Life-Long Learner

Alright, I have to admit I’ve become a bit of a blogging junkie and I think I might need some help. Blogging is amazing and frustrating all at the same time.

Here is the amazing part – intellectual thoughts, ideas, and opinions come to the individual – literally dropping information at our finger tips. Information and resources that we never knew existed are being shared with a whole community, and I am a part of that community.

Here is the frustrating part – so much information and so little time. I am currently subscribed to 40 bloggers including classmates, educators, and literacy (adult and family) practitioners, which is exciting in itself. BUT I find that I’m easily distracted. I’ll be happily reading a blog and clicking on all the links (you never know how much additional information is beyond the next link). Then I’ll come across something that I’ll want to learn more about so I’ll google it or check the links within the links. Next thing I know I’ve spent over an hour on one blog. This explains the 183 blogs waiting for me to read them. This would be fine if I had a coffee pot next to the computer and my double taking care of all of my other life celebrations and challenges.

So I’ve come to accept that I am not managing my blogging skills or time very efficiently and I ask for some help. If any of you have some recommendations (beyond getting up two hours before the rest of the family and squeezing in moments when I think no one will distract me), I will gladly hear/read them. As a student, mother, spouse, and career woman, I will take all the advice that I can get – not to mention how many more blogs I can read. Tee hee hee.

Have a fabulous blogging day.

Well, a new day has begun (at 4:40 am actually) and I’ve decided that I need to rethink what I am learning about blogging and what my motivation is when I am blogging.

So I started with the presentation of my blog. I was thrilled to discover all of the interesting and very helpful tips available through edublogs.org. For example Gail Desler has developed a wonderful introductory resource on edublogs. Another great resource was on changing your display name (which I needed to upgrade desparately). There is so much to learn about blog presentation. Anyways, to assist any of you who are like me and learning about blogging and navigating edublogs, I encourage you to visit The Edublogger. I found it very useful to personalizing my blog.

My next area of focus is the motivation behind my blogs. To date, I’ve been floundering. I set up this blog account as a direct result of my ECMP 355 class at the University of Regina. I understand that I am to use the blog to reflect and communicate online through a social and professional network. So occasionally I would include random thoughts, reply to other blogs, and link to interesting sites or videos that I may have come across. This is all well, but I need more structure, so I’ve come to the conclusion that I will post two kinds of blogs: journalling my blog learning process (including challenges and celebrations) and posting interesting educational finds.

So as Part I of The Blogging Journey, I am quite happy with all that I have learned today about managing and manipulating my blog presentation.

Take care and have a wonderful day.