Tag Archives: Blogging

Deal With The Fire

It is only 9:00 pm and I am exhausted. Don’t get me wrong; I am suffering from the fatigue that comes from hard work and personal fulfillment. I have been working very hard lately and my brain is a buzz and snapping a bit too quickly at times. Perhaps I need another sojourn into the jungle, or some deep breathing, mediation or a simple dip in the ocean, but a break is not on the agenda for a few more weeks. So I need to roll up the sleeves, plug-in and see where this train is headed.

I started teaching a course called DC101 for teachers at my school. It meets twice a week for one and half hours; it is on my mind 24/7. I sometimes wake up in the middle of night and think about ways to convince people to blog. It is crazy. I have become the school lightening rod for all things digital. This constant need to be the voice for the 21st century can be taxing. Again, don’t get me wrong; I know I brought it upon myself, unfettered passion can sometimes be contagious and you need to be able to deal with the fire.

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Dan LXIX

And a fire is what we may have on our hands at school. It is slow in building, but I can feel the excitement and energy of our teachers. Before I continue, let me say that we have an amazing staff. I have a little over 40 people who have signed on for no credit, in their own time, to push their thinking and themselves beyond their comfort zones. It is a beautiful thing. Because of the work we have already done, hopefully a few of them (you) are reading this post from your RSS reader.

We have begun to discuss and share some of the apprehension people are having about a public online life.

The three main things that seem to come up over and over are: time, the feeling of having nothing to say, and fear of the unforgiving permanence of the Internet. I do not have the energy now to write to each point. I hope that we can touch on all of these issues in the next few weeks, and that the participants will come to their own conclusions. I just wanted to share some misconceptions about blogging that I have overcome, in hopes that my sharing will help others.

You are publishing so everything has to be perfect. Teachers are used to being experts in their respective fields, and so they feel that if they are not “publishing” a PHD thesis style post then they will judged and evaluated. Perhaps an administer or parent will question their ability, if their blog posts express doubt or confusion, or worse TYPOS! Be a risk taker. Write from your heart. Do what we ask kids to do. Reflect honestly, authentically. Be vulnerable and your admin and parent community will respect and appreciate your openness to show your learning. Life-long learning is more than a piece of jargon to put on a resume. Jump in and write.

Nobody cares what I have to say. If this is true for you, then it is true for your students. And if this is the case then lets all go home. We tell students that they matter. That they have a voice and that they should learn to share and express this voice. We tell them that when they talk to others, they will learn and grow from collaboration. We tell them that writing is an art, that you craft and improve over a life time. We tell them not to fear failure. We tell them to dig deep and find their passion. We tell them that they are special and that we want to hear what they think and feel….now just tell yourself those things when you don’t know what to write.

It has to all be about tech or education. I don’t like writing about tech all the time. I like writing about things that excite and frustrate me. Find things in your day that you find meaningful. I like to write about epiphanies I have in class. I like to write about ideas that worked and those that failed. I like to use my writing to connect with others, but really I use my writing to help me make sense of my teaching, my life, myself. There is empowerment in vulnerability. Open up a little and see what happens. Take baby steps.

You have to blog everyday and all the time. Write when you feel you have no choice. I guess I have always felt the need to write. I have been wishing for a blog since I was 12 years old. Maybe not everyone has this obsession with writing, but set a manageable plan. A post a week. Set up an hour on Sunday night and make it happen. Make it fun. Not a chore.

People who blog do nothing but spend time online. I have a full life with two kids, a wife, a voracious appetite for books and TV and many other hobbies. But I make time to write. I have a routine: Music and the couch- Me and the my words. Make one up. Stick to it.

I am officially out of gas. It is 9:22. See that took me twenty minutes. I will now crawl into bed, read a bit, watch some TV and try to rest. Hang in there guys. You are doing an amazing job. This, whatever it is we are doing, takes time. The fact that you are excited and here is a great first step. You see the value of connected learning. You see the value in sharing ideas with an audience. You see the value of creation. In short, you are starting to see that technology is not about computers. It is about people, ideas, creativity, passion. It is about “real” life.

