Virtual Schooling Blog Carnival – Call For Submissions

As you may recall for part of the Day 18 of the 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger series that Steve Dembo did last month that I participated in I created an entry  on the Blog Carnival website for a K-12 online learning (see Day Eighteen – Thirty Days To A Better Blog).  The actual call, which used to reside at http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_5688.html (but doesn’t seem to work anymore and has been re-created at http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_6131.html), read:

K-12 online learning

Description – This Carnival is devoted to K-12 online learning
Keywords – k-12, online learning, virtual school, cyberschool
Filed under – education
Submission deadline – Whenever We Get Enough Content
Maintained by – Michael Barbour
Current status – This carnival is ongoing.

Well, this call didn’t generate the kind of submissions I was hoping for (with only one entry being related to the use of online technologies in K-12 learning).  You can see the actual issue is the entry:

K-12 Online Learning Blog Carnival

After some discussion, both in the actual issue and in the comments to that issue, I decided to give is a second attempt with a new Blog Carnival that I hope has a better entry:

virtual schooling – http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_6130.html

Description – This is a carnival that is focused upon the use of online learning and distance at the K-12 level. Please submit items that are related to the field of K-12 education – elementary or high school – and online or blended/hybrid learning.
Keywords – K-12 online learning, virtual schooling, cyberschooling, distance education
Filed under – education
Submission deadline – Middle of the month (providing appropriate content)
Maintained by – Michael Barbour
Current status – This carnival is ongoing.

I’m hoping to post the next entry around the middle of February.  I’ll try and promote submissions via Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, a couple of NINGs that I belong to, the iNACOL forums, and of course this blog.  If you have something relevant to this topic, feel free to submit it to this Blog Carnival.

K-12 Online Learning Blog Carnival

Okay, as a part of the Day 18 of the 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger series that Steve Dembo did last month that I participated in I created an entry on the Blog Carnival website (see Day Eighteen – Thirty Days To A Better Blog).  Steve described a Blog Carnival by quoting from their FAQ:

A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many kinds of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine. It has a title, a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to all the contributions that have been submitted, often with the editors opinions or remarks.

There is so much stuff in the blog-o-sphere, just finding interesting stuff is hard. If there is a carnival for a topic you are interested in, following that carnival is a great way to learn what bloggers are saying about that topic. If you are blogging on that topic, the carnival is the place to share your work with like-minded bloggers.

Well, as a part of my participation (see Day Eighteen – Thirty Days To A Better Blog) in the 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger I created the following call for entries.

K-12 online learning

Description – This Carnival is devoted to K-12 online learning
Keywords – k-12, online learning, virtual school, cyberschool
Filed under – education
Submission deadline – Whenever We Get Enough Content
Maintained by – Michael Barbour
Current status – This carnival is ongoing.

Pretty straightforward, right? Initially, I was going to post the first Blog Carnival on 15 December, but I have to say that I have been disappointed with what I have received.  To date, I have received the following type of entries:

Entries actually on the topic of K-12 online learning or even K-12 distance education:

• NONE

Entries about teachnology use in K-12:

• Managing the Modern Classroom – an entry about a 1-1 laptop initiative

Entries about K-12 in general:

• List of Elementary School Guides, Workbooks, and Assessment Resources – ISBN, Used, and List Prices – an entry literally listing the names and prices of books used in a K-12 system
• 6 Tips for Success in School – an entry about how to succeed in K-12
• Teaching Test Taking Skills Doesn’t Mean You Are Teaching to the Test – an entry for teachers about teaching and assessment
• Scissors and Glue and Glitter, Oh No! – an entry about project-based teaching and asking questions

Entries about teaching and or learning (not necessarily about K-12 at all):

• Avoiding Tricky English Grammar Mistakes – an entry about learning to speak English
• 100 Best Lifehack Lists for Recent College Grads – an entry of tips for your post-college life
• Games for Brain Health – Novelty, Variety and Challenge – an entry about a recently published article

Entries that have nothing to do with education at all:

• Denver Climbers Coalition – an entry announcing the creation of this organization
• How To Subscribe To Your Favorite Real Estate Blogs – an entry explaining RSS for real estate bloggers
• Will Social Media Kill Membership Sites? – an entry about the various tools in social media sites

What I kind interesting is that it seems that these people don’t really care that their submissions had little or nothing to do with the topic at hand.  I even corresponded with some, expressing my interest and enthusiasm to getting this Blog Carnival started, and they all seemed oblivious to the fact that their entries had nothing to do with K-12 distance education.

I suppose by posting these entries I have given the submitter exactly what they wanted, more exposure and potentially more traffic.  What I wonder is why they took the time to submit anything at all to my Blog Carnival?  Is there a bot that will do this for them automatically, so that they don’t have to even enter in the information?

Steve, I have to say that this has been a real bust thus far!

