Still building the online profile

Wow! My professional learning blog, "Booked Inn", has been nominated on a shortlist for "Best Librarian/Library Edublog 2010" in The Edublog Awards. Voting (please click HERE) doesn't seem too complicated; I would love your support. Many thanks in advance! It's such a buzz to make the shortlist. (Looks like all that work on Build Your Online Profile with Tristan Bancks, at the Sydney Writers' Centre in Term 3, is really paying off.)



Also, as an update to the work done by Kindergarten students this term, the first of our Photo Peach slideshows for the "Travelling Fearless Project" garnered 726 views (and 40 comments, including Sarah Davis, the illustrator of "Fearless"). Simply astounding! And it gets better: I Just received an automated email, via Photo Peach, that someone had made my page a favourite of theirs. I was curious, so tracked back and ended up on the main search page. It seems that, of Photo Peach's 42 pages of "Recently Popular" slideshows, "Travelling Fearless" is on Page 1 (one of 15 image links sitting there, gathering even more views as I type). And the sequel, "Farewell Fearless!", is on Page 3!


I have... Goosebumps!

Writing better blog posts

Sue Waters, of The Edublogger, says, "Here’s My First Five Tips For Writing Better Blog Posts — What Are Yours?"

My five tips, to add to Sue's five would include:

1. Use of humour - especially if I find myself telling a funny anecdote more than once. That usually tells me it's worth repeating as a future blog entry. (It's amazing how often I check back through old entries now, and find humorous stories I've almost forgotten writing. If they hadn't ended up in the blog, they'd perhaps be gone forever.)

2. Know your topic(s). I think that sometimes bloggers try to be too eclectic. Focusing on a few topics you know well helps the audience to anticipate your future blog entries in those areas. You become "the guru" on a topic.

3. Know your audience - but also remembering that your audience may well be bigger than you think. (If you miss blogging for an extended period, you are likely to hear from them! I had no idea my two young nieces regularly checked my blog - until I was on vacation, far from an Internet cafe, and they emailed me wondering where I'd vanished to.)

4. Keep in mind the international nature of the World Wide Web. Be prepared to be informative by embedding a few clues in your posts. Remind them where you are writing from. Some quirky, localized things will seem quite bizarre to those of your readers not familiar with certain terminology, places, customs, the local slang, etc.

5. A picture is worth a thousand words. A picture can help explain many of the above mysteries for international web surfers. Most of my new visitors seem to come via people following a link to posts after locating one of my Flickr photos, which they found during a search of Google Images!

Greedy for blogs

In the last year at work/ie.school, we've formed at least three new professional learning groups that extend beyond our one school and take in other local schools with similar goals and projects. Inevitably, these networks mean even more after-school committee meetings, but the value of the results these groups can produce, means it's usually well work the time invested.

Today, I found myself volunteering to create another blog for the teachers, teacher-librarians and consultants involved in two of the groups - this one a little more in-house in theme, purpose and audience/participants, so I won't be promoting the URL far and wide at this point, although if it takes off it may well find a niche beyond its original brief. It's only very early days yet.

Essentially, it's a blog about our school (and other schools in our learning support group)'s quest to select, purchase and efficiently utilise interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in our school programs. I had suggested to the network that involving ourselves in some group projects would be a great way to support each other, proactively on several learning journeys with the IWBs. Me and my big mouth. (A new wiki activity just wasn't enough!)

As my third blog (fourth if I count helping out with the Wilfrid rap blog last term), I was astounded how quickly I could go to Edublogs, throw together a few pieces of already-created information and have a slick-looking set of posts, attachments, links and models of previous examples in about an hour, with a few hours of after-work tinkering to get the presentation looking user-friendly.

It's empowering!

Booked Inn: heroic adventures in teacher-librarianship

In a challenging fortnight, I gave up three days of my vacation to help develop and test some new ways of presenting Internet-based book raps in schools.

I also spent considerable time doing what felt a bit like a brain data dump of information about blogging, and it really got me thinking about the online facilities that are available to teacher-librarians to share ideas with each other, and excuses to become more comfortable with how Web 2.0 components can be used in education.

Therefore, I commenced another blog, glutton for punishment that I am, called Booked Inn: heroic adventures in teacher-librarianship over on Edublogs (via WordPress). Supposedly, it will be fully accessible in NSW government schools, and I can use it for professional learning and information exchange. (For all its great features, I'm unable to upload anything to my Blogger pages from a work computer due to blocking software.)

I've challenged myself to stay as positive as possible; I've seen lots of professional blog sites and opinion-based web sites where the author (and readers) sink into a quagmire of negativity and constant rage against the system. And I'm definitely a "glass half full" kind of guy.

Wish me luck - and check it out some time (or, indeed, often).