The Art of Creation

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I have written several post lately about how happy I am, and how the events of my life are fluidly flowing in some strange spiral direction, but for the last few days I have been weighed down by a nagging angst brought about Google +. I am pretty sure it is not this new social network that is causing me anxiety– that my apprehension is caused by this new digital social arena where we sometimes find ourselves battling for existence as unwilling gladiators.

Who am I? Where am I? What am I sharing? Likeablity versus authenticity. My brain has been buzzing for the last forty eight hours; I just need to shut it down and focus on what matters. For me the main thing has always been creating content I can be proud of. Writing post, creating videos, singing songs, taking photographs that touch people and make them think. Feel. I have only ever wanted to explore my sense of self; if a group of people find what I do, who I am, worthwhile than that is a plus. I cannot concern myself too much, however, with the splintering of this body of work. This self. I am who I am everywhere, all the time. The internet is just a reflection of that.

Networks will come and go, ebbing and flowing within various tools and online spaces. This is our modern consciousness. The trick is to learn how to construct a viable self within the flux. I know the connections that matter to me, and they will find me when I need to be found, the rest is grandstanding. I am trying not to concern myself with circles or groups or lists. I have set roots in these blogs. I have stretched my branches as far as my constitutions allows. I will now focus my energies on keeping my leaves as green as possible and producing fruits that others enjoy. If nothing else fruits that will help me regenerate.

I find value in the act of sharing. The art of giving with no expectation for value returned is a holy act. In an age where commerce rules, I see sharing as an act of transgression, one I have to which I have committed my life. Even as I write this post, I see the paradox of my point: I want to share, but cannot be bothered with worrying about the avenues with which to do so.

One can advertise and use competing networks to connect with as wide an audience as possible, but at some point you have to have faith in your content. You have to believe that what you put out into the world will attract the necessary attention. In the past, artists simply created– unconcerned with feedback or connection; we have lost that somehow. So concern are we with statistics and comments that the art of creation has been replaced with likes, +1s and Re-Tweets.

There is no anxiety about sitting quietly and smearing your thoughts into the blank void. The fear is that no one is listening. No one cares. You don’t exist. I am here to say that I do exist. In the body of my work. In my ideas. In my art. In my body. In my life. If you are seeing this right now, than somehow what I am saying has worked. Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or some other nameless avenue has brought you here. For that I am thankful, but what has rid me of my unease is the very act of creation itself.

Do You Love Me?

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If you blog for long enough, I suppose, you will eventually begin to repeat yourself. It can feel like a never-ending cycle of repetition, but who is to say that revisiting themes is necessarily a bad thing? So I apologize if I have written about this topic before, but my good friend Ari over at We Buy Balloons recently emailed me a link to this article with a request to write on the subject with careful consideration, as the affliction mention in the article is the same from which he claims to suffer. Although, I have linked to the article itself, I will quote it at length below, so please stay with us till then end. In short the post claims:

The Internet measures everything. And I am a slave to those measurements. After so many years of pushing much of my life through this screen, I’ve started measuring my experiences and my sense of self-worth using the same metrics as the Internet uses to measure success. I check my stats relentlessly. The sad truth is that I spend more time measuring than I spend doing.

I used to feel an immediate sense of accomplishment when I wrote an article or came up with a joke that I thought was good. Now that feeling is always delayed until I see how the material does. How many views did my article get? Did it get mentioned the requisite number of times on Twitter and Facebook. I need to see the numbers.

And I define myself by those numbers.

I judge the quality of my writing by looking at the traffic to my articles. I assess the humor of my jokes by counting retweets. My status updates, shared links, and photos of my kids need a certain number of Likes to be a success. How am I doing? That depends on how many friends I have, how many followers, how much traffic.

What David Pell describes in his post, what bothers my friend Ari, and those of us involved in this game called social media is the feeling that our thoughts, our art, our creations, our words, and in turn ourselves are only as valuable as the amount of attention they receive from the network of “friends” we have been able to cull from the web.

