Month: November 2018

30 Days of Blogging: Day 4

Today was a pretty good day at school. I enjoy teaching but when I can do special things with the kids and be creative, those are the best. One of my classes is a Digital Media class where I teach kids about photography, photo editing, and videography. It is an Enrichment class which means that I get students who are interested in this subject and want to be there. It also means that I have some freedom to teach it like I want and I don’t have to worry about tests and grades. So today we were learning about the photography technique of the Rule of Thirds. We went outside and the kids just wandered around the school taking pictures. It was great.

Later I got to teach another one of my favorite subjects, Moore’s Law, to my 6th graders. I like Moore’s Law because it’s the fundamental idea behind our entire computer revolution and what makes computer technology so great. My 6th graders were really getting into it and I have a few props that I use to demonstrate how things have changed over time.

Even my first class of the day, with my 7th graders, wasn’t too bad. They’re working on their Children’s Story Presentations which lets them be creative and I can wander around the room and see the great work they are doing. I also get to present to them a children’s story from past classes that help to get them motivated and give them some ideas for their presentations. 

So not a bad day, hopefully tomorrow will be just as good.

30 Days of Blogging: Day 3

Here we are on the third day and I’m starting to get worried about what to talk about. I’m trying to stay focused and just write about ideas that come to me but I’m still struggling with writing about things that I haven’t been thinking about for a while. I’ve even considered keeping a list of ideas as they come to me, which isn’t a bad idea and would probably help out.

I was also reading about one person’s journey to being a better a writer and how they would spend so much time just working on their blog site so that it was perfect. This was a professional writer who was trying to make a living by writing short articles and then trying to build those into a job by getting people to view them and also subscribe to his blog. But he realized that he was spending more time on blogging and not enough time on building relationships with his readers.

Right now this is not my problem. I just want to practice writing so that I can get better at that first. So I just need to keep working on coming up with things to write about. 

Another worry about mine is having the time to do this. Between working and running kids around to their activities and then getting dinner and sleep in there somewhere, my days are usually pretty full. Luckily I have been writing while sitting at Tae Kwon Do practice. It doesn’t make for the best environment, especially to focus but so far I’ve been making it work. Having the kids around is also a distraction, they do require a lot of my attention. Luckily I can use some of my training as a teacher to manage their time and behavior and still carve out some time for myself.

Finally, I have been getting the hang of Grammarly which does offer better suggestions to you if you pay for the premium version. I think that the basic will do just fine for what I’m trying to accomplish here.to me so that

30 Days of Blogging: Day 2

The hardest thing about this challenge is coming up with things to blog about. The hypocrisy, at least for my students, is that I have them blog every day for an entire semester, but I’m worried about doing it for just 30 days. 

The other thing that I have been thinking about as I start doing this is how much do I need to write about. I’m thinking that I should at least be writing a good page at least. The problem will be coming up with that much to write about every day. As a writer, I have always started the process by thinking about what I will be writing for a while before I even start typing. I like to have a good portion of it written in my head before I start. I’m thinking that with this challenge, it will be a little more writing on the fly.

I’m hoping that as I start to write each blog post something will come to me to write about and while I have a few ideas to get me started, I’m not sure how I will be able to maintain this. I’ve always been a planner and an organizer so this exercise will definitely take me out of my comfort zone.

One of the tools that I’ll be using to make me a better writer is Grammarly. I’ve heard about it for a while now and I thought that by using it for this blog would give me a good excuse to try it out. So far it’s only been finding a comma that I’ve missed here and there. I thought it would also be making suggestions for different words to use, but that must come with the paid version. This kind of sucks because if I start paying for it and it doesn’t do what I’m expecting will I be stuck with it for a period of time.

30 Days of Blogging: Day 1

The idea of practicing something for 30 days is something that has been done a lot recently but it has always been something that I have wanted to try. The goal in most of these challenges is to do an activity for 30 days straight in the hope that it will become a habit or at the least will change how you live your life. That’s pretty much what I want to do.

I’m starting by blogging here for 30 days in the hopes that I will get in the habit of writing a little bit every day. I have always wanted to be a writer and when I was in middle school, I was on the school paper (editor-in-chief in fact) and my teachers were all very encouraging about my writing. I had a weekly column where I would write about whatever theme I chose for the week. I would also type up stories on our old family manual typewriter for my other classes. Looking back now, they were imaginative but pretty silly. 

In college during my freshman year, my English 101 teacher also thought my writing was pretty good, She was probably a grad student so I’m not sure if my writing was “really” good or just perhaps just better than other student’s. Through the rest of college, my papers seemed to get good grades, not so much on the content but on how I presented it, the “story” I could tell.  

Being able to communicate complicated ideas in an easy to understand way had always been a strength of mine as I moved from job to job. I learned early that communication was a key skill that I needed to maintain and enhance. It has served me well and has probably lead to my success in my jobs of IT Support.

Now as I get older I realize that what I really would like to do is start writing stories like I did back in middle school. I miss those days and hopefully by practicing my writing for 30 days will help me get back to those times.