Thanks to
Ruth and Stacey for hosting Slice of Life Tuesdays. You can check their
blog
for more
Slice of Life stories.
This week I am teaching an Advanced Summer Institute on Digital Writing with 2 of my favorite people and teachers, Gretchen Taylor and Margaret Towery. All of the participants in our class are past participants in the
Columbus Area Writing Project Summer Institute (which if you ever have the chance to participate in a summer institute, you absolutely must!). Earlier in the school year, Margaret, Gretchen and I, along with the co-directors of CAWP met regularly with
Troy Hicks to build the foundation of this class. We learned so much from Troy and experienced first hand the struggles and successes of reading and composing digitally.
If you haven't read Troy's books, please check them out. Both are a wealth of information! The
Digital Writing Workshop was published in 2007.
Crafting Digital Writing is brand new.
 |
Image from Heinemann.
|
 |
Image from Heinemann. |
Our class began yesterday. As is always true, when there is a gathering of
National Writing Project folks, good things are going to happen. We have a dynamic group of teachers who are willing to take risks and step outside their comfort zones as we cover new territory (or in some cases, revisit old territories).
Today, Gretchen led us through
Twitter. I am someone who dips her toe in and then backs out and today I realized why I've been reluctant to jump right in. I am one of those people who has a need to do it all. (It's not a healthy way to be, so I don't recommend it). I was shying away from Twitter because there was no way I could take in everything offered out there. I realize how silly this is...what would I tell a colleague or a student? I'd tell them to take what they could and leave the rest. I decided to take my own advice (which is a little like taking your mother's advice) and give myself permission to take in what I can and not worry about the rest. I will not be part of every conversation out there, and that's ok.
Tomorrow, I will be leading the group in learning about blogging. Most of the class is interested in starting their own blogs and some want to blog with their students. I remember how scared I was when I decided to put my voice out there. I worried that no one would care what I had to say or that I wouldn't have anything unique enough to offer my audience. Sharing our thoughts puts us in a vulnerable position and that's scary.
I'd love some feedback from the SOL community. What advice would you give to new bloggers? How do you mangage your time for blogging? Where do your ideas come from? How do you keep going? How do you even decide where to start? What do you do when you don't know what to write about?
I will share your thoughts with the group tomorrow. If you would please also leave your blog address in your comment, we can directly go to your blog. We'll also be building RSS feeds.
Thanks so much!
Next week...I will be blogging from Turkey! :)