Where Does Blogging Fit into a Busy Life?

In two weeks, life is about to become insanely busy. Summer will be officially over for me, and I will be heading to a new teaching position. I'm very excited about this new endeavor, I will be the technology teacher at Hammitt Junior Senior High School. A challenging and rewarding position.

Aside from the new placement, family life will be crazy as well. We are in two weddings this fall, attending two more, starting a new toddler care provider, painting the house, and oh yes, painting a bathroom. Not to mention prepping for a conference and working on my graduate courses.

So where does blogging fit into all this stress? I've been doing some reflection on this lately, as I took a break from posting. Here are some things I've been thinking:

1. Why do I blog?
2. What is the purpose of my blog?
3. Does it really matter if I post regularly?
4. Is it okay that my blog doesn't have one single direction?
5. What am I giving up in order to make time to blog?

Here are my answers:

1. I blog because I like to have a place to share things. It is an outlet for self expression, link sharing, communication, and yes, I do enjoy getting comments to see what others think.
2. The purpose of my blog is to give me an outlet for the above. It's not as involved as a full blown website, but more involved than twitter.
3. I've read a lot of posts that say edu-bloggers should be blogging regularly. I've decided I'll post when I have something worth posting. A thought to share. I am not writing to be a one-stop-resource for all teachers, others have time for that and I do not. I'm going to stop making myself feel guilty for it.
4. I've wrestled with this. Many education blogs have a very specific focus, where I blog about all kinds of things. True, I do focus more on technology, but this blog is about my journey in education, so it can't have a specific focus because I don't know where I'm going from time to time. I blog on topics of meaning to me and hopefully my audience. Down the road if I feel the need for a specific topic blog I can always start another.
5. This is huge. I refuse to give up time with my family. As teachers we are already over-worked, over-booked, and over-exhausted without adding blogging time. Blogging is something I enjoy, and want to do, but only after I've taken care of my other "hats."

After a few weeks off from my blog, and after reading some great posts about edu-blogging, I'm re-dedicating myself to my blog, but in a manner that will not suppress my other enjoyments, responsibilities, and wishes. We (the collective "we" being teachers) should not be made to feel guilty if we don't post regularly, or our posts are shorter than others. Edu-blogging is about sharing, communication, and collaboration- not about guilt, stress, and pressure.

Anyone else ready re-dedicate?!

Through the Eyes of The Twilight Saga: Digital Citizenship Brochure

In one of my graduate courses I recently had the assignment to create a digital citizenship brochure for students. I'm pleased with the results and thought I would share the brochure.

One requirement for the assignment was for the brochure to be comprehensive; however knowing junior high students (the audience the brochure was designed for) giving them too much information at once can be overwhelming; a brochure is not the correct method for distributing massive amounts of information, rather the tri-fold I designed is meant as an introduction to the idea of digital citizenship. I took a spin on this and designed it through the eyes of a Twilight fan.

• I used Open Office Draw to create the brochure, then saved it as a pdf.
• I used a website called morgueFile to find the picture on the cover. It was posted by jdurham.
• The other Twilight images were taken from the download section of the official Twilight movie website.

As mentioned on the brochure, I have no affiliation with anyone who has anything to do with the making or production of Twilight, I'm just a devoted fan! The brochure is purely for educational purposes, feel free to use it according to the creative commons license listed on the back of the brochure.

You can download the brochure here.

As always I welcome comments and thoughts about the creation of the document!

Update (July 20, 2010) I got an A+ on this assignment. Whoo-hoo!

4 Summer Sanity Savers

What's this about teacher's having more time during the summer? I've been on summer break for only a few weeks; and when I don't have a toddler attached to my leg I have a laptop attached to my hand- and I'm still not getting all my stuff done.

Here's 4 things I'm doing to keep myself sane:

• When you read a blog that shares several great links, don't open each link and save each individual one, just save the blog post. Ex: Richard Bryne over at Free Tech for Teachers recently wrote a great post about resources for teaching about presidents. I'm not teaching presidents right now so I don't need to open up each link and tag them separately. I just tagged the entire post in my delicious under "presidents." Then when I teach it, I can easily go back through the post.
• Ditch the "read it later" button. I love it but it's just another way for things to pile up and add additional stress. I deal with items right then and there, or file them into delicious where I can always go back.
• Unsubscribe. It's not necessary for me to follow someone's blog and twitter; I'm tidying up my RSS reader by getting rid of some feeds and just making sure I subscribe to the user's twitter handle. Most twitter users will tweet about their blog posts anyway. 
• Give up some of your ideas about the perfect summer. Sadly teachers can feel that they have to use the summer to make up for the past ten months of neglected parenting/friendships, etc. This is hard for me. I quickly learned my grand plans of daily trips out, blogging several times a week, reading fifty books, painting, traveling, and cleaning out the china cabinet this summer just might not happen. Not only do I need rest and relaxation- but my little tyke needs it too!
  

