the families in our group. It began with a few ideas that would support badgework, scoutcraft, and getting in touch with other Scout groups (see Scoutblogs and Scoutreach). And I thought I had some topics might have some interest and be of use to Scouting like groups and perhaps some others.

Just a few days ago the Bat Page recorded its 20,000th visitor ( in just 9 months of tracking). That's far more than I expected when I started this. Wow! Not bad for a Scouters blog.

The chart above shows those visits. The spikes from left to right are:

• Carnival of Space #61: Tunguska Edition,
• Scam psychology, Whack-a-mole and the next 2012 hoax,
• Greenwash, Security Theatre, and Skepticism - Critical Thinking, and
• Astronomical distances are .... (well) astronomical.

Back in May I wrote Mang's Most Popular. This was before the spikes generated by The Carnival of Space and Stumblers. There is still steady interest in articles like:

• Build your own Planisphere (Star Finder)!, and
• Navigation without a compass (or GPS).

One things I tried to do with the last two articles, was to make sure they provided answers for those in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

The Web and tools like blogs have the potential to transform and expand Scouting. Events like JOTI are a fantastic complement to traditional jamborees. The promise of Scoutblogs is to keep this kind of grass-roots communication going all the time. There are great examples of Scout Bloggers, but I think there is room for a lot more. I know Scouters that have a wealth of relevant and useful information covering all of the domains of Scouting knowledge. More of them need to share this. Scouters could take a lesson from the Space/Astronomy blogging community that has shown one way it can be done.

There are a lot of people who've shown how to do it and I'd like to thank some of them: Scouters Joy, Ken, and Clarke; and Space bloggers Fraser, Ian, and Phil.

More Scouting insight at Scoutmaster

If you don't know Clarke Green's Scoutmaster blog, I recommend you check it out. Clarke often has insightful posts that are well worth reading. I'd like to bring some articles on leadership from this past summer to your attention:

• How Not To Know Everything
• Don't Control Them - Lead Them
• No Jerks
• The Island Will be There Tomorrow
• Update: Building Confidence in Youth Leadership
• Update: "Big Picture" Thinking
• Update: Ten Common Scoutmaster Mistakes

I've written about Clarke's blog before in Gone Home too soon ....

BTW. Scoutmaster is one of the blogs feartured in my blogroll. (Over on the side bar ... scroll down).

Pyro Scouts and Boy Scout Trail

Over at BoyScout Trail in I saw a Scoutmaster Musing blog article titled Pyro Scouts that caught my attention. This insightful piece about Scouts who get fascinated by camp fires provides a good suggestion for channelling their curiosity.

I've wanted to talk about Boy Scout Trail for some time. It's one of the sites I follow via Web Feeds. It's a great resource for Scouters - so check it out.

Great Cubbing activities at Akela's Cubs!

In my hunt for good Scouting resources, I came across a blog that consistently shows Cubs involved in fun activities. A lot of these go the extra step with a little well prepared embellishment.

If you haven't already found it, you should check out Akela Joy's blog at the 9th Benoni. For a sample consider:

• Why just play capture the flag when you can play capture the pirate treasure, see Pirates!
• Cubs a bit overheated? Need a steam off game? Try some Icy Water!
• Feeling gooey? Take your cubs for a trip through the graveyard!
• Or try some reality Cubbing like Survivor!
  

Joy has lots more, so check it out.

50 Ways to get kids hooked on the outdoors!

Texas parks and recreation's blog had this article. The suggestions cover a wide age range and a lot of core Scouting activities.

Thanks to the Awesome Cub Scouting blog, here.

Scouts in Space (not kidding)

I came across this article on scouts in space by a leader of 1st Avoca Beach Scouts just north of Sydney in New South Wales Australia!

Of the 294 men and women selected to be astronauts since 1959 to 2005, more than 180 have been Scouts.

and ...

Astonishingly, 11 of the 12 men to have walked on the moon were Scouts.

The first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, was a Scout and ...

What’s more, Armstrong had carried the World Scout Badge with him on his historic mission.

Update: At least 22 of them were women, here.

Linking with the 9th Benoni Cubs

The 443rd Cubs wanted to link with a pack from another country. We were fortunate enough to find the 9th Benoni Pack outside Johannesburg South Africa.

Since we wanted to learn about how they were like and unlike us, we decided to have a question exchange. Each pack was asked to put together a list of 5 to 10 questions that they would want to ask the other Pack.

We found out that Cubs are Cubs and despite some differences, including 13,000 km of distance, we were surprisingly alike. Both packs wanted to know about things:

• each others uniform and scarves
• meeting places and meeting structure
• favorite activities and games
• camps attended in a year and where
  
• badges and advancement
• climate
• ages of scouting sections
  

The 9th wanted to know if we had girls in the pack (not this year) and if we played American style football. Our fiercely Canadian Cubs had other sports on their mind.

