The Edublog Personal Blogging Challenge has pushed me to generate more words and design more content than I have in quite some time.  Oddly enough, I needed the step-by-step structure to break the dam that was holding back my creativity.

Step 7 challenged me to rethink whether I collect or curate resources.  Learning how to embed codes on my blog site has encouraged me to be more conscious of my audience and how that audience might explore the resources I have bookmarked in Evernote or uploaded to a Mindomo map.

The intentionality of setting up a blog and writing posts has not escaped my notice as a teacher.  Selecting a theme, finding widgets, embedding codes, and designing pages before ever generating a blog are all parts of real-world communication.  I changed my theme at least three times in two days before deciding on a crisp, clean look.  I did not want too many or not enough widgets.  And what if my Evernote files are of some interest to someone?  I added those links to a Padlet to find out.

One of my rediscoveries was Mindomo, which I used for several projects some years ago.  I found my old maps and then upgraded the account to add more.  I embedded the code for one of my resources on Teacher Inquiry on my research page and hope to update the map in the near future.