Alright March, do your worst…
It’s amazing how out of touch I actually feel after two very busy weeks which have kept me away from Twitter and my blogs. Two weekends of visitors, then one away in Melbourne, Year 7 camp and some really hectic days at school have meant that this is my first post in ages! I also have to admit that I’ve had to hit ‘Mark All As Read’ in my reader. I looked at all the feeds and wondered if there was any I could get rid of so that my unread feed numbers stays down a bit, but I ended adding some instead! Aagh! 
Right now, watching the Sunday night movie, I’m reconnecting myself to the world that has become such a normal and integrated part of my life that I really notice it when I can’t get to it or interact with it properly for a few days. Of course, I am still in the minority as far as educators in general go. This was part of a conversation that Sue Tapp (@sujokat) and I had when we met face to face at the Port Fairy Folk Festival a couple of weeks back. Here’s the photographic proof! It was lovely to meet Sue and to also be invited by her to a Bloggers Feast in May. (I may not be able to make it though as it’s a Tuesday night dinner and I live three and a half hours from Melbourne, which is a bit far during the week!) I just love that this network is becoming real too, as well as being something that exists only on my laptop.
March hasn’t finished yet either, despite the fact that I am now technically on holidays. I’m off to Melbourne tomorrow night to rush around catching up on a couple of things on Tuesday, and then I’m off to Adelaide for three days for some training on the Professional Standards for LOTE Teachers (I will then come back and in turn train LOTE teachers here in Vic). Then, staying with friends for the weekend and competing in Run For the Kids. Well, the only competition I am really entering is to actually finish the race running as much of the 5.76 km course as I can. I’ll have a friend with me so see how I go!
I am really looking forward to next week as that is when I’ll have some time at home. I want to get some really decent planning done for Term 2 so that I can actually reclaim my weeknights and weekends. That of course, remains to be seen though.
Hello again to those of you reading. Thank you for staying with me. My wit and wisdom, in all its glory, will return shortly…
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I Swim Therefore I Blog Pt 2
In my last post I wrote how I’ve started swimming and got to 26 laps in my (just over) half hour swim! I was really enjoying just chilling out doing my laps, and wondering whether I was swimming properly or looking like an absolute idiot. I prefer to think I was looking pretty good but with a few areas for improvement. Then, two lanes away, Miss Pink Cap got in. Well, there she was in all her speedo-ed glory. Cap, goggles, those really sporty looking bathers that cross over at the back. Then she started swimming. Oh, the power, the ease, the gliding! AND she even did that little turn thing at the end of each lap so she didn’t have to stop. The fabulousness! So, I watched. I could have felt totally intimidated and given up my meager efforts on the spot. I could have let it make me feel like an absolute hippopotamus with 7 legs. But I didn’t, and it didn’t even occur to me to feel that way. Instead, I watched and I learned.
I learned that you are supposed to be making splashes with you your feet which means you need to be as flat as you can on the surface when you’re swimming. Currently I am not doing too badly at that, but my legs are on a bit too much of an angle so there are not little splashes happening with my feet. I learned that you can actually glide a fair way and I learned that she stops after a few laps for a breather too!
As I watched Miss Pink Cap I started thinking about how, just before I went swimming, I was feeling totally overwhelmed by all the things I have to get done over the next couple of weeks, and was questioning this that and the other. I was even wondering whether I should bother to keep blogging because I didn’t feel like I was contributing much at all. Just sitting there watching someone who swan so easily (yes, ok, I want to be here one day!) made me refocus and tell myself a few truths. Everyone has to do this now and again I’m sure. Anyway, my truths were:
- I didn’t feel overwhelmed by this swimmer who was obviously so much better than I was. I knew straight away that she had had training and had been swimming for ages.
- I’ve only been blogging for a little while. I’m reading lots of blogs by people who have been doing it for ages and even train other people how to do it too! Rather than feeling like I should be doing exactly what they’re doing, I should just read and learn.
- I choose to swim and I choose to challenge myself to be a better swimmer and to increase the amount of laps I do in a half hour session. I’ll never get there if I don’t get in the water and swim.
