Thing #7

It was nice to scan the gentle hints for proper responses. It could be that I appreciated them just because they all seemed to be what "Miss Manners" would have considered the proper thing to do. It will be great to use these blog posts to share with our students. I can recall some blunders from my own youth, and it is nice to know there are guidelines we can use as examples.

For blogs within our class that I want to follow I wanted to follow a person that I shared online classes with. She's astute and as Harry Wong would say you need to 'hang' with positive people. The other blog I chose to follow is someone I've admired as an educator within our district. We have some really gifted leaders in MISD, and even at my age it's never too late to learn something new!

One of the ideas that stuck with me seemed to repeat itself in each of the blogs that dealt with commenting. That thought seemed to be that if we wnat people to respond to us we need to be open and thoughtful. As you read the 'Blue Skunk' blog it becomes quite obvious why this blog has a good following. While he is a total professional, he has the 'grace' not to shove it down our throats. In fact he is quite humble and inviting; he even admits to having areas where he could do better. It soon becomes obvious that there is room for someone new and ignorant. The message seemed to repeat that "if you want help, ask."

As I mentioned in Thing #6 it became quite effortless for me to take one of those "Family Circus" type of tours while I was searching for blogs to put in my RSS reader. So many great treasures to unearth, and so little time. The blogs that I enjoyed the most were the ones that gave me reviews of books.

One of the things I didn't mention about Just One More Book the Pod Casts that are included with the reviews. How fantastic would this be to have a library link that let teachers preview new books. We're continually trying to get our teachers to try new books and this would be such a cool way to hook them. What a great tool to use along with School Library Journal.