Day 29: Teachers, Promote Thyselves!

Well, the "30 Days to Being a Better Blogger Challenge" is almost over. I'll be sad and a bit at loose ends when I no longer have a task each day. Today's challenge (or rather yesterday's, but I'm not getting to it until today) is to be a Rock Star. Yes, teacher, promote thyself.

I've noticed over the past couple of years that many teachers are loathe to promote their own accomplishments. I have found it difficult to get teachers to talk about their continuing education, professional memberships and activities or their honors and awards. When you do back them into a corner they will speak about it, but they seem to speak with great reluctance. I'm not sure why that is. I was part of this group in the past, but I'm getting better about letting people know what I am doing.

How have I done this? First, on my Retaggr card (which also serves as my profile here) I have put many of my professional activities including the fact that I'm a Teacher Consultant with the California Geographic Alliance (and have been since 1994), that I'm a Google Certified Teacher, and that I am a Certified Journalism Educator. I also added that I am the 2008 Secondary Teacher of the Year in my district. That was a hard one for some reason. I have also added my professional activities to my email signatures on my district and other email accounts. On my gmail account, I also added my Twitter name and this blog address. I even got business cards at 123Print. My business cards now have my professional affiliations, my Twitter name and my blog address.

There are a few things about which I am still not overly comfortable discussing. For example, I don't spend a great deal of time talking about my role as the lead California Coordinator for My Wonderful World, a National Geographic-led public awareness campaign to highlight the need for geographic education in our country. Within my geography circle, I do talk about the campaign, but at my site, I'm pretty quiet. I am fortunate that the district curriculum director is interested in the program, so she gets me talking about it all the time.

So...why is it that teachers seemingly don't want to be rock stars? I'm not sure. Has this post been easy to write? Not really. I wonder if there is something in our make up as educators that makes it difficult for us to promote ourselves. As educators, we do need to promote our accomplishments more. We can start within our own circles of education, but eventually we need to expand beyond that. Teachers, Promote Thyselves!

Day 10 of the "Be A Better Blogger Challenge"

It's been a few days since I've written about the "30D2BBB" Challenge (that's 30 Days to Being A Better Blogger). There have been several small tasks along with a request to have an impartial party observe my blog and a suggestion to get a guest blogger. I'm still working on those last two.

Today's challenge is to check out the blog on other browsers using a variety of operating systems. I was prepared to use both Mac and Windows machines. I was even prepared to use a few browsers like Firefox, IE, Chrome and Safari. However, I discovered that I didn't even have to go to all that trouble because Browsershots can do the work for me! (Elaine Plybon and Sue Waters both suggested this webiste on teach42.com)

Just click on the browsers you'd like checked, enter your website URL, then click submit. It's as easy as that!


I did notice that some of the browsers didn't have certain plug-ins, but apparently I'm good to go on most browsers. Yahoo!

Day 5: Go Global

Today's challenge is to go global. I've had the ClustrMap for some time and like seeing where my visitors are coming from, but hadn't really thought about putting in Google Translate. It's kind of funny that I have started to notice that many of the blogs I read have a translator on them, but had never thought about applying such a tool in my blog. Was it because my readership is so limited? I'm not really sure. I'm excited that my widget is placed in the blog just over on the right. Have fun!

Challenge Day 4: License to Drive

We all need a license to drive, but what about a license to blog? Well, no, but we can license our work. Day 4 of the "30 Days to Be a Better Blogger" Challenge suggests that bloggers get a Creative Commons license for their work. There are a variety of choices for licenses.

I chose the license called "Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike." This seems to be the best license for what I do. I want others to be able to share my thoughts, but I'd rather they aren't making money on it if I'm not. Finally, any derivatives should be shared alike.

This was incredibly easy to do and protects my rights as the author of the work.

Day 3 The Thank You

Day 3 of the "30 Days to Being a Better Blogger" Challenge suggests that we write thank-yous to those who have helped and inspired us in our blogging journeys. I've been blogging for just a few months and already have a whole host of people who are inspiring me on a daily basis. However, there is one educator in particular that I'd like to thank right now.

Vicki Davis (coolcatteacher) was the Keynote Speaker at the Google Teacher Academy last June. I honestly don't remember if she even mentioned blogging, but I started reading her blog and she ALWAYS seems to have just what I need, when I need it. My favorite nuts and bolts post is "Ten Habits of Bloggers that Win!" I read it a few weeks after I started blogging. She has also written asking the question "are you part of the solution or part of the problem?" Just today, as I am looking for sites that contain appropriate copyright free or creative commons license images, she posts "Let's get kids out of Google Images and into Good, Free, Legal Photos."

So, Vicki, thank you for all of the hard work that you do in your own classroom, at conferences and in cyberspace. You have given me the courage to start blogging and continue to write about my own journey as a teacher trying to integrate Web 2.0 tools.

Day 2 of Blogger Challenge: Site Statistics

Day 2 of the Be a Better Blogger Challenge asks us to start thinking about site stats. This is a good idea as we never know when we might need them. I started this blog as a result of my participation in the Google Teacher Academy last June. Part of my responsibility as a Google Certified Teacher is to get the word out about Google Tools for the classroom and other Web 2.0 tools. I decided that one way I could do that is through a blog. CGTs do periodically report on what they are doing, so having site statistics could be useful.

As recommended by Steve Dembo, I signed up for a free account at Site Meter to track visitors to my site. I had previously been using ClustrMaps, but it doesn't give detailed information. I have been able to see that my blog has had 101 hits since September 1, 2008, but I think many of those are me. I can also see where my visitors are on the map which is pretty exciting since I've had visitors from five continents!

One of the things I do like about Site Meter is the detailed reports I can get even with a free account. I can even exclude my own computer from stats. I am looking forward to see who is visiting this little blog and where they are coming from.

Day 1 of Blogger Challenge: update the About page

As a participant in the "30 Days to Being a Better Blogger" Challenge you'll notice to the right, I have updated my About Page. I didn't make major changes to it, but did make sure that visitors have a way to contact me. I also decided to make my location visible. I find that as I visit blogs, I 'm always interested to see where people are. I really liked the idea of using Wordle to check the focus of my blog posts and was please to see that students and resources seem to be the most frequently used words. Check out the complete Day 1 suggestions for the 30D2BBB Challenge.