Before I try to offer up answers or justifications of why this need for affirmation isn’t as big of a problem as many think, let me first admit that I check my stats. I am pretty stoked to be nearing 3,000 followers on Twitter. I google myself often and enjoy hearing my voice echoed back to me via the web. The question I suppose we are left asking is, is that a problem? Is wanting/needing affirmation a bad thing? Is it vain or needy to place your self-worth in the hands of others? Before we get to that answer, I want to make a claim that this discussion has little to do with the Internet. (*The need for acceptance and identity creation has implications for our students. I will try to touch on this idea at the end of this post.) Sure the Internet has made it easy to see how much attention each pixel of our collective self receives via Re-Tweets, views, Likes and other affirmative statistics, but I claiming that the need to be heard and accepted has always been a part of our human psychology; the Internet has only exacerbated our ability to monitor it.

I think the need to be heard and told we are valued is not only at the core of human psychology, but intricately connected to the very purpose of art. Yes, I understand that much of art is personal and cathartic. Why the artist creates is a question that we will never answer, but we can all agree that while some artists create art for the sake self-healing, many also create art to connect to others. Art is the ultimate act of sharing and openness. Audience is an inherent part of art. It has to be. The dance between creator and observer is what makes art so powerful. Let’s face it most people who create, write, paint, perform are needy. We have a void in our souls that can only be filled when others connect to our creations. We feel alive when our art helps others see who we are.

by Ari Zeiger

I have had this need to share and connect with people for as long as I can remember. Does this make me vain or needy? Lacking in self-confidence? Perhaps. But that is the nature to which I have grown fond. The spaces between a robust self-esteem and crippling anxiety is tenuous at best. The difference between the vain rock star and the nervous introvert can be nothing more than a pair of sunglasses and a bottle of whiskey. What I am trying to say is that, while the Internet magnifies our anxieties about whether or not we matter, most artist have always needed to be told they are relevant. Before the Internet did not authors worry about book sales, artists by number of guests at openings and paintings sold? While stats, numbers, sales, and reviews have always been a part of sharing, statistics have never slowed art down. I am sure the first caveman looked for a round of grunts and nods after he first sketched a picture of the hunt on the cold stonewall.

When I was younger, in my twenties, I would scribble poetry, stories, and other random observations into journals. These thoughts were very similar to my current blog posts, Tweets, and other ideas I share online. Back then I would scatter these journals on coffee table tops and would love when people would flip though them at parties. I would watch them wrinkle their faces in confusion or smile in understanding. I could feel them entering my consciousness through a shared understanding of not only who I was, but who they were. I was just not smart enough to leave a little comment box at the bottom of my journal pages, because I wanted more than anything to hear what they thought.

It is true that the web can enhance our neurosis and self-doubt. It can cripple the act of creation if we allow it to magnify our fears and misgivings. It can force us to place our self-worth in the hands of a fluctuating audience, and yes this can have disastrous effects, but this is not the fault of the web. This neurosis is rooted in our collective human psychology of needing love and acceptance. There are people much smarter than me with more letters after their names, who I am sure can write much more intellectually than me on the subject, but that has never stopped me from offering my opinion.

Each person must decide how their self-worth is derived. Each one of us has to decide what we are worth despite the Internet not because of it. Some days we feel like we can carry the world, while others we need to be told we are special. Understanding this dance and going with the flow is the most important thing an artist can learn to do. This was true before the web and it is even truer now.

It is nice to have a post re-tweeted and shared and “liked” and commented on. It makes us feel like our ideas are important and that others “get” us. It is great to make a film and get a couple thousands hits on Youtube. It feels warm in the heart to watch people connect to you words. It feels great to recieve emails from people who say they get what you are doing. Saying they respect you and your work. It is nice to go to conference and have drunken peers say they admire you. It is great to have fans. It feels good to be loved. How can it not? But the question we must ask ourselves is how much of what we do is for them? How much is for me? And how much is for us?