Scouts Canada seems to differ a bit from South Africa. There seems to be a more granular advancement Cheetah, Leopard, Lion and Leaping Wolf. There is also a badge called the Arrow of Light which Canada doesn't have but South Africa and the United States have. It indicates the Cub is prepared to advance to Scouts.

A reference on South African Cubbing badges can be found here.

Some references on Canadian Cubbing's 70+ stars, badges, and awards can be found here, here, and here.

Akela Joy at the 9th maintains a blog with lots of activities and pictures, here. There are some good activities on it and I encourage you to read it. They recently had a raptor show and South African Eagles are quite impressive looking!

This activity counts towards our centenial crest, here.

Unofficial Carnival of Space Search Widget

I've created a Google Search Widget for the Carnival of Space.

It's experimental only in that it is subject to tinkering. The intent is to be able to search through sites and pages related to the Carnival of Space. Tinkering will be limited to the addition of related sites, and changes to options to limit how far the search can expand itself.

Currently, the widget searches each page has hosted the Carnival and dynamically includes pages linked from these pages. The search should not expand beyond this to the larger Internet.
I will also be adding individual sites from the carnival.

I had tried some different options initially and found some the searches went a bit astray. I'll put this down to my inexperience with Google CSE widgets.

I'll update this post if I make significant changes.

Feedback is welcome.

I've also added it to the blog's side bar for when this rolls off into the archives.

For more on Google Custom Search Engine widgets, see here.

BTW. If you are considering using this widget or creating one of your own, Google's Terms and Conditions include some "Exclusivity" terms to preserve their lock-in. If I read it correctly, they don't want to share their widgets on pages with other search engines/widgets.

Update: No longer experimental. The options that I'm using to limit searching too broadly have been working well and there appears to be no need to tinker with them anymore.

The Carnival of Space

This article touches upon two areas of interest. One is communications and the other is astronomy and space exploration.

In my previous posts on ScoutBlogs, I was looking at ways that Scouters might communicate better outside of the hierarchies of their local and national organizations. I briefly considered web rings and blog networks. Another interesting idea are blog carnivals. They come in several forms, one of these is a kind of distributed roving online magazine. It's a great way for cross promotion. It also seems to require more coordination effort.

A great example of a blog carnival is "The Carnival of Space". This is a roving carnival with a central coordinator. An index can be found here. And if you loose that link, googling "Carnival of Space" will get you there in a pinch.

Update 2008-12-15: The Bat Page gets a mention in The Carnival of Space #41! This edition covers 22 different space blogs and there is some very interesting stuff including a 20 km/second catapult, a galaxy eating monster, and using WiiRemotes in physics.

One of the things I didn't mention before was that each new carnival is written and hosted by a different blogger using information submitted by others. It's fascinating and often entertaining to see the different writing styles.

ScoutBlogs #2 Nipissing and the Google Search

The Nipissing Scouting News blog is a fine example of a scouting blog. It does a good job of staying focused on local news and events. It looks crisp and sharp. But beyond that it does more.

This blog is well organized and provides its readers with a great portal to Scouting and supporting resources on the Internet. The two sidebars have links for organizations, newsletters, and a wealth of other resources. There is also something special.

The site includes a Google custom search engine (CSE) widget setup to search a large number of scouting resources. I liked it so much that I asked the webmaster for permission to use it! Now you see it on our sidebar - at the top! This is a great resource because you can type in things like "skits", "songs", "rope", "knots", "astronomy" and have a far better chance at finding an appropriate page. It may not be the Scout blogging network I was thinking of, but it sure is useful.

Thanks to Ken Sitter of the 3rd Widdifield in Nipissing!

Update 2008-2-15: I checked out how to create a Google CSE widget. It looks pretty simple. You need a Google account to start.
Update 2008-2-24: The homepage for this Google CSE can be found here.

ScoutBlogs - the search begins

I've been on the lookout for interesting and useful Scouting Blogs (and web sites) and will be reporting on some of these in the near future.

There is a vast wealth of Scouting materials that can be found if one only looks. Scout related sites are reasonably well organized within the hierarchy of their country, region, and districts. Individual sites do a good job of cross-linking. And there are fascinating events, such as the Jamboree on the Internet (JOIT). Beyond this Scouters do not seem to have exploited other methods of linking and do not seem to be as well organized as some other groups on the Internet.

Other special interest groups organize in different ways, like:

• Webrings - these use a ring host database to provide next/previous and random jumps through the ring. The problem is that rings alone don't work for really large numbers of sites. And one thing about Scouting is that there will be a large number of sites!
• Blogging Networks - these aggregate like minded networks into a single feed. They're great ways for people to see the most current postings. But these too can become overwhelming. They are also designed as advertising channels. Like rings, this to fails to 'scale' up to the task of handling large numbers of sites.
  

As I add posts on this topic I will be cross-linking some of these sites from a new side section of the blog.

Update 1/31: I'd forgotten this post about using RSS/Atom feeds. Handy if you don't already know about them.