Kick Start Your Blog – Advanced Activity 8 – Promote that Blog!

Over the last 30 days, we have built a blog- one that has a heart, brain, muscles, nerves, legs, bling and now it is ready to fly. Thanks Murcha for your last post in the teacher challenge.

Choose at least 5 terms from this wordle and explain how they relate to building blogging readership.

• Webinars  Online conversations in elluminate have been an inspiration to me and where I can meet other professional educators doing 'my thing'. Each webinar I have attended have given me something to learn about. Some are large, all day affairs, (symposium) others can be a short one hour webinar such as Jo Harts' Serendipity sessions.

• Tweetdeck on my laptop is fantastic because I have bben able to find the tweets I need by looking at the hashtags. Similarly I can write a post and send to some readership group where I know like-minded readers will appreciate it and either give me feedback or retweet mine. In this way, my blogging readership is 'out there' usually in the web2 or ESL audience. (#parrpakala)

• My PLN is getting so enormously huge I can't keep up and go for the bike rides I long for. It's addicitive, I learn heaps, it is a fantastic resource. If I get stuck at the computer and have a mental block, I go to twitter and I am set on a path again. All my twitter followers are in the same field as me so it is really good to find something relevant and perfect for my current needs. Blogging and the challenge is also another amazing learning curve..

• The blog challenges (2nd tchr challenge) are really useful to get me thinking about how I can be more creative and interesting on the blog. It gives me practical lessons on how to arrange and present using web2 tools/ features that create a striking presentation of learning materials. It is great reading where others are at in the challenge and how successful we all are in learning and making the blog a good read for others. It is also beneficial to students to see that the classroom learning does not have to be face to face and can incorporate the global world of teachers and students.

• Blogging directory offer a list of potential support and resource library to use. Many of these people become part of our PLN as they may be similar. These similarities may be about content and resources, web2 tool users that can offer a way to do something you hadn't thought of, and they may be geographically close to you.(or not-this may be an interesting point of discussion). So many young bloggers in the last challenge- connected to the class blogs would discuss their snow-related activites and we would be here in Australia talking about fires and floods. So it is really interesting what may come out of all these connections.

Teacher Challenge 1

Twitter Column: #ksyb


Here's my Wordle on Great things about blogging

My quick sketch of my PLN at Converge10 last year, when @catspyjamasnz gave a talk about "what my PLN means to me"(http://www.cats-pyjamas.net/)

My 10 Great things about being a blogger (and you should know about blogging)  are:

1. Up-skill Yourself: you are always up-skilling yourself, getting better at doing this. Blogging is an ICT lesson to yourself, learning about how the apps, widgets, plugins, networks, tools, RSS, subsriptions, links, pingbacks etc work.
2. Learn: you are becoming part of a network of familiar and new bloggers that interest you and you can learn from. You find people in similar areas as you (ESL teaching for me) through the edublogs directory or thru your network, and LEARN learn learn, get motivated and it's a great community.
3. Follow good practice: like any community of practice, blogging can really open new directions for your own practice and skill. We learn from each other and apply it in our blogs.
4. Extend our PLN. Through all of the networks and communications we have extended our community to a global audience and provide ourselves with such a huge range of influences.
5. Enthusiasm & Creativity: People make visits and leave comments on your blog, your 'visit counter' increases, your feedjit tells you where people are visiting from, and all of this promotes enthusiasm and the blog takes on a new focus & direction. Posts are directed to a real audience and your whole creativity gets a boost.
6. Web2 tools skills development: Learn new free software and tools you can use for education, develop new ways for creating an environment for learning/sharing/displaying/organising etc..
7. Your network offerings: Use the blog posts for sharing with peers, post in twitter, if relevant to the #about and refer to older posts when needed.
8. Lesson planning on the blog: Refer students to blog for lessons. Advertise blog in divisional LMS or in Facebook class group. Use for weekend homework, distance learning and projects.
9. Current Themes: Keep themes current to news events or class activities. Readers can comment, create threaded discussions and reflections on reading, listening to podcast links etc..
10. Responsibility to Readers: Once you have a following you feel responsible to to the readers to continue with the blog, keep people inspired and wanting to learn.

The Teacher Challenge.