I could get wrapped up in the numbers, and I admit that I sometimes do, but I am learning that I share and let spill what I cannot hold inside. All I can do is hope that others connect. I have the audacity to write a book about my life and think people will care. That is the biggest cry for attention I can think of and that has nothing to do with the Internet or numbers, but I have found the less I worry about the numbers and focus on creating honest work filled with energy and passion the more the numbers tend to rise; the more comments I receive. Someday this fragile network I have cobbled together could all dry up and I could end up writing a blog no one reads, or scribble back into journals I leave on coffee tables in vacant rooms. A book no one buys. Either way, I know that sometimes I create art to help lighten the load and guide me through the darkness and sometimes I share what I share for you dear reader and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Show me you understand. Show me you love me. Show me I matter. Leave a comment. Re-Tweet. Like me on Facebook. Let this post get a 1000 hits. Let it go viral and get me a book deal. Let it shine a light on all the world and make me a god! Or just skim it, mark it as read, and chalk up to more gibberish coming to you through your informationally overloaded brain. There will be more tomorrow. I am valuable whether you tell me I am or not. How do I know? Just a promise I made to myself as a child. It is not too late make yourself that promise right now….let’s see what you got!

I will save the my thoughts on how young adults deal with the dance between confidence and anxiety and how the new online social reality is affecting their identity creation for another post, or maybe in the comments. But I will say that right now I am listening to the Beatles and this is a great first step to helping young people understand how to deal with the world wide web:

Custom Headers

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I am a big fan of blogs. This is no secret to readers of this blog. I think they are useful for teachers, students, parents, writers and non-writers a like. With more and more online activity and participation with social media, I see blogs as the personal space each one of us carves out of cyber-space to set up shop and build a home. Like a homestead in the frontier days, blogs are plots of space designated for our voices. The more I work with students and blogs, I am finding that personalization of this space increases authentic engagement.

The thing about blogging is that it is not automatic. It does not come easy to most students and they don’t particularity like it. I have been blogging with middle school ESL classes since October and we are just now at a place where I feel comfortable with their blogs and valuable spaces. Having said that, most of them are still only writing “assignments.” I have tried very hard to encourage personal writing beyond what I “expect” as portfolio posts. It is hard work convincing students to create a space that is both personal and dedicated to school. It is confusing and unnatural and I get that, but I believe if done with patience and love, students can find a voice that fits both their personal and professional selves.

A few weeks ago. I decided ask my students to create custom headers, and it was through this task that I feel many of them turned a corner. Suddenly, their blogs were their spaces. Sure they had all already chosen a theme, but after creating a header I saw students begin to change font styles and colors. A few students began to write posts on their own, and I could see them beaming with pride about their space. In the process, they learned a few tech skills as well.

I asked them to find (Flickr Creative Commons) or use four images that represented who they are. “When someone comes to your blog, what is it about you, that you want them to see? What do you look like in images?” We then used the collage feature on Picnik to create headers. We spoke about color, balance, composition. They added frames and finally, many of them were forced to name their blogs something other than, “My blog.” Some wanted to match the colors of their titles to the live link colors on their blogs. So we explored how to find the color codes on blogs and what that means in terms of design. I had several students change their headers three or four times in a few days, till they got it right. One student, Theo who rarely speaks in class decided to use Keynote instead and created his own header.

Another aspect of the blogs that I feel helps students feel connected is actually adding a picture and a short bio. I know there is a lot of fear of revealing too much information, but there is something to be said about personalizing their space in a responsible way. It must be difficult for students to know what to do if we are constantly giving them mixed messages. On one hand, we tell them to open up and share their voices on line, but then we tell them to be scared and weary of strangers.

The thing about blogs is that they are designed to meet new people. Blogs are about strangers finding similarities and making connections. How can we expect students to create worthwhile content and build authentic audience if they only post school assigned posts and share little to know personal information? There must be a balance, that is obvious, but I have found that the custom header and the brief profile have made our class blogs feel much more like home. Feel free to snoop around our class blog and see for yourself; most of the students now have a custom header.

In short, if you are struggling with blogging with your students, let them personalize their space so they can better connect with it. If not you may find student blogs to be lifeless folders where students dump assignments, another hoop they are learning to jump through.

Marathon Man

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As the year comes to close there will be the inevitable litany of blog posts recapping achievements, documenting successes and reflecting on next steps. Kim Cofino started it with her latest post, and since I am flying to Lombok tomorrow and hoping to take a much-deserved break from Twitter and Edublogging, I want to gather my thoughts here, now, in this blog post.