Bonus Item: For those that blog- keep your blogs short this summer! Save yourself sanity and consider those of us who read. We love reading your lengthy and profound thoughts- just not twenty a week. Keep your points short and sweet. Seth Godin is awesome at this!

(Author's Note: The photo was taken by Old Shoe Woman, found using a creative commons flickr search.)

With Or Without Books The Library's 'a Hopping!

I told myself the last time I wasn't going to drink anymore.

I'm beyond addicted. It's just so good, I really think they put some sort of drug in the mix to make susceptible coffee drinkers like myself completely hooked. The McDonald's Carmel Frappe. It's delicious. And it's the perfect accompaniment to this beautiful, warm, summer June day, as I sit here in my hometown's public library. A few years ago they didn't even allow beverages in the library (so I can clearly blame them for the tall frosty beverage at my left, right?). For the record, I feel horrible about this purchase; aside from the obvious fact my tasty indulgence is laced with caloric guilt, as a budding vegetarian and common sense American I have huge health and ethical issues with McDonald's.

(pause to take a nice long carmel-y sip)

I've read numerous blog posts over the past few years, as well as studied the topic in one of my graduate courses, that books are on their way out- out of our shelves, out of our libraries, out of our cultures- in favor of ereaders, like the Nook or Kindle.

I'm not here to argue that point, because I think there is some obvious truth to that, and I'm not entirely sure it's a bad thing; but as I sit here in the library I can't help but notice, this library is hopping- with or without books (though our library has a great selection, as well as subscription service to My Media Mall where I can checkout digital books). It's nearly noon on a Wednesday and it's packed, kids checking out books, adults at laptops, computers, in the stacks; talking, sharing, reading, typing, laughing (and yes, sipping those lovely beverages now encouraged to help bring about the "cafe atmosphere"), it's inspiring to a teacher to see. There is so much life in this building, and I can't imagine that would go away just because books might.

Libraries across the nation are innovative, they are working double time to keep up with our evolving digital culture; everything from changing the outdated decor, to offering more services. It becomes a haven for us cheap bibliophiles, and offers a non-threatening escape for emergent readers.

The library continuously amazes me and I look forward to exploring more it has to offer this summer.

For now, I may go look up books on addiction...

25 Edu-Game Websites to Explore This Summer

Here's a quick list of 25 awesome websites with educational games that you can share with students and parents this summer! There are certainly many more, so please share your favorites in the comment section!

1. Chess Kid- Learn to play chess and play against kids all over the world.
2. National Geographic Maps has some excellent exploration and geography games for young explorers.
3. Discovery Channel Man vs. Wild game requires a use of geography, math, and critical thinking skills.
4. Moppet Games offers math facts, hangman, memory, picture search, and other games for young learners.
5. The Ruler Game teaches you measurement using virtual rulers.
6. Inside the FBI Become a detective through history and current news with these games.
7. Starfall has various reading games for early readers.
8. Spelling Match Practice your spelling skills.
9. The Enchanted Palace takes you through the history of the Kingston Palace, a fun way to sleuth!
10. The University of Nottingham offers this website to custom make your own parts-of-speech practice activities.
11. The Children's University of Manchester has games online for all subjects.
12. Spelling City offers another way to practice spelling.
13. Grammaropolis A fun way to practice grammar with kookie characters.
14. Learn to Type with this alphabetic rain game.
15. Fun for the Brain is a huge resource of various fun math, science, and English games.
16. Math is Fun has games in geometry, arithmetic, and algebra and more.
17. ABCya! has games in every subject and every grade level.
18. Scholastic features a variety of games from the stacks.
19. Word Twist is an online game similar to Boggle.
20. The Problem Site has a variety of educational games based off solving problems.
21. Ghost Blasters the game might be spooky but math isn't!
22. Gamequarium features games in all subjects at all levels.
23. Primary Games feature a variety of games for our youngest learners.
24. Grammar Ninja lets you try to improve your grammar skills.
25. Maggie's Earth Adventure features games in geography, but also in math, science, and Language Arts.