- I have chosen to take on the things I have on my plate right now, and I want to do them (except one which is now too late to back out of, but that’s ok, financial renumeration will come my way for it), so rather than grumbling and procrastinating, figure out a schedule and get on with it.
- I have to take regular little rest stops after a 4 or so laps. That’s ok. I’m a beginner and I’ll get there. I can already see an improvement in how long I have to rest for over the past week.
- I’m still in the process of thinking about exactly what I want from my blogging (see below for links to posts on this) and I do need to take a few breaks, step back, reflect, think again, think more, draft, think, reflect read more, reflect etc to keep in touch with what my goals are (when I figure the exact ones out).
So, I’ve touched base with reality again. I’m managing that full plate. I’ll be swimming more laps tomorrow.
To read more on my online identity crisis and really thinking about blogging, check out: Online Identity Crisis and Being Yourself for the Betterment of Your Blog.
Image is ‘Swimmer’ by mag3737 from FlickrCC
I Swim Therefore I Blog Pt 1
Or is it I blog therefore I swim? I have just started swimming laps in an attempt to get much fitter than I am. I also do a bit of running, but don’t seem to really be ‘clicking’ with it and it is usually an effort to get out there and go. I am very good at finding excuses not to! So far, it doesn’t seem to be that way with swimming. A friend of mine was going twice a week and seeing as it had been something I had been meaning to get to (you know those lists!) I said I’d go with her. I’m a reasonable swimmer, definitley not too streamlined, but not an absolute disaster and I can manage to swim in a straight line. Anyway, I really enjoyed it and I’ve been back 4 times now to swim my laps. I swim for half and hour and the first time I really struggled with 20 laps (25m pool). I was stopping alot. Next time I managed 22 and stayed there for a couple of sessions. Today I got to 24 in half an hour. I lost count a bit and thought it could have been 24 or 26, so I did a couple extra for good measure and so did 26 in just over 30 minutes. I wanted to do more, but was a bit tired and thought I better no over do it. I was rapt with my effort though. I seem to have finally found some exercise I look forward to doing. I even went this morning because I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the things I have on my plate for the next couple of weeks and I wanted to relax. I have never ever picked exercise as a way to relax before in my life! There is a whole new and hopefully fitter world out there for me now which I can’t wait to get into. I might just have to buy that summer pass with 6 weeks of unlimited swimming until the end of March.
Stay tuned for the lessons I learned about swimming from Miss Pink Cap, and how I related it all to my blogging.
For another blogging similie, check out 5 Ways Blogging is Like Running a Cafe.
Image is ‘Underwater’ by Mazintosh from FlickrCC
5 Ways Blogging is Like Running a Cafe
My husband and I went out for out Sunday afternoon coffee. Well, he had his flat white and I my hot chocolate as I don’t drink coffee. We went to our favourite little cafe which is a glass blowing studio and gallery as well that overlooks a marsh. It’s lovely and so we are really disappointed that it is closing down next week. The family that runs it is going overseas for a year, so I understand. But, I’ll miss going there.
Anyway, as we were driving home I thought about how blogging is like running a cafe. (Yes, blogging is taking over my life a little and is obviously never far from my mind!) I thought of these points to illustrate what I mean:
Customers won’t come back to your cafe if:
- you don’t provide food they like
- your cafe is messy and not appealing to look at
- your service is half-hearted and not friendly
- your coffee is not hot enough
- there are not enough options on your drinks or eats menu
Readers won’t come back to your blog if:
- you don’t provide content they like / are interested in
- your blog is cluttered and confusing to navigate
- your writing shows lack of effort to engage with your readers
- you aren’t writing about interesting things or
- you’re writing about the same thing all the time
Even if we already are aware of these things, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded from time to time and to have a good think about what we are writing about. On my other blog, technoLOTE, I’ve asked readers straight out what they want to get from the blog. I’ve got my own ideas about what I want to do with it, but I’m sure I’ll get some other ideas from my readers. Many heads are better than one.
I’m going to keep these cafe lessons in mind as I do more reflecting on my blogs and blogging. Have you got any tips to add to the list? Have you been somewhere or done something and learned lessons about blogging at the same time?
