Tag Archives: blogging

Why blog daily?

“For years, I’ve been explaining to people that daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating and (eventually) fun.“ ~Seth Godin

I enjoy writing, but I’m slow at it. So, when I get busy, I don’t write. This has really hampered my sharing on my Pair-a-Dimes for Your Thoughts blog. At one point, I was constantly thinking in blog posts. I enjoyed this. I would think of a concept or idea, expand it in my thoughts, then wrap it up on my blog. But I’ve written less and less and so that ability to create a full narrative around an idea has faded. I miss doing that.

So, what can I do to get that back? I need to practice writing; to practice thinking in story; to make writing a routine and expectation – not just something I wish I did.

When I started Daily Ink years ago, I was going to hand write a journal and then take a photo of the writing (images are gone from moving this blog around before finally getting DavidTruss.com)… This digital sharing of analog writing was to be a blending of two worlds. It didn’t stick. Then I shared links and videos with a small commentary (I might still do that occasionally), but now this is about (re)finding my joy in writing.

It might go to an audience of just one, but I’ll share it publicly, and hopefully anyone reading this, besides me, will enjoy the writing journey I’m on.

What’s a habit that you want to develop? And what can you do right now to get it going?

Challenging myself to write

I consider myself a blogger, but in the last year and a half to two years I’ve been writing very little. I realize that in my 10th year of blogging that I’d go through times when my writing would ebb or decrease, but this seems to be a slump that I’m not getting out of.

What’s weird is that I still think in blog posts. I come up with ideas, and I start writing them in my head… But they never get to ‘paper’, or rather, they never go digital.

So here is my attempt to change that. After being untouched for a long time, my daily-ink will go daily… For the month of May.

If I’m truly inspired, I’ll write something to share on my pair-a-dimes blog, but I will put something here daily.

I’m doing this because I believe that I am most enthusiastic and passionate about my job when I’m blogging about education, and I miss the ‘me’ that used to blog regularly… I hope this process helps get that ‘creative-thinking’ part of me back! 🙂

DigiFoot12 – My Experience

Yes, I’m still at work. Yes, I’m probably too busy to add something new to my plate. But this is my work in a way… actually in two different ways!

1. I have been a MOOC dropout that did one assignment for the course, and I’ve never followed through with an online course… and yet, I work in an environment where I help students find success in online courses. I work in a learning centre for adults and most of them, like me, live very busy lives. I want to model the commitment I ask of our students.

2. Digifoot12 is an excellent launching ground for me as I start to build my course, Applications of Digital Literacy for our new Inquiry Hub, starting in September. I’m very excited about teaching this course and I think that almost everything I do in Digifoot12 will benefit the development of my own course. In fact, as we approached the start of this course, Verena Roberts and I had a conversation and we realized that we were taking similar approaches. She has students working as Digital Detectives, working on cases: Case 1 – Scavenger Hunt And I too had the idea of students being ‘digital detectives’ though not as an overriding theme. 

So, I have a lot to model and to learn from. I decided to use my Daily Ink blog because I’ll be posting much more frequently than I normally do on ‘Pair-a-Dimes‘, and that blog is really not for course material as that’s not the audience I’ve built there… Although reflections on this experience will creep over there as we move forward. 

What I’ve done so far:

* Joined the Student2.0 Digifoot12 Group and updated my profile. 

* Introduced myself

* Added my twitter and blog links. I’ve also posted about on Digifoot12 Twitter. 

* Added an artifact to mightybell – This one: The complete guide to building a digital footprint

* Watched the slideshow for week 1. (I had a work appointment that prevented me from being part of the live session.)

* Written this introductory post, And…

* Created this Netvibes page to help me, and hopefully others, follow along. 

Digital-footprint-me-dot-com-david-truss-cc-by-nc-sa

Steve Wheeler has some ‘Synching feelings’

One final word: We need to remember that professionals built the Titanic, but an amateur built the Ark. It’s not always about expertise – sometimes it’s about passion.

via Synching Feelings on Steve-Wheeler.blogspot.com

Go visit & read the whole post… but I wanted to share the quote above, and the post script to my comment below.

ps. I love your ‘One final word’!

Many uneducated farmers have taken machinery built by ‘experts’ and made them better. Many ‘amateur’ stargazers have made astronomical discoveries within clear view of the experts. Many educators are turning their practice inside-out and sharing what they do with the world, while the experts model great schools around getting good standardized test results… hmmmm.

The learning doesn’t stop when I hit ‘post’!

Comments make blogging a rich experience.

Comments on four of my recent Pair-a-Dimes blog posts have blown me away!
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… The learning doesn’t stop when I hit ‘post’! 
Check out the amazing conversations: 

Thank you, thank you and thank you to all who have ‘joined the conversation’… I really appreciate the opportunity to learn from and with you!