Day Thirty – Thirty Days To A Better Blog

Day thirty in the 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger series was yesterday and asked us to look at Day 30: Choose Your Own Adventure. Essentially, we are asked to select our own task or challenge for the day.

I think I’m going to turn this around and instead of making it a task or challenge for one day, I’m going to make it a task for multiple days.  Specifically, I’m going to make it a task for two months.

For day thirty of Steve’s 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger, I choose for my own adventure to do this again.  Several times throughout the challenge, Steve mentioned that this process was based on an earlier 31 Days to Building a Better Blog challenge that was originally done by Darren Rowse.The first part of my day thirty task will be a commitment to complete this challenge during the month of May.  May marks the end of the Winter semester for me at Wayne State and I don’t begin summer teaching until the end of June.  So this is a good month with 31 days that will allow me both the time to commit to improving my blog once again.  It is also about six months from now, so it will give me some pause to reflect on how well some of the changes from the Steve’s current 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger have taken hold in my blogging practices.

The second part of the task will be a commitment to complete at least one National Blog Posting Month or NaBloPoMo.  I’ve been trying to find somewhere that I can find a list of topics from the previous year (and if someone knows where I can find the complete list, please let me know).  I know that November did not have a topic and the topic for December is “Thanks”.  But in 2009 I commit to completing at least NaBloPoMo – and I’ll wait to see the topics each month to determine one that I think would be relevant for this blog.

Anyway, I guess that ends Steve’s 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger challenge. Hopefully the suggestions made throughout this challenge will in the end stick (or at least some of them will), and in the end I’ll be a better blogger for it.  Thanks Steve!

Day Twenty-Nine – Thirty Days To A Better Blog

Day twenty-nine in the 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger series was yesterday and asked us to look at Day 29: Be a Rock Star. Essentially, we are asked to put the same kind of effort into our the public comments that we write in the entries on our blog that we would or do when we are just sitting around shooting the sh!t and giving our opinions with our professional colleagues.  As a way to actually turn this into something we can blog about, Steve asked us to “take the time to share what being a Rock Star means to you.”

For me it is doing the kinds of things that I am currently doing with entries like Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change The Way The World Learns and Rewind: Virtual School Symposium And Disrupting Class – sharing my opinions on topics that are of interest to people who are in my community (i.e., K-12 online learning), many of whom are readers of my blog.  I’m reminded of a comment that Erik made when he reviewed my blog for Day Six – Thirty Days To A Better Blog (Part 2). He had comments like:

Would love to have your thoughts on the top 10 list…

I read blogs to learn about other perspectives and opinions; I don’t feel that you are doing as much of this as you could. Give yourself some credit, you are one of the top researchers in the VS field, your opinions are worth a lot!

I remember early in my doc studies, I gave an article to Dr. Dawson, she read it, gave it back and told me that centrists are dull. She encouraged  me to stick my neck out and make some noise. I told her I wasn’t confident enough to get aggressive on a topic. She challenged me to do so, and I’ve been able to in a couple instances. Make some noise, I know you are passionate about VSs, make sure that passion is evident to the reader.

While I have tried to do this at times, it is often the case that I don’t have the time (e.g., tomorrow is the final day of November I haven’t prepared the VHSM Podcast for this month yet).  In an ideal world I would love to be able to comment on each article, report, news item, resource, website, etc. that I come across in K-12 online learning.  And when I have the time, like today and over the next few when I am focusing upon Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, but it seems so often the case that I am reporting more than commenting.  I think that I should do both, I’d just like to do more where I do get to voice my opinion.

Hopefully, participating in this 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger and then next month I’m thinking about participating in the National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) project, will give me the motivation to do more of this.  But Steve, for me being a Rock Star means if I were to ask Erik for his feedback on my blog in the future he wouldn’t make those same comments.

Day Twenty-Eight – Thirty Days To A Better Blog

Day twenty-eight in the 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger series was yesterday and asked us to look at Day 28: Link It Up. Essentially, we are asked to consider how we link to other entries, specifically we were asked to do two things:

1) Go back through your last few posts and hunt for links that you may have missed. Could you have done a better job? Are there any things that you should have linked that you might have missed? Any places you could have added value by inserting more links?
2) The next blog post you write, go crazy on the linking. Every paragraph, think to yourself… Should this be linked up to something providing more information? Should I include a link to a definition for people that may not know the term? Should I share a few examples via links? It’s OK if it looks silly, it’s just about retraining the brain a little. And sometimes you just gotta dive in headfirst to get some quality swim time in.

Thinking about the first item, it was only a few hours ago I wrote Rewind: Virtual School Symposium And Disrupting Class and I think I did a good job of linking based upon the content.  Although Steve, I’d love a comment to this entry with your assessment of my linking in that particular entry.

Also, looking ahead this week…  Later in the week (i.e., after Wednesday) I will be posting an entry about my visit to the Odessey Cyber Charter School, and that will be the one I use to focus on for the going crazy linking in a future post.