Tuesday, January 11, 2011

30 Day Blogging Challenge


What is the 30 Day Blogging Challenge? This challenge was posted in a blog that I follow "Free Technology for Teachers" by Richard Byrne. I have found a great many gems in his blog. The latest one was "So You Want to be a Blogger? (or a better blogger?)". I want to be a better blogger, so I went to the link 30 Day Blogging Challenge. I didn't have to create a new blog, because I already have one. However, I did change the background on my blog. So, for my first post I am going to pose some questions for me to answer.

1. When did I start my blog? I started my blog in June of 2009 right before necc '09 (right before it became ISTE). However, I didn't do anything with it, so I deleted the posts and re-started in November, 2009.

2. How did I start my blog? At the time I started my blog, I had only heard about Blogger.com and it was the only one that was not blocked at my school.

3. What was in the first post? The first post in November, 2009 was about Web 2.0 Tools.

4. Why did I start my blog? This was my first time of attending a national conference and I thought I would write about my experiences at the conference and what I saw. That didn't work out very well. I had a great time at the conference, but I didn't really write anything of use. I didn't take the time to reflect on the day and what I had seen and heard. I decided later to try to start writing on my blog again, and then only posted a couple of things. I really thought no one would be interested in reading about what I had to say.

5. What did I decide to write about? I decided to start writing more about things I knew about; things I might be teaching to others. So I started with SMART Notebook tips, things I had created in EDU Glogster, new things I personally was learning.

6. What are sources of inspiration? I work with some very prolific blog writers and I get really inspired by their blogs. Steven Anderson has a blog "Blogging About The Web 2.0 Classroom" and is really into social media. Another co-worker is Melissa Edwards; her blog is "Technology: figuring out how the pieces fit". Evan Herreid is another co-worker and his blog is: "Techno Fusion". All of my co-worker's write about technology and how to use it in the classroom. They pull ideas from Twitter, what they are teaching to teachers, or other blogs and write about how they would use it in the classroom. My boss, Marlo Gaddis, has her own blog also: "Finding the Diva Within". Her posts have technology links and reflection posts. As a department we also have a blog that we are encouraged to post to: "In Touch". I usually post at least once a week (sometimes every other week) to this blog.

7. What are my top hints or tips? Two of my favorite tools to teach about or with is SMART Notebooks and EDU Glogster. That is what I write the most about.

8. What would make me happy about my blog? To know that people are benefiting from any of my tips and for them to tell me what they used and how they used it.

9. What are my future goals? My future goals are to write more and to hopefully have people comment so that I can become a better writer and to see if any of my tips actually make a lesson better for students.

10. What is my most exciting moment? Usually when I finish a blog post and am actually happy with what I posted. I look at it and realize that I write a little better after each post.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for tweeting this post link. I am at the other end of the blogging challenge - beginner! It has been a nice break from the heart-breaking TV watching Queensland under the weight of all that water!
    Am amazed at the generosity of the edublogs crew to set up such support for teacher bloggers - quality teaching in action!
    Will return here for a read of your work! Thanks for sharing (the moral imperative!). Regards, Deb

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  2. Thanks for sharing all these great responses and adding those links for further investigation, Doreen. It is always interesting to find out how people find out about challenges, online PD etc. Glad you found out about this one and contributed. The second challenge comes out tomorrow, so hope you will continue joining in.
    I am hoping to give people the option to add a glog as a post towards the end of the challenge. Would you be willing to help me with that, please?

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  3. Hi!
    I loved the clean and simple aspect of your blog. It looks really neat :)

    Cheers!

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  4. @murcha - Thanks for your comment. I would be happy to help with adding a glog. Let me know what I can do to help.

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  5. @DebHogg and @kami - thanks for your comments on my blog.

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