Spring Blog Festival 2015: Webinar

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Spring Blog Festival Webinar Presentation March 21, 2015

This was a terrific opportunity to look retrospectively at how I have been using blogs since 2008 for my professional development, teaching and learning,  and then to think about how to improve these pursuits moving forward.  I was so thrilled to see that attendees came from around the world!  Spain, Ireland, Hawaii, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Greece, and of course, where this all started with Nellie in Canada.  What a great experience!

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Spring Blog Festival (SBF) is a free one day event, hosted by Nellie Deutsch, that will take place on Saturday March 21, 2015.

The aim of the festival is to showcase bloggers and their work. Topics range from transformational blogging and reflective blogging to connectivity, history, evolution, teaching tools, multi-media, thinking & creativity, families, schools, educational applications, and content curation.
 → Presenters

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Review: Sue Waters Webinar

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I was really sorry to have missed the live session of Sue's webinar on "The Art of Blogging: How to connect, interact & build rapport with students" but really appreciated having access to the archive. For me it has been the most engaging session I've reviewed so far - as I watched I kept wishing that I had been there to engage in the conversation and ask questions.

Here's why it worked for me:

1. Interactive Discussion vs. Presentation: Sue modeled good web conferencing practice. She asked questions, had attendees respond to a question by writing on the whiteboard, got us to think about our own personal experiences [to help us think about how best to get our students engaging in blogs], and encouraged us to think critically about different tools.
2. Engaged in Some Good Focussed Distraction: The discussion went on an interesting detour that included topics/tools related to online teaching - e.g. how our MOOC facilitators are creating the newsletter using mailchimp, how to make good use of flipboard, pinterest - but then came back around to the main topic of blogging. 
3. Practical Focus: Sue talked about how things work, and pointed to examples, to help us understand how we might use these tools in our own practice. 
4. Excellent Resources: Some great resources and exemplars where shared throughout the discussion - see list below

this thing called blogging...

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so i too need to learn how to be a good blogger and post regularly. i am reminded of when i kept a journal as a youth. there was a period between about grade 9 - 12 that i wrote in my journal religiously. i still have them and get a real kick out of reading them. at the time my journal was an important part of my life, it gave me a place to sort out some of the things that were going on - all those ups and downs teens go through, so many questions i had. then my writing dropped off and i picked it up again sporadically in my twenties. as an academic i've found keeping a notebook - more like a semi diary/ideas/catch-all - can be a nice way for bringing together the different elements of my life. i dont seem to write the personal, emotionally-laden stuff any more but more creative ideas or plans for things i'd like to achieve. thing is i find that if i dont drag my book around all over then i end up writing things on bits of paper that get lost...keeping organized is always the challenge isn't it?

Getting with the blog thing...

i created this blog a while ago - last year i think - for one of my past tech courses. it was one of those things that i told myself i had to do. well i think i got side tracked with other stuff so here i am a year[?] later, i come to blogger and there it is, my empty neglected shell.

So i understand that blogs are a great tool for journaling, reflections, ongoing learning....so i think we should discuss the idea of each of you starting your own blog. just to try it on and see what you think.