Digital Passports

One problem that many fledgling bloggers encounter is finding time in the day to create a quality blog post.  Of course, the definition of what makes a blog post a ‘quality’ one is pretty subject to interpretation, but many people set fairly high standards for themselves.  If you’d like to start building out your presence on the web, by yourself or with a class, but don’t want to commit too much time to the task, then consider the world of microblogging.

Twitter is a site that I have spoken of with love on many an occasion.  It provides you with 140 characters to share what you’re doing right now.  They key ingredient to making Twitter stick though, is to build up a network of friends.  Sometimes your friends may be doing nothing more than eating a bagel, but other times they’re sharing fantastic classroom resources, presentation ideas, and professional development opportunities you might never hear about otherwise.  And if you need a few friends to kick things off, you can always start with Hall, Scott, Jannita, me, and of course the DEN itself!  Then look through the list of faces in the right sidebar to find other people to connect with.  Plenty of STAR Discovery Educators are using it and sharing every day.

The other microblogging site I thought I’d mention is Tumblr.   Essentially it’s a blogging engine that is made to encourage tiny little short blog posts, videos, images, and links.  A three word tumblr post is not unusual at all.  Got something to share, but not much time to do it?  Tumblr was created for your exact situation. 

Another use of Tumblr has started to evolve though.  It really fascinates me how many people are using it to aggregate their ‘lifestream’.  Since you can have it bring in RSS feeds automatically, you could use it as a central repository for your Flickr photos, del.icio.us bookmarks, blog posts, tweets from Twitter, videos from YouTube and so on.  Your entire online life in one central location.

Aaaahhhh, the beginning of a new school year.  The teachers are excited the students are frantic, there’s a wonderful buzz in the air.  More than likely, you don’t know the students that well yet, the students don’t know you, and the first few days are spent getting to know each other, learning the class rules, and establishing a positive learning environment. 

So long as you’re getting to know your students during class, why not do something a little different and get to know them outside of class as well?  Assuming your students are in upper elementary, middle or secondary school, they probably have at least one profile on MySpace, Facebook or Xanga.  SO, why not kick off the year by asking if any student wants to share a little bit about themselves by showing their profile up on the projector? 

Shouldn’t their profile reflect who they are?  And since this IS a public page most likely, shouldn’t they be able to share it publicly?  Be a great way to emphasize safe, responsible and appropriate social networking!

Hey, you’ve looked up your students, right?  They know you’ve looked them up, right?  So break the ice this year and talk about it!