Learning More

I am still really excited about this blog, but, like most things, it can be hard to find the time to keep up with it.  It definitely is the kind of thing that I need to set aside time to do.  So, I am making the commitment now that I am going to work on it 2 mornings a week. 

Even though I haven’t gotten very far with blogging, I am already wondering what else I can do with it.  How can I turn this into something that people actually read?  Should I created a classroom blog & update it with my “newsletters?”  For now that seems to be the most logical step.  As useful as this blog is to me as a portfolio, I feel like I should be working on something more.

My Plain Jane Blog (for now)

I still really am trying to figure out all of the features of blogging.  Right now, I’m pretty much just writing posts and adding them to my homepage.  There are an awful lot of options that I see on the Dashboard and other menus.  One I think I should get in the habit of using soon is the tags.  I’m not sure that I really need it for myself, yet, but if I’m proficient at using it, it would probably be handy for a classroom page.

Another thing I want to get better at is adding links to other online pages.  Again, right now this is all pretty much for me, so I don’t really need to include links for myself, but if turn this into a site for our 21 Things study group at school, links would be really helpful for sharing information with other teachers.

My WikiSpace right now this is used as a forum for out FIRST LEGO League team

My Delicious Link I’m using this as a source of professional webpages I like

My Online Presence

Since I now have my own blog, I officially have an online presence.  I do think I’m pretty cool now, by the way!  I also have my own WikiSpace that I will (eventually) be using with my FIRST LEGO League team.  I haven’t shared these sites with anyone yet, but I will pretty soon.

I never got started with my own online site before because online privacy is really important to me.  I mean, what is the point in having a blog (or website)  if I’m not going to open it up to allow anyone else to read it.  I’m only getting slightly more comfortable with the idea, but I decided to get started with this so that I can help my students (and my own children) create these types of sites responsibly.  I also realized that some of these sites would help me share information and collaborate professionally.  How can I say no to that?!?

Online Bookmarks

I am a huge fan of online bookmarks.  First of all, our school has our computers “locked” so we can’t save bookmarks through Internet Explorer.  As much as I understand why the tech department wants to do this, it is a huge pain for me if I am going to use my computer productively.  (I end up relying on Google to get me to the website or I have to navigate through several pages to get where I want to go.)  If I really like a site or want to create a list to share with others, I save it in a word document on our shared drive.  It all works, but online bookmarks are a better route.

After watching the preview videos, I decided to use Delicious to save my bookmarks.  I was really intrigued by Diigo and being able to save highlighting and annotations that I add as I read.  I don’t think I will be able to add these buttons to the browser toolbar at school, though.  Maybe someday I’ll also try out Diigo, but for now, I’ll stick with Delicious.

I haven’t done a lot with Delicious yet, but it will help me go back to some of my favorite sites quickly.  I’ve tried adding stacks, but it doesn’t seem to be working from our school computers.  I’ll definitely want to do this soon from home, though, because I can see how my list will quickly get out of control, even with the tags.

Keyboard Shortcuts

shortcuts

I thought I was good, but I had no idea how much I could control just from the keyboard!  I plan to look over these lists occassionally and see what I can do without having my fingers leave the keyboards.  The ones I have already started using are the ctrl-arrow shortcuts to jump to the next word.  I think these will save me a bit of time.  Now I just need to get in the habit of using them!