Thing #1

           OK, so my first impression was how easy it was to actually get going on a blog. When I looked around at other blogs to see what they had set up they seemed so complicated. The basic functioning blog was really not too hard. The dash board was pretty easy to navigate and figure out. I also talked to my sister-in-law who has maintained a blog for a few years to find out how some of the features worked; I had wondered about tags, categories, blog rolls, and how the older posts were archived for later viewing.

            I wanted to try this blog thing but I also wanted it to be about something worth while. I saw several blogs that were not very interesting and others that really caught my eye on topics that resonated with me. About this time, Kentwood admin was talking to the essential arts teachers about program visibility in the community. It struck me that a blog would suit this visibility and communication goal for my elementary music program!

            I began talking to those who I knew that had websites and blogs to see where they hosted their sites and how much they cost or what you got for free. These were teachers at Discovery who were starting sites on shutterfly. This site is designed for photo sharing and so the teacher pages are really geared for picture media. I knew I wanted to be able to post video and audio as key elements. Others I talked to were Brooke Storm and got some more information as well as My brother in law who I found out hosts websites and has wordpress intalled on his server.

            I ultimately went with my Brother-in-law for the personal support and the fact that he offered his services at the family rate...free. I use word press to build and manage the blog. I learned about plug-ins that add features to the site. Specifically, I had an audio player installed and will shortly have a video player installed. Audio and video files stored in the media folder can be linked to the plug-ins so they show up in the post as a playable/ viewable object.

            I have gotten great feed back from people regarding the blog I created (mrconniff.com) and finding it really a useful and convenient way to provide resources to my students and parents. Many kids have already told me how they went to the website to check out the links and videos embedded there. So far, so good. I am really enjoying putting it together!


         



     

Thing #8 (related)

Here is an embedded mpeg4 video stored on screencast.com. I like that this player loads quickly and plays right away. It is perfectly sized to fit in a blog post.





I was watching the great clip of Sir Robinson where he talked about creativity! I've seen this one many times and he has a quote in there that applies to this project. He said, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original." I like to finish that with "you'll never get better at anything". So, click away!