Unfortunately my list of accomplishments may sound a bit more personal than Kim’s, because I am not really working within a Tech team, regardless I would like to thank my colleagues at school, and my wife/team member/tech protégé Mairin Raisdana for being so open and hungry to learn about technology and move forward. So where to start?

It is a bit taboo and perhaps considered vain to talk about numbers, but since it is clear I have no issues with ego, awards, or numbers counting, I will start there. My numbers are up!

I am sure there are many that will say numbers don’t matter, but for someone who started a few years ago writing to an audience of one, it is encouraging and rewarding to watch the bars on the graph grow taller and taller. I am not arguing that higher numbers mean success or a better blog, or a better community, but I am saying that the more people stop by and read my blogs, the more chance there is to build authentic connections. Beyond the numbers, however, the thing I am most proud of and happy with are the consistent comments from my regular readers. People like Will Chamberlin, Adrienne Michetti, Clint Hamada, Cathy Crea, Melanie McBride, Tim Bray, and Keri Lee Beasley (There are so many more to mention!) have proven time and time again that having a small committed readership is more important than a huge one. So while increasing numbers are a good way to build a robust readership, a blog must have a foundation of people who look to it as a pleasure to read and with which to connect. I know that I have a support system in place that challenges my thinking, supports me and my students, and offers me material on which to reflect. So why mention numbers?

Over the last semester as my blogs have gained popularity, my voice and ideas are reaching more people. Through Twitter and my two blogs I have been able to connect with a variety of people worldwide. School kids in Canada, a variety of online interviews, and of course face-to-face connections. I have been accepted to present at the 21st Century Learning Conference in Hong Kong, and I am speaking with Melinda Alford about leading a cohort at the next Learning 2.0 conference in China. I have had constructive feedback on my teaching more here, and support for the blogging initiative I am trying to spearhead at our school.

Wow! That’s a lot of hyperlinks. Which means it has been a busy productive term. For people who are new to this online world of networks and connections, I hope my recount can shed some light on the power of blogging and connecting. It is not my intention to brag about my work, but to show what powerful professional development maintaining a blog can be. I was able to do all of this in addition to the in house “real” work I am doing on campus, building an ESL department from scratch, learning about the MYP, and helping the IT team move forward on schoolwide initiatives!

Furthermore, my students are making great progress within our classroom. I am experimenting and pushing the boundaries of what second language learners can do when given the tools to express themselves. In short, I am doing what I love and modeling behavior I would like to see in our school.

How does this happen? How did I go from blogging to myself to creating an authentic, caring, supportive, critical group of individuals who read my work, comment, share tweets, and invite me to conferences?

Consistent, open, honest sharing. This is the model that has worked for me. Everyone says they haven’t the time to blog or connect or do anything other than what the curriculum demands of them. I simply find that to be a cop out. In addition to what I have described above, I am raising two kids, writing a book, and leading a pretty satisfying rich life. I am not trying to say that I am superman and you should be like me; I am simply pointing out that building these networks takes time and energy and it is hard work, but if you take baby steps and stay with it it will bare fruit. Managing time is a choice we all make. If you are serious about blogging, it must be built into your day. Even if it is a few hours a week, it must be consistent.

I often catch myself comparing writing/blogging with running. I don’t do the latter, but first saw the connection through the book What We Talk About When We Talk About Running. Writing is like a marathon, you take your time and pace yourself, but always have a goal in mind.

image by seeveeaar

My goal has never been to become an Edublog celebrity, or to leave my classroom and present at conferences worldwide. I have only ever wanted to share my ideas, my thoughts, and yes my feelings in the most honest way I can to connect with as many individuals across the world as I can. I see this connection as the first steps toward understanding, which eventually I believe leads to a more just and peaceful world. A marathon indeed.

So as 2010 comes to close, I want to thank everyone who has supported me this year with your comments, tweets, external validations and of course love. I feel proud of the work I am doing and I owe much of its success to you. Whoever you, where ever you are reading these words.

Now I am off to Lombok to enjoy some of this:

image by Fadil Basymeleh

I look forward to spending time with family, friends, and my thoughts. Looking forward to disconnecting for awhile, taking a break from Twitter and blogs and enjoying the ocean, my daughter’s laughter, and my camera. See you all in 2011!