Saturday, January 29, 2011

First Post

Here goes!

I'm writing this blog for LBS 850, and I'm excited to get a little push into life as a blogger.  This is a long day of homework, as I spent some time this morning on the discussion board, then "messed around" with blog exploration, and finally created my blog.  I like to write, so I think I'll enjoy this project!  

For my blog exploration today, I started with the link http://supportblogging.com/Links+to+School+Bloggers.  (Well, well, I see I already have something to learn; the links I wrote in Word are showing up as active links, while this one that I'm composing on Blogger isn't.  What to do?  I'll ignore the problem for now.) 

Anyway, I browsed some blogs, got a sense of the different categories of educational blogging, looked at the How to Start tab,  where this informative article by Vicki Davis, author of Cool Cat Teacher Blog, caught my eye: “Ten Habits of Bloggers that Win.”
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/03/ten-habits-of-bloggers-that-win.html   I noticed that she won the Edublog Best Teacher Blog in 2008, so I decided to follow her on Twitter.
I looked at Bernajean Porter’s A Digital Storytelling Blog because I recognized her name from another LBS class.  There was a sweet little video about the life of a Granny Smith apple made by third graders that was featured as the Story of the Month.  http://web.mac.com/bernajeanporter/Site/About_Me.html
I looked at a blog called DE Tools of the Trade http://www.detools.ca/ which I would follow if I were Joyce Valenza, but for now I think I’ll let her sort through the wealth of free tools and wait to see which ones she likes best! 
By now I have spent about an hour looking two blogs, and I’m starting to get the idea that blogging and looking at blogs could consume my whole life!  Also, I notice that a lot of blogs go into a collapse after an enthusiastic start.  Of course, people get busy, but I also wonder if blogging starts to feel like shouting into the void?

The Edublog award winners were also very interesting.  I looked at the Best Educational Wiki  (I know, wiki not blog) winner, Greetings from the World.
http://greetingsfromtheworld.wikispaces.com/  This wiki is a really neat idea in which students and teachers from many different countries share geography Glogs they’ve made.  The examples here helped me understand what an exciting technology glogs can be—I didn’t really “get” them before.  I love that people from around the world are collaborating to share ideas in this way.  I especially liked the Flamenco glog.

And I looked at the Best Resource Sharing blog:

Free Technology for Teachers
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/01/good-list-of-google-search-tricks.html where I found a list of 100 Google search tricks that I will peruse at greater depth sometime.

Setting up my own blog was easy, except that I had forgotten my Google password and had to get help in setting a new one.  I'm always positive I'll remember my passwords, and then I don't.   I was curious to see the guidelines for blogs on Blogger; I'm glad they won't allow illegal activities, hate speech, threats, and other nasty things.   I'm still working on the design of my blog...I thought I had selected a nice background, but, instead, the default picture shows up.

1 comment:

  1. Wow, fantastic first post! And I love the look of the default grain in the background. It reminds me that somewhere, sometime there is something green and not covered with snow!

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