To blog or not to blog ...

Now you've blogged for 2+ months. Depending on who you are, you've embraced it, struggled with it, been excited by it, been bored by it, felt it was a chore, had a million thoughts about what to blog ... and maybe you've experienced all of these sentiments. Now that you've had this experience, it's a great time for us to think about what it means to blog. A blog is a platform. It is a place to showcase one's voice and vision. To blog is to lead the charge in one small corner of the internet. It is proactive rather than reactive -- the exact opposite of a discussion forum, where instructors post questions and studnets respond. A blog can document a student's journey through a course in a way that discussion boards do not. Each blogger owns their own space, and made choices about what is posted there. No matter how you feel about blogging, I encourage you to take this opportunity to review your blog, and your journey. You may never blog again, and that is fine. Blogging is not an activity that everyone enjoys. You may find that you blog in the future, but in an entirely different genre. Or you may just keep blogging. Whatever you do will reflect your interests, comfort, and needs ... and no matter what you do in the future, you will be able to say that for at least a little while you were a blogger. Signed, A fellow blogger

A week of challenges: The weekend challenge

 We've had a week of challenges, and now the finale:

The Challenge Challenge!

I sure hope a lot of you undertake this challenge!

Step 1. Come up with an idea for a challenge! Get it all set up. Use canva.com to create a challenge graphic. It is an AWESOME tool. It's not a social media tool, but it is a social media helper tool. I use it for all of the challenge graphics in this class, canvas banners, etc.

Step 2. Share your challenge. Post it on Twitter, Instagram, your blog, etc. We can get it posted on this blog, too (a good idea to get folks involved -- just coordinate with Vanessa and/or Daeun). 

Step 3. (optional) Design a badge for your challenge. Coordinate with Daeun and she'll award it in badgelist.

A week of challenges: Day 5

I'm not sure how this challenge will work -- it's a first for me -- but I wanted to try it. If the technology doesn't work, well ... we'll learn something all the same.

Let's play with collaborative playlists!

 It's Friday. Almost the weekend. Do you need some good summer tunes for the weekend?

I started a playlist for some good summer tunes. 
Add to my spotify playlist.

I started the playlist with Vacation by the Go-Go's. Yes, I am a child of the 80s, and this song always makes me think of summer.

I also dropped Manic Monday on there by The Bangles. I feel like that's the song that should end this playlist. It's always a Manic Monday after a fun summer weekend, right?

Please add some songs in the middle.

And if you want to do the challenge part and earn a badge, here's your task:

1. Add to my playlist (fingers crossed that this works, technology-wise) and comment below about what you added and why you chose that song.

2. Create your own collaborative playlist (you can choose whatever tool you want, I picked spotify because that's the music service I most frequently use)

3. Write a blog post about your playlist (kind of like the bit I wrote above about my collaborative playlist) and invite us to add to it. 

Get creative with it! I've seen people create playlists to go along with books, for special events, etc. I even tried to start one with social media songs, but I didn't get too deep there (and I was struggling to find songs). If you want to add to that one, it's here.

A week of challenges: Day 4

 Today I bring you the #EME6414 Word Cloud Challenge. A retro challenge of sorts.

Find an online word cloud tool and build a word cloud based on your tweets or perhaps even a hashtag, blog post, or some other body of text that interests you. 

Save the end result and:

1. share it to the class hashtag on Twitter and/or Instagram. 

2. post it to your blog, along with a post about how you might use word clouds generated from social media sources to support learning and/or performance. 

Here's one I created for my tweets using https://floom.app/service/twitter-wrapped:

I love that "challenge" showed up big and in the center.

Here's another from https://www.wordclouds.com/

The source material is this blog.

Any ideas how you might use one of these word clouds to support learning or performance?

A Week of Challenges: Day 3

  Let's play with Miro!

The challenge has two parts.

1. Visit the miro board I created for this class and add something to it.

2. Create your own miro board that depicts some part of your EME6414 journey and link it to the board that I created.

Link your own board? Get a badge!!!

Note that there's a little bit of a learning curve with miro, and you may find yourself needing to zoom in and out to see what you want and change perspective (the zoom function is on the bottom right). 

Also, note how I have set up the space to begin. I've left a few stickies on there. Also an image and an emoji. Since taking the above screen shot, I even added a link (just back to the course blog) embedded on a sticky to provide an example of sharing a link. It helps learners to have an example rather than a blank screen, doesn't it?

A week of challenges: Challenge 2

 Your third challenge? It's the make-it-up challenge.

Sometimes you want to emulate social media, but not actually post there. Well ... there are tools to help with that, too. 

In this fun challenge, dream up a reason to make up a fake tweet, Instagram post, or Facebook account. Maybe you want to imagine what a historical figure (long dead) or character from a novel would say if they tweeted. Get creative with it. Even make up a dialogue!

Generate your fake tweets/posts/whatever, and then share them in a blog post. Comment here if you did it and share the link.

Some resources to help:

• https://tweetfull.com/blog/fake-tweet-generator/
• https://generatestatus.com/generate-fake-instagram-post/
• https://www.classtools.net/FB/home-page

A week of challenges: Challenge 1

 Let's kick off Week 10 with a week of challenges! 

Challenge 1: Google Maps

Visit the google map I created for you. 

Note that there are TWO layers to it. Contribute at least one pin to each layer. I recommend adding your name like I did in my examples so we know you've been there and what pins you shared.

Then create your own map and share it in a blog post. Encourage the rest of us to drop pins on us. 

Comment here if you have completed the challenge and give the link to your blog post so folks will wander over.