Sues Message

After Sue Waters awesome talk there were a number of things that I realized I need to do better.
1. Link!
      This is something I did not even think about!  I was viewing blogging very similar to regular journaling.  It simply did not register with me that I could "Link" (connect) what I am sharing with my readers.  Once Sue showed us how simple it was, I felt a little embarrassed because of how I was not already doing it or making that connection myself.
2. Connect
    I think I am connecting to the class.  I realize that I am focusing more on the final project rather than class to class but I feel that the final project is the basis of how I am going to connect this class to my actual job, which is why I am taking the class.  I know I could comment and reflect a little bit more about the information we are learning week to week (which I am doing now!)
3. Comment/Join In
    This is a task that I will try to improve on week to week.  The only way of doing that is to make sure my posts are done earlier, so I can then spend time checking on others, and they will then have time to read and respond on my posts...
4. About page.
    This is something I will work on over the course of the next few days (aka weekend) and will get up and running.  It should be simple but I would also like to add in the design and development of my page as I have not completed that either and feel that shows a lot about a person as well.

5. How to get more people reading my blog? Attention seeking titles.
    This is something I am not very strong at... I feel that I can be spontaneously witty, but when it comes to creating catchy titles that I know are out there the pressure gets to me and I come up blank... I will try but who knows.
6. Images... Start adding images...
    I understand why adding images is a positive thing.  It makes it more visually appealing and in our society today people need that visual connection to stay focused.  I am one of those people.  My issue is, how do you find visuals that are meaningful for all the concepts we are talking about... Like this one for example... Do I find a picture of someone posting a picture?  It seems a little redundant... Maybe that's the point... Maybe I could do it with some humor.   We will see what kind of pictures I find.

7.  Flipboard - Awesome!  Why/How did I not know about this prior to this class.    This a spot where I can link all my media to that I find interesting, my blogs, tweets, news feeds, and its at the tip of my finger without having to jump around from page to page or app to app.  This is awesome! Enough said on this point.

8. Alec's Challenge - 

Create an EC&I 831 magazine for Flipboard, and add relevant links to it.  I think that we each can do this for ourselves and a "magazine" page would be unnecessary for us.   But it would be a good thing if people wanted to search for us.  I will try but I will also keep an eye out for it as a magazine due to the amount of people in our class and who knows how many of us will try to upload our info to a magazine page.

Now when it comes to how all this information will help me blog and become a better blogger... Well after the class my mind was spinning and my browser was packed full of tabs opened.  It took me until Thursday afternoon to go through each of the pages and simply browse each of them to get a stronger understanding of why Sue would mention them.  Obviously I found the Flipboard page to be one of my favorites. 

I am on my way to developing my major digital project.  As I said last week I am in the process of getting my edmodo class up and running with the focus to be within math.  I am also trying to do this within an Explore +4 model.  There are a bunch of great youtubes on this from teachers in Regina Public. One of the best ones for middle years is here:



This project is coming along and right now my big struggle is getting all the students signed up as it is taking some time due to the multiple levels of groups that I get to work with.  I have students from 4 different classrooms within my school and I am setting up emails, passwords and walking each of them through the process one at a time.  By next week I will be opening my page to be viewed by others so keep an eye out for my progress.  Thanks for all the support