Days 19 to 21 of 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger

Day 19

Teach42 challenges us to look at other blogs and analyze what you see there.
“Today’s challenge is a relatively simple one, and likely one that you probably do on a regular basis subconsciously. Today we’re just going to do it consciously. Basically, the idea is to spend some time visiting other educator’s blogs that fall into the same niche as yours, and analyze what you see there. This is one of the challenges that I really liked out of ProBlogger’s 31 day challenge. And I think he has an excellent list of questions to ask yourself while you visit other people’s blogs.”

I love to visit other educator blogs because I like to hear what other educators are talking about, how they feel on certain issues, and then think about how I feel about that issue. I like to read blog posts that aren’t too long and aren’t too technical. I also love the ones that have a little humor in it or are interesting to read. If the font is too small or the topic is too technical, I tend to skip over them. I also like posts that tell about different tools and how they use it with students or the successes they had with the students. I also like to look at their sidebars and see what interesting links or widgets they have that might make my blog look better.

Day 20

Teach42 challenges us to go on a Dead Link Hunt.
“There are two sites and one PC based tool that I’ve had recommended to me. The tool is Xenu, and the two sites are Dead-Links.com and the W3C link validator. All of them do the same basic task, which is to crawl through your site and test each individual link. If it thinks the link is invalid, it flags it for you. Based on the specific way each tool/site does this, it may come up with different results than the others. That’s why you will probably want to do at least 2 of the 3 tests. I’d suggest running one test, checking the results and making changes as needed, and then running a second test.”

Since I am on a cruise and limiting myself to 30 minutes a day on the internet, this will have to wait until I get home but I never thought about doing this. I also never knew there were tools that checked this. I’m excited about testing my site and I hope I don’t have too many dead links.
Day 21

Teach42 challenges us to make a blog post about a comment we made or a comment left for us.
“For today’s challenge, we’re going back to commenting with a slightly different spin. Your challenge for today is to integrate a comment into a new blog post of yours. This can be a comment that somebody left for you on your own blog (like I’ve done in this post), or a comment that somebody left on somebody else’s blog. This may require a little digging, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Honestly, there are times where the comments left on a blog post are perhaps more significant than the blog post itself.”

I like to do this a lot of times if my comment is too long or wordy. Sometimes it gives me room to express my thoughts more clearly without worrying that someone will think I’m spamming their blog post. If my post is referring to someone else’s post, then I link to that original post and leave a comment with a link to my post telling them that I wrote a post about theirs instead of leaving a long comment.

Interview with Susan Fowler, President of Council for Exceptional Children

Recently I asked Susan Fowler, President of Council for Exceptional Children for an interview. Her term will be completed at the end of December 2008 so I thought it would be fun to ask her some questions. I really appreciate Susan taking the time to do this since I know how busy she is and after reading this, I realize she is even busier than I thought. I hope you enjoy the interview!

1. What is your official job title outside of CEC?
Professor, Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois

2. How long have you been a member of CEC?
I joined in 1975 s a first year doctoral student at the University of Kansas—gee 33 years ago!

3. How did you first get involved in CEC?
One of my advisors told me I needed to join to be part of the profession. Fortunately, she also invited me to present at the national CEC conferences in 1976, 1977, 1978 as a member of her panel where we talked about early childhood special education services and I discussed the transition from preschool to kindergarten. That experience started me on a line of research and got me involved in DEC. I soon published articles in the early Journal of DEC and eventually in Exceptional Children. Then my state chapter asked me to run for President of Kansas DEC in the 1980’s and that got me involved in local advocacy and governance with CEC

4. Why do you think teachers should join CEC?
It provides them with a larger context about their profession and who they are and represent. It expands their focus and knowledge to the whole range of special education issues, birth through young adults. As new knowledge emerges and practices are developed, clarified or even changed over time, they learn about it and stay current with their profession. This opportunity ensures that they have informal ongoing professional development (through journals, TEC, website) and formal professional development opportunities through state, provincial, division or national conferences. Membership also provides a community for them to belong with and to share values and a sense of mission for the incredible work that they do with children and youth, who not so long ago, could not be guaranteed an education. It’s a precious and demanding commitment and belonging to a community helps to support this dedication and mission.

