Recently, I've been extended an AMAZING opportunity to be engaged in some professional development that I can't wait to share with you! More information coming soon. As a part of this opportunity, I've been doing some research, watching a lot of Ted Talks and inspirational videos. This has brought me to a wonderful book called "Courageous Edventures" by Jennie Magiera. I have not been able to put this book down since I got my hands on it!
Towards the end of the book, Jennie gives a seven-day challenge for those that want to power up and reignite their innovation exploration plan! If you know me, you know I love a challenge! I gladly accepted the challenge and even tweeted about it to hold myself accountable! This challenge encourages you to spend 1 hour a day for the next 7 days completing tasks that will lead you to a renewed sense of innovation and thinking about a new challenge that you would like to identify, pursue and solve!
Today is the first day of the challenge and according to the book, I needed to spend an hour on what Jennie calls, a "blog bender!" I was to spend an hour searching for different educational technology blogs and then start a blog if I didn't already have one. Well, I already have a blog so I spent my time searching the web for some inspiration!
My thought for today's challenge was that I would research a few new blogs and see what they had to offer. I went to Google and searched, "educational technology blogs." Sure, a TON of blogs populated, and then I had a squirrel moment....what else is new? I remembered that Leslie provided her website information during her session at GaETC, so I decided to go visit! I literally just spent the last hour on Leslie Fisher's website, lesliefisher.com. I have followed Leslie on Twitter for years. I always attend her sessions when I'm at a conference that she's presenting at, however, I have never visited her website. I have no idea how that's even possible, but it is! Well, I do now and it's just as amazing as she is!
Now, the challenge was to spend an hour searching for blogs. Leslie does indeed have a blog on her website but I spent the majority of my time searching all around her website and found a TON of cool tools that I can use! She has an older video on her blog about changing the resolution to something other than the suggested resolutions when presenting on a Macbook. I found the most value in the section called "Resources." Leslie has graciously listed .pdfs of a lot of her sessions. I may or may not have spent more than an hour searching through these. What I appreciate about Leslie is that she provides information about all kinds of topics: IOS, Android, Chromebooks, Web 2.0 resources, iPads, photography, Twitter, etc! You really can get lost in time on her website....I did! I HIGLY encourage you to go over to her website and delve into all that's there! It won't be as fun as seeing her present in person, but it will definitely give you a sense of her great personality and all of the ed tech knowledge floating around in her brain!
I loved this first day of the #courageousedventures challenge! I loved having this hour set aside to engage in some professional development for myself. I use Twitter a lot for my PD as I have the best PLN in the world, but I could definitely see me spending some time doing some organic searching of blogs in the future.
Did you take on the challenge? Which blogs did you come across? Did you start your own blog? Share it below so we can read all about the things you are doing!