Other posts with blogging advice: Hey Good Lookin’ and Being Yourself for the Betterment of your Blog
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Hey Good Lookin’ - advice on finding the right theme for my blog
Right, that’s it. It’s gotta go. A makeover is needed. I’d been thinking this almost every time I looked at my other blog, technoLOTE, for a few months. I thought it was a bit dull, and I was no longer liking the colour scheme. I was very unsure about the posts background being green, and the grey sidebar was giving me troubles whenever I tried to edit the code.
Time for something new for 2008! I asked Sue Waters to have a good look at my blog and tell me what she thought. After a few emails back and forth her main points of advice were:
- keep it simple and make sure that new readers can see exactly what you want them to see quickly and easily
- it is important to have a ‘Home’ page that directs readers to the front page of your blog, especially for people who are new to your site
- put your RSS and subscription information at the top of the sidebar where it is easy for readers to see
- make sure there is a Search function and place it at the top of the sidebar too
- remove all widgets that aren’t really necessary. It is very easy to collect too many widgets and they can clutter your sidebar and be a distraction.
- don’t have too many pages listed on the top menu
- a white background makes for clearer reading for most people
- read her post on tips for effective blogging
So started my quest for a new look. I was obsessed. I spent hours trawling through the Wordpress Themes Directory. I downloaded at least 40 different themes and got Nick (my husband and personal IT assistant) to upload them for me to whatever content directory they needed to go in. Then I played. I found a few I thought were ok, then asked the techoLOTE readers whether they preferred the original or testsite1. Generally, technoLOTE readers were split as to which one they thought was better - positives and negatives for each were mentioned. I really found there was a fairly even split between readers who liked the original vs the test site. Some general comments were:
- the green background on the original wasn’t great (although some thought it was better than white - what to do?!)
- the header on the original took up valuable ‘real estate’ - I had never heard this term used in conjunction with blogs before, but several people mentioned it.
- the white on the new site was easier to read - although some thought it was too glaringly white
- even thought the text on the new site was easier to read on the white, the site looked cluttered.
Ok, with this feedback in mind, I kept looking. This damn theme searching was getting in the way of everything else. I didn’t feel as though I could really go forward until I had it sorted. The more I looked at themes and other people’s sites the more I felt the need to change mine.
I drove my poor husband nuts by saying ‘What do you think of this?’ and turning my laptop around to show him. This was taking up so much of my attention that he thought I loved my laptop more than him. Oh, darling, it’s just a phase I’m going through! I got advice from some Twitter contacts, which I wrote about a couple of posts ago.
I then started emailing one of my very best friends, Michelle, who works in IT at LinkMe to get her advice. She came back with the goods, just like Sue did. Michelle made a lot of sense and her main points were:
- sidebar headings must be as clear as possible
- really think about what you want to have on your blog and how you want to organise it, then find a theme that suits that. Think about what pages you need - keep the topics broad - and what exactly will go on them.
- adding drop down menus to page titles if possible is not a bad idea
- reduce amounts of unused space
- Michelle has this to say about headings and text styling:
- Michelle -Not sure in the blog posts why there are all different sized headings. Perhaps this is because it’s a demo and not finished(?). Me - that was me experimenting. so, not a good idea then? Michelle - Different sized headings are used to indicate hierarchy. If you mixed them, you start losing the hierarchy. Plus, it can look messy. I would def advise to keep the headings at the same level and the body at a different level. Any emphasis can be done using bold. Where there is a call to action (therefore, you want people to act on something, use italic text). Try not to mix bold and italics because you want people to subconciously know what you mean just by the style of your text.
So, thankfully I have many wise people around me who are so willing to help! I found a possible theme for technoLOTE last night. After playing around with it this morning (and getting a bit of feedback from Sue and Michelle) and I am pretty happy with it. I finally feel as thought I am getting somewhere and that I can start putting my energy and attention into improving the content technoLOTE now. I’m still playing around with some little bits and pieces on this new theme (which takes all of the above points into consideration, even though it may not be perfect) and will let you know when I officially ‘launch’ it which will hopefully be in the next couple of days. Just depends on how much time my dear, dear neglected husband has to help me.
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