5. If you could give 3 words describing your term as President of CEC, what would they be?
exhilarating, challenging and humbling

6. What has been the best thing about being President of CEC?
Seeing how a group of committed Board members, Committee Chairs and the Staff of CEC can have a visible impact on the field of special education through advocacy at the federal, provincial and state level around issues of legislation, funding, rule making that impact our daily services to children and families. Also seeing how we can influence the future by identifying through a consensus process the most critical and timely issues on which to focus in our strategic planning such as increasing our knowledge of evidence based practices. Finally, seeing how responsive CEC can be to important issues that need a policy or position statement, such as Response to Intervention, Safe Schools and the fact that CEC members are ready and able to work on expert panels to draft these statements.

7. Do you have any advice for people who might think of running for office in CEC?
First, have a passion for your profession and a desire to make a difference in our field by thinking carefully about current and critical issues. Second, prepare to be part of a very active community of leaders who tackle these pressing issues, discuss them, argue about them and finally reach consensus on them. This takes time, but the satisfaction from doing so is enormous.

So what kind of time are we talking about? If you are running for the Board, make sure that you can set aside 3-5 hours every week to participate in e-community discussions, read CEC Smart Briefs, CEC Today, CEC Policy Insider and other electronic information. Try to take time to read one or two articles from each issue of our journals to stay on top of trends and findings in our field. Be ready to serve on a work group on a specific topic related to issues of governance. Finally, make sure that you can arrange time off to attend a Friday-Sunday board meeting in Arlington VA in Oct. and Jan. and of course 5 days for our convention in March or April. If you run for office as president-elect, double the time commitment and add more visits to CEC to your schedule!

8. What do you think the biggest challenge CEC faces in the future?
Growing our membership and convincing our new teachers that they will benefit from belonging to their professional organization. The second challenge, is just as critical, and that is maintaining our specialization as special educators within the general education curriculum.

9. What are your plans when your term is over?
Professionally, I’ll have more time to think, relax, read my journals, attend more sessions at CEC and division conferences and enjoy being a member. Personally, I’ll have less travel and more time with my family and I think the teenagers will be happy that I am home more often! I know my husband will be happy!

10. (One teacher wanted me to ask you this): Placement for special needs students is straining the budget in the small rural district where I teach. Any suggestions?
Does she mean placement out of the district? Or does she mean identification of students who are eligible for special education services in the district? I’ll try to answer if you have a bit more information……

(Thank you Susan for a wonderful interview! I have enjoyed serving on the board under your leadership!)

Carnival of Education 11/19/08

The Carnival of Education is up on the midway at I Want to Teach Forever. Don’t miss out on all the fun! See what is going on in the Edusphere. My article on How Was My Lesson? is there but there are lots of other great articles to read too! See you there and don’t eat too much cotton candy!

Photo credit: Payasos de colores - Guanajuato México 2008 5615 by Lucy Nieto

Useful Information In and Out of the Classroom 11/21/08

Here are some interesting sites that I’ve found this week. As a teacher, I feel we have to keep up to date concerning research in our field and current issues in the education system. I hope some of these inspire you, inform you, and even have you asking questions. Thank you for coming by and visiting!

You are the Historian – is a “comprehensive online site that builds students’ understanding about the harvest celebration of 1621, which is often erroneously referred to as “The First Thanksgiving.” The learning on the site is supported and enhanced by an online teacher’s guide, “Becoming a Historian,” with lessons that correspond to each activity on the site,, graphic organizers,, and additional resources and information.”

National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery – Images, videos and audios for you to use

Can Do – “The Can Do! web site offers stories, activities, and resources to help create a better understanding and deeper appreciation of how people can overcome their challenges and reach their dreams by using their abilities and a "can-do" attitude.”

Learning Vocabulary Fun – games to make learning vocabulary lots of fun

Next Vista for Learning – “An online library of free videos for learners everywhere - find resources to help you learn just about anything, meet people who make a difference in their communities, and even discover new parts of the world. And Next Vista for Learning wants to post your educational videos online, too. Everyone has an insight to share and yours may be just what some student or teacher somewhere needs!”

Day 18 of 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger

Teach42 challenges us to join and read the Education Carnivals. He quotes BlogCarnival.com by saying:

"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."

This is a wonderful idea because I have been doing this for a long time. I have read so many things that keep me current with educational issues. I have enjoyed joining the debate on some of the articles and I feel this helps me sharpen my own ideas and beliefs. I have connected with many other educators and learned about new resources that are constantly being developed to make my teaching more successful. I make reading the Carnival part of my weekly routine so it has become a habit.

photo credit: Original image: 'Rosie the Blogger' http://www.flickr.com/photos/9106303@N05/2493066577by